The Longest Day – a full afternoon “playing” the D-Day with FOW

It has been one of the hottest summers ever for WW2 gamers. Battlefront deployed a full array of Late War books: the “transitional” Fortress Europe with all four armies on the Western/Russian front, the US D-Day and the incoming German Normandy focused one. At our club in Milan, we decided to play the D-Day scenarios in US D-Day book to “celebrate” both the 75^th anniversary of that fateful day and the starting of the Late War FOW season.

We already had all the armies we needed: lot of us are V3 veterans, and we began a Bastogne campaign in January with Germans, US and British divisions. We just needed bunkers, lots of bunkers.

The preparation

We asked Battlefront if , but were not available. So we used the bunkers from Baueda – they offer a full range of , with optional French tank turrets. Baueda also has a really good command post, gun emplacement, and some bigger bunkers, so you can choose the ones you prefer. I also added a small 3 x 1 mm round magnet under each “french” turret, so I can remove them when it.

We needed some larger bunker, so we printed them with a 3D printer, as we did for the landing crafts. The final result is of lesser quality of the BF stuff but was good enough for our scenario.

The bunkers we used: these are from Baueda. You can use the small “Tobruk” ones also as objectives for Flames of War.

Actually, when you print a 3d model, you’ll notice the flat surface on the top is totally smooth, while the walls on the side are irregulars. This is due to the way the 3D printers work: they add one layer of material after the other, and they can’t be too precise, resulting in “sides” with irregular lines. For us, this flaw was simply better: we primed the models in black and dry brushed in subsequent layers of lighter greys. The result was very good concrete looking bunkers. We just added a wooden base (you can buy in any DIY shops) and some camo nets and vegetations. ().

The bigger bunkers were printed in 3D, as the smaller landing crafts. Primed in black and with two shades of grey drybrush, the result is simply great!

 

We used a mat from Deep Cut Studio. While has the beach on the shorter side, this one features a full long-edge beach. We placed some (history) books under the end of the sand to simulate the ill-famed beach wall. For the villages and the “bocage”, we had materials from our club “Condottieri” and “X Legio” from Milan, as well as a strong help from the Turin club “L.I.U.T”. We gathered more than 50 houses and factories and 100 infantry bases, in total!

 

The setup took half morning: we used some books to create “hills” under the bunkers and simulate the Atlantic beach wall. Culture helps!

The teams

We had six players in total, so we decided to run three different scenarios. In the US D-Day Book, they are meant to be played one after the other, but we preferred to play them simultaneously. The “beach” mat was big enough to cover two tables, while we had a third table with the night assault from the US paratroopers on a village really similar to Sainte-Mèré Eglise.

 

The six players ready to start the scenarios and see if the US Army will manage to break the Atlantic Wall.

The US team was comprised of myself, Antonio Pietra and Stefano Grombi. The German defender team had Dennis Peroni, my personal nemesis on FOW tables Maurizio Cisotto and Massimo Vecchia.

The tables

The final setup was quite impressive, as you can see from the photos. We agreed that the two tables with the beach had an “invisible wall” between them, so troops from different scenarios couldn’t help or attack the ones from the other. Still, was really eye-catching! I was going to play the “Help’s on the way” scenario against Maurizio, while Antonio was going for the similar but worse-for-US FUBAR VS Massimo Vecchia. On another table, Dennis and Stefano were going to play “Shot in the Dark”.

Shot in the Dark

Dennis is so precise. He printed a map of the WW2 Sainte-Mèré Eglise and reproduced the village for this aerial assault. They played both a 100 points list, with all relevant armoured units on the German side off in reserve and all the deployed troops starting as pinned or bailed out.

 

Dennis and Stefano built their table using aerial reference from 1944 of Sainte-Mèré Eglise, with the Church and the square.

This scenario allowed us to check the airborne rules: we’re not going to play this rule often in Tournaments, but in a friendly scenario is really interesting. Basically, the US troops are all airborne, so you can’t parachute tanks or heavy artillery. Since Germans will receive armoured support, the US player needs to play fast and try to capture the objectives before the German side can crush him with Tigers and Panzer IVs.

The Airborne rule proved quite “historical,” provided we are talking about a game and not a full simulation. We saw Stefano’s paras going around the map and, in some cases, dropping on impassable terrains or enemy troops, as happened on the night before the D-Day. At the same time, German forces are too scarce to cover all table, so Stefano – despite the losses – managed to regroup and attack with a good force in two different spots on the table.

