What games to get?

[Vaevictis]

My wife will get me 3-4 games for my birthday. I'm to pick them out, but need some advice. Here are my thoughts:


General: I'm interested in games that have great playable scenarios for PBEM. Play balance not important.

Normandy -- not at all, sounds like it is a real slog with tons of units and snail's pace

Bulge -- Ive gamed this a lot, so the battle is less enticing. But if HPS put an interesting spin on it, I might be interested

Tobruk -- heard bad things about it, only title that is not success -- is this correct?

El Alamein -- Very tempted here. I'd like to see PzC in the desert. I've never wanted to game the battle, though, as it seemed some kind of WWI style brute force assault. What is PzC in the desert like and does the battle generate exciting scenarios despite its reputation?

France -- This would be automatic for me -- any considerations that might give pause?

Salerno -- Quite tempted, but worried it will be too much mountain fighting. Sicily has enough of that for me.

Rzhev -- I very much enjoy the Russian attack campaigns. I've been afraid that this would have too much of the Kharkov hopelessness to it though.

Non-PzC:

War over Mideast (air game) -- is this insanely detailed? how playable is it? For that matter, I have no idea what it is like.

Decisive Action -- same as above