I bought paper copies of 14 and 15 back in the day, so it was lovely to see them all available here. I will work backwards until I come to a 'Nah, not even for that price' issue - Jagdpanther was definitely a magzine that got better over its life.
Realistically, you are going to get this one for the game, which is definitely worth the money. The pages of variants are a mostly a mix of a 'you won't have this game' / 'not a very good variant if you do' / 'both', with few good ones mixed in. If you read the blurb about the Sorcerer review, then read it, you may laugh. I did.
But what about the game? It's a mix of the familar for its day - SPI Kursk 'move fight move-if-mechanised' - with some very interesting (unique?) twists. You can't move next to an enemy unit unless a) it's across a river, b) there's already a friendly unit in the hex, or c) you're at least as strong in terms of combat strength as it is. You can't, in other words, form a new defensive line next to the enemy unless you're at least as strong as it is. And as the Soviets in most scenarios, you won't be, giving the Germans more freedom of action as they won't be starting in ZOC. Similarly, units with a high enough movement value can go through enemy ZOC. As you can't retreat into an enemy ZOC and the CRT is very likely to lead to a retreat for the defender (4/6 for even 1:1 attacks!) this leads to some 'surround, kill, expolit' tactics.
There are some layout issues - the railroad section is split in two by the forts rules for no good reason - but this turns out to be still worth playing. With ISO paper sizes, you want to print the map to fit on A3 paper and the counters on A4. This will give you large enough hexes to fit the counters. If you print the map on A4, the scaling makes the hexes too small. I do like how much overlap there is in the map sections: no trying to join sheets edge to edge here.
The scenario mix is also good, a mix of Germans finding it easy, the Soviets making an effort, the Germans getting out of trouble, and the Germans being in big trouble. I do like the way that two of them are next to each other in time, but you can't combine them: historically the Soviets woke up at the join point and the start of the later one would look nothing like the end of the first. Without a bunch of rules, it's far easier to do it this way.
So thank you Stephen for designing it, and thank you for making it available again.
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