Dennis was forced to choose where to send the first units arriving from reserves, and Stefano strength the attack on the other side. In the end, Stefano even managed to cripple a Tiger and some other tanks – the US troops have the deadly bazookas in decent numbers, so tanks can’t crush them so easily, but Germans managed to defend the objectives. The morning shined on a German victory, with losses. We felt that the Airborne rule works quite fine, but the US side needs to win this scenario really quickly, or it’s doomed to be a German victory.

 

Assaulting Tigers on the infantry: actually, the Paras repelled them thrice

Help’s on the way

My mission had a special rule: to simulate the sheer numbers of allied forces landing that day, all the infantry I chose to deploy on the beaches can “come back from the dead.” Anytime one of my infantry platoons is wiped out, or I decide to remove it, I can deploy it back on the landing craft. They also return in action with a 4+ on a dice, so we can fairly say the US have a good advantage.

The Germans have even fewer points, but they can count on the deadly line of bunkers, with lots of machine guns targeting the US troops, who are normally on the move (so the German MGs won’t need the firepower roll). In this scenario, if the US troops get to a “middle point” near the beach, they activate a faster reinforcement from the back.

Germans moved “en mass” on the wall to repel the attack from the sea

When the scenario started, I really felt like while I was watching the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan. No matter what I did, the Germans literally butchered my troops. You think that an unmodified 3+ save should – actually – save your troops, but when the Germans roll 60+ shots against your three/four platoons, it’s a massacre. I managed to survive enough at the second landing with one platoon, and I dug in. This allowed me to attract enough shooting to get a single platoon of mortars to survive, and in the subsequent bound to shot some smoke screens.

 

The attack from the back arrived on the very few Germans left behind the wall: M10s destroyed any opposition and the Motor Infantry conquered the unchecked objective.

Meanwhile, I landed a platoon of Shermans and began to shot to some bunkers – killing not more than one, but was something at least. With all these tactics, I managed to arrive at the “middle point” and activate the reserves. All Germans were on the bunker line to stop the landings, so when my tanks and M10s arrived on the back, Maurizio had little to defend the farthest objective. This was a major US victory, but the beaches were full of killed bases.

 

The “Help’s on the way” beach was littered by Sherman wrecks: infantry used them for hard cover – and worked!

FUBAR

If you saw the aforementioned movie Saving Private Ryan, – and it’s still optimistic. In this scenario, we had rules similar to the “Help’s on the way,” but with no reserves from the back. Antonio stormed the Atlantic Wall on his table half, but his troops were butchered like mine. However, he couldn’t wait for some relief forces: so, after losing all his tanks (unlike the infantry, they are not replaced after they are killed), he decided to quit the battle. After the game, we noticed the beaches on the Deep Cut Studio mat was a little bigger than the scenario (the troops needed two movements to reach and assault the bunkers). Even with the extra move, we really felt this scenario is quite unbalanced to favour the German side.

 

Similar beach, but bloodier. The German wall, with guns and minefields, proved to be unbeatable

After the games ended, we enjoyed the usual wargamer final report: beers and “amaros” (you need to come to Italy to truly understand how good a Lemoncello is on a July late afternoon) flew abundantly, and we all agreed that we had to blame the usual suspect: our dice!

What you need to do these games

One mat with the beach. Battlefront has a similar mat, that has the beach on the short edge. We used the Deep Cut Studio ones, that has the beach on the longer side.

4-5 bunkers per beach scenario. I think the points spent on the bunkers should be lowered a bit, circa 25% less.

A US army with lots of infantry, and a fair play German army. You can choose the army list forgetting the usual company – support rules, they all count as a Company, so you can’t lose the battle for the morale, the opponent needs to kill all your units. We also suggest, in the “A shot in the dark” scenario, to limit the presence of heavy tanks on the German side. Perhaps, a single platoon of Panzer IV should be the maximum armoured troops allowed.

Houses. You need to fill the terrain behind the Atlantic wall with houses, factories, farms. A too bare scenario would help the Germans in FUBAR and the US reserves from the back in “Help’s on the way”.

Landing crafts. You need 4 of them for each Beach scenario. If you want to land Shermans, you need the special DD version. The US DDay book has both the paper shapes for bunkers and landing crafts, but we know you won’t use them!