Five for Fighting: The Normandy PBG Pack

From Against the Odds:

So what battle has been wargamed the most?

Most people would pick one of these--- Waterloo, Gettysburg, and D-Day.

Yes, even in a world war with stories like Stalingrad, Midway, Guadalcanal, and the Battle of Britain, there's something about the mix of hope and desperation, plus the enormous preparations on both sides to secure the Normandy beaches that grabs the imagination.

The landings involved a bit over 175,000 troops, some 12,000 airplanes, perhaps as many as 10,000 ships, boats, landing craft, frigates, sloops, and other special combat vessels—all involved in a surprise attack on the heavily fortified Normandy coast of France. Despite there never having been a military operation remotely approaching the scale and the complexity of D-Day, it remains a much-traveled territory. So, how could we do something different?

We challenged Paul Rohrbaugh to model all this using our "Pocket Battle Game" format, and he choose carefully, seizing on Rommel's famous quote, “Believe me, gentlemen, the first 24 hours of this invasion will be decisive! It will become for the Allies, as well as for the Germans, the longest day—the longest day.”

But instead of just ONE "post card" sized game, he crafted FIVE separate PBGs, one for each main landing beach for that crucial 6th of June. Best of all, while each one is playable independently, and he also constructed a system clever enough so that they could all be combined into a large campaign game as well

It's one of our favorite Pocket Battle Game sets and collecting the whole set has been a challenge for gamers. Now we will make it easy-- you can just BUY the set!

Here is what you get!

Sword Beach - British troops land and hold "the left of the Allied line" reinforcing their glider and parachute airborne units and preventing any sort of coordinated thrust by German panzer troops on D-Day.

Juno Beach - Given the toughest job, Canadian troops are assigned to tackle the D-Day beach which in turn will become main target of the planned German counterattack that day.

Gold Beach - Well equipped British troops invade at Arromanches with a wide variety of specialized armor to assist, and still earn the only Victoria Cross awarded on D-Day during the hard fighting.

Omaha Beach - US forces invade at "Bloody" Omaha Beach only to encounter the best prepared and alerted German defenders that day. This landing came the closest to being driven back into the sea!

Utah Beach - US forces successfully land to hold "the right of the Allied line" and secure the vital jumping off positions needed to subsequently take the French port of Cherbourg.

The Five for Fighting PBG Pack includes:

• Map - 5 postcard size playing maps
• Counters - 100 full color 1/2" die-cut pieces
• Rules length - 1 page for each individual game, 2 pages for the campaign game
• Charts and tables - 1 cardstock sheet

Complexity - Low
How challenging are they solitaire? - Average
Playing time - Up to 1 hour for the individual games, up to 4 hours for the campaign game

Designer - Paul Rohrbaugh
Development - Steve Rawling
Graphic Design - Mark Mahaffey