Anniversary games in June and July

One of the things I try to do is have a game on the anniversary of a battle. It's just to give a bit of a focus because at the club and outside, we play a variety of games that can be played anytime. Playing a game of a battle as near to the date as possible adds a little poignancy to the game.

Here are some of the games we played. First is Breakout: Normandy, played over two evenings in early June. This is my double-sized home produced version of the Avalon Hill game. 

After the Allies are ashore, they secured the Ranville area. Germans trying to wall them off. 

At the British beaches, a very successful bombardment and landing was strengthened by follow-up forces. 

Germans driving for the coast to block the Allies. The German couners are flipped and scattered due to the effect of Allied airpower. 

Omaha was not so severe this time, following very good Allied bombardments. 

This time, though, it was Utah that stalled a bit. A couple of mistakes by the Allied player led to the bridgehead being sealed off for now. 

By the end of the first week it was an Allied victory. 

Then in mid-June, our by now traditional game on the 1815 campaign. This time it was double sized version of Napoleon's Last Battles. Another oldie but goldie. 

Here the French have pushed back the Allies to the Bois de Bossu and the Materne pond while Allied reinforcements march to the rescue. 

On the Ligny side, the Prussian player tried to outflank on both sides and bring D'Erlon in to help. However, it was relatively easy for my Prussians to block these moves because I was moving on interior lines. 

An Allied victory in this game.

A special biggie for me in July were two games on Kursk for the 80th anniversary of the battle. First was another of my home-made double sized versions, this time the SPI Kursk game from the 1980's. It's a very complex game, so to make it easy we only fought the southern side of the batle. The map still fitted on 1 6' x 4' table though. 

Here is the set up for the first turns. The strengths of the Russian artillery and anti-tank are hidden from the German player. 

Both sides took massive losses  and the German attack stalled at the Psel river line due to lack of strong reserves. Much of the German strength was burned up breaking through the Russian lines and dealing with the Russian reinforcements. A Russian victory. 

And then the following week, just to give a seal to it all, we played the vintage classic Panzerblitz. This was the Kursk scenario from the game. The Germans have to move on to the bottom board and get to the top board as well as knocking out lots of Russian units. 

And here are things as both sides approach the middle board for the armoured clash. The game was heading for a German victory when we called a halt. 

 

Panzerblitz is still a great game, considering it was released in 1970. And the others too, are 1970's or 1980's vintage and still great games. 

As a side note; I understand Panzerblitz may have sold over 100,000 copies in it's lifetime and may even have reached the 250,000 mark. I have at least two other games of a similar vintage, Squad Leader and The Russian Campaign, which have apparently sold in similar numbers.  

On a final reflection, new games and rules are published seemingly all the time, and are often very glossy, but sometimes don't merit several replays. For me, these oldies are still worth playing time after time.