An after-action
report for a D-Day game using the Battlegroup Overlord rules.
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| Approaching Omaha (from Wikipedia) |
Background
When I visited the
Normandy landing beaches earlier this year (see my earlier blog posts Normandy
parts I and II if you're interested), I promised myself that I would
wargame one of them in 2014, given that this year is the 70th anniversary of
the D-Day landings. My mind had actually been set on the idea some time
earlier; in summer 2013 I put quite a lot of effort into scratch-building some
D-Day beach terrain . As usual, though, I got a bit overambitious (this is a
tendency I have - for example I have two huge boxes full of a 15mm Stalingrad
that has never been used, and a large quantity of desert fortifications for
Tobruk - but no 8th Army to defend them with) and it wasn't actually finished
until after Christmas. At least it was finished! But the point is that by this
time I had made an invasion beach and defences, landing craft and DD tanks, and
painted both armies.
Al and I decided to
play out a scenario at the Heromeet in Bangor based on Omaha beach, E-1 draw,
which is in Easy Red sector and was one of the times during our Normandy
battlefield tour that we stood on the sand at Omaha.
This was a tough
place to land. At the top of the beach was a short sea wall backed by dunes
with bluffs rising behind. There was a narrow track leading down to the sea
(the E-1 Draw) that was defended by Wiederstandnests WN64 and WN65, together
forming a strongpoint of two 50mm guns in concrete casemates, along with
multiple machine gun nests, mortar pits, and barbed wire sections, several of
which were mined. The road was blocked with tank traps and the beach was filled
with stakes, Czech hedgehogs and ramps, some of which again were mined. The
beach was also directly in the line of fire of a distant 88mm gun in a casemate
set into the cliffs a mile or so to the west at WN72, and a heavy artillery
battery inland was also able to give supporting defensive fire directly onto
the beach.
Game Setup
We'd not felt wholly
satisfied using the Flames of War rules for historical simulation games, and in
my view this is especially the case for the Hit
the Beach scenario, so we decided to try out the Battlegroup Overlord
rules instead.
Without a points
system, we drew strongly from the Bloody Omaha scenario in the Battlegroup
Overlord book (page 117), adjusted slightly to conform to what we knew of the
actual battlefield and also to accommodate the troops I owned. We used the
following lists:
US 1st Infantry Division and Support
First Wave
3 DD Sherman Tanks
Second Wave
(arriving on Turn 2)
3 Assault Boat Teams
in landing craft
1 Engineer team and
Sherman Bulldozer in landing craft
Third Wave (arriving
on Turn 5)
3 Assault Boat Teams
in landing craft
1 Beach Landing
Party HQ with jeep in landing craft
Fourth Wave
(arriving on Turn 8)
2 Assault Boat Teams
in landing craft
Fifth Wave (arriving
on Turn 10)
5 M4 Shermans in LCT
Off-Table Troops
2 offshore artillery
batteries of 3 x 105mm guns
Turn 1: 3 Timed
6" gun barrages
Turn 2: Timed B-26
Air Strike
Turn 9: Timed
5" gun barrage
Turn 10: Timed
5" gun barrage
Turn 11: Timed
5" gun barrage
2 1st priority
artillery requests
11 Officers; Battle
Rating 100
German Forces
88mm PaK43 casemate
gun with loader team (WN72)
2 x 50mm PaK 38 gun
casemates with loader teams (WN64/65) at the top and bottom of the D-3 draw
8 x MG34 nests
2 x 50mm mortar
nests
1 x quad 20mm flak
nest
1 x 75mm PaK40 in
open bunker
1 x OP bunker
Anti-tank obstacle
across the entrance to the draw
Barbed wire sections
at top and bottom of the bluffs and defending the OP bunker
Minefields across
top of the bluffs along barbed wire line
Beach obstacles all
over the beach
1 x 75mm gun in open
pit providing enfilading fire
1 x Rocket artillery
battery at the table rear
Off-Table
Reinforcements:
Understrength
Grenadier platoon (HQ, 2 x squads, 2 x MMG teams all in trucks)
2 Officers, Battle
Rating 40+D6
We set out the
terrain on an approximately 8 x 4 table roughly as shown below.
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| Omaha: Easy Red - the battlefield |
The scenario in the
Battlegroup Overlord book suggests a 6 x 6 table and has deeper beach and open
water areas than our terrain allowed (note to self: when time permits I will
make a new and extended beach). This will definitely have made a difference, the
difficult conditions offshore slowing landing craft and DD tanks and increasing
their vulnerability to defensive fire.
While we were able
to extend the sea zone (hence the 8ft table length) the beach was fixed because
of the way I had constructed the terrain (originally intended for Flames of
War), so (we could argue) the tide was higher than expected.
The game has the
following objectives, which are all in German hands at the start of the game.
Obviously the German player cannot claim an all objectives held victory!
- Breach the anti-tank obstacle
- Breach the trench line at the top of the bluffs
- Capture the observation bunker
The game uses all
the special rules from the Beachhead scenario (p.114).
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| The early hours of 6 June, 1944 and all is quiet on the Ste-Laurent-Sur-Mer seafront |
The Game
The game began by
deploying the defenders according to the map and allocating 2d6 units to be in
Ambush Fire. This ended up being all of the big guns and most of the MG nests.
The first wave of DD tanks was then deployed 10" from the shore and the second
wave at the seaward table edge.
The sea was rough,
with a Heavy Swell (as it was on the day). This meant that the landing craft
and especially the DD tanks were really slow getting to the beach. During this
time they found themselves under enormously heavy fire from the defenders. However,
the defenders themselves took a pounding from off-table artillery and air
strikes and while this for the most part simply ended up pinning forces down it
meant that a lot of effort had to be put in by the Germans in particular to
rallying units - and that meant taking tokens.
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| First arrivals on the beach |
The allies had only
got a single DD tank on to the beach by Turn 4 when the German reinforcements
arrived and they were quick to deploy to the assistance of the defenders,
detaching some of their men to reoccupy several of the MG nests that had become
ineffective through taking occasional casualties.
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| At last, the German reinforcements are awake and on the way to the coast |
The random effects
of the tokens had some interesting game effects. There were at least three
occasions when German air support (doubtlessly Pips giving the Luftwaffe its
finest hour) happened, bombs scattered wildly with mixed effectiveness about
the beach, narrowly missing the defenders on at least one occasion. And to the
benefit of the Americans, the 88mm casemate was running out of ammo.
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| Wave after wave more Americans make it onto the beach |
Gradually, despite
losing all tank support, the Americans brought troops onto the beach and on
Turn 10 took the first objective at the bottom of the E-1 Draw. At the same
time the Germans took their final counter and their morale broke. We presume
that this was the point the defenders lost hope and either abandoned their
positions or came out with hande hoch. Common sense in the end wins over
loyalty to the Fuhrer, at least where Ostbatalions are concerned!
Post-Mortem
My overall
impressions of the game were all good. It was a lot of fun, and it felt right
for D-Day and Omaha Beach. Play was quite slow but I put this largely down to
our lack of familiarity with the rules - we definitely sped up as the game went
along. It is clear, though, that the game does require careful balancing to
make scenarios work, especially in appropriately setting the break point for
each army. It was a little bit deflating in our game when the Germans
surrendered - it felt a little precipitate; but the game does have to end
somewhere and it is possible that we weren't doing the naval gunfire right (it
felt too effective) and that may have skewed things slightly too far in the
allies' favour.
Overall, though a
great game and we will definitely be giving these rules an outing again soon!
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