"80th Anniversary of D-Day - Scenario" Topic

Our group is looking at running a "large" scenario to commemorate the 80th Anniversary of the D-Day landings next year.

As a group we play "Spearhead", "Rate of Fire" and have looked at a number of other rules.

Out tentative plan was to do a Utah Beach, Airborne Landing Game utilizing "Rate of Fire" in 15mm, however those plans fell apart last week when those of us organizing the game did our first walk through. The game space on our tables were not big enough and competing players would be on top of one another from the start. Enlarging the tabletops is not necessarily an easy solution as we are limited in our club to the number of tables we can put up.

In the next month we will be making our plans on how to address this situation. Nothing is really off the table.

Due to space requirements we are considering other scenarios/games. I am wondering what other players are planning?

Could you set up 2 or 3 tables for 15mm action – maybe the beach itself, St Mere-Eglise, and Pont l'Abbe – with "connecting" tables using MicroArmor/1:300 and converting inches to centimeters? As a 15mm stand moves off its table it is replaced by a corresponding 1:300 stand at the appropriate place on the "connecting" table?

Seems to me such a scenario, covering 3-5 days and taking weather, logistics, airpower, and naval gunfire into account, would be fantastically fun and a great salute to those who served.

The bottleneck of the exits from Utah kind of bogs things down. Assuming you have to fight ashore, which is more really to luck than any tactics, then you swarm the thin beach defenses, and have to slog in through the wet areas. I wonder if you might just do away with the beach and start inland. I know you lose a lot of the "look" of an invasion, but from a playability standard I think the main 'game' at Utah is the 4th ID linking up with the paras.

A possibility is to simulate the issue of landing (both by sea and air) by having a neutral third party to figure out where and what the allied forces will be in advance, without telling the players. Then when they start they get an envelope telling them what successfully landed and in what location. Like wise the German player has his list of T/O forces that 'should be' there, but then the referee decides what 'survives the air/naval' bombardment and is actually allowed to be used in the game. So neither die really knows right up tot he start what forces they get to use.