D-Day Upon Us – D-Day+10 Battle Report Part I
By Michael Rafferty
This year marks the 80th anniversary of Operation Overlord and the Battle for Normandy. To commemorate this my local group, the Nerds of War, wanted to run a D-Day themed mega battle. It’s been a few years since we’ve run a mega battle at our FLGS The Game Room and not at AdeptiCon, so we wanted to start things off with something big and flashy.
We have a logo and a banner, we’re official!
I really enjoy running large games for people and I’ve always enjoyed playing in something larger and more cinematic. It’s a good feeling to be maneuvering whole tank companies about the battlefield instead of a platoon. That’s what got me started running big games a decade or so ago.
If other people weren’t going to run the kind of games I like, I would do it myself. These games also motivate me to complete modeling projects. Setting a date means I need to have things ready by then and I work better with firm, external deadlines. Big games both keep me recharged in the hobby and progressing along my projects, a win-win!
A section of the Germans I prepared
Now that I’ve explained why I like big games, what were we going to run? We already knew we wanted to do something in Normandy, but the beach assault probably wouldn’t be that fun. The Germans won’t have to move anything, and the Allies will just run forward and hope for the best. That wouldn’t be an interactive, fun game. I’d also have to find and paint my US assault companies which didn’t sound fun, to me at least. After discussion, we went with some of the post-June 6th action as we could have mobile battlefields with each side doing defense, attack, and counterattack.
Working on the setup of Villers-Bocage and Caen. Notice the historically accurate Taco Bell in Caen.
We ended up setting up two large boards. One area represented Carentan and the surrounding countryside, including a farming area and a forestry space. We had a battalion of 101st attacking the 6th Fallschirmjager regiment in the town. We also had elements of the 5th Fallschirmjager division on the outskirts of the town. I used the Berlin Fallschirmjagers for this to represent their lack of jump training and so it would give me easy access to Hetzers and some other equipment. Defending the farm was a Luftwaffe Field Division force supported by 88mm AA guns with reinforcing Jagdpanthers and Panzer IIIs.
Attacking the farm was a US Armored force, with Shermans primarily on one side and a mix of Shermans and armored rifles on the other. Our buddy who is a 40k World Waters player was playing the armored rifles as if they were Khorne berserkers, which while killing my inner historian was amusing. I told him that his CO will either win a medal at the end of the game or be executed for treason, so stay tuned to find out which.
The fields and forests of Carentan
The 88th Khorne Husker Division are ready to go
Forces deployed and ready to go
On the commonwealth table, we set up Villers-Bocage on one end with the 7th Armoured rolling through the town, with Whitman and his Tigers ready to delay them. I forward deployed Whitman so he could make his attack. Whitman is full of surprises that I definitely didn’t make up on the fly and he proved to be an interesting adversary for the British. Then we had a middle board to represent the couple hundred miles of French countryside between Villers-Bocage and Caen.
We’re all about historical accuracy in the Nerds of War. Defending this area was the rest of the 12th SS division. At Caen, I set up some German infantry and the 21st Panzer Division which I had been frantically painting. This proved to be a tough nut for the Canadians to crack, though they did get to use their flamethrowing wasps.
The defenders of Caen
The 7th Armoured coming to the rescue
With the board set up and the players arriving it was time to start. How did the game go? You’ll have to check back to find out.