Musings on Normandy

[Ocito80]

I do think the game struggles with seaborne invasions, mainly due to its scale. Probably one of the reasons the feet-dry scenarios exist. Obviously results will vary with each play-through. And just maybe why we never saw a pacific title come our way.

I've not really played Panzer Battles Normandy, but I would think the scale shrinking from 1km in pzc to 250m in pb would make a better difference in how a beach area is played by expanding upon the tactical situation instead of relying on a purely operational one. Probably why I think Market-Garden would be a better PB game than a PzC title, not to take anything away from it there.

Omaha is a tricky mistress, especially with alternate indirect fire turned on. I do think using that optional rule requires the artillery values to be scaled back a little, but that's just my view on the matter.

This is a bit outside the scope of the discussion, but I wanted to inject this too. I know you're just talking about the beach scenario, but it's why the campaign plays such a larger role. The object of the allies was in part to link up the beaches. One of the reasons why Carentan was an objective to the west, if needed forces from Utah beach could put pressure on Omaha, as well as British forces from Gold Beach. Threatening to isolate a capable German division early on could be huge in forcing the German player to either stick it out for a few more American bodies on the beach or withdraw to save the division. Without that external threat, the Germans can just reinforce omaha with whatever is available. Can you imagine if the German reserve regiment, 915th, at the time was originally sent to Omaha beach instead of being sent to attack the airborne troops to the west. It was later diverted to the beach, but only after the defenses started falling bit by bit. Anyway, now i"m just babbling on, my bad.


Atheory