Hey all,
This forum doesn’t seem to get much love lately so I’ll keep populating with new D-Day experiences. Our last game was particularly wild because we threw in the forture cards and tactic cards. The tactics didn’t hurt as much as the fortune cards did. In reality, my bad fortune probably won me the game in the end.
On the first turn the allies bombardment missed all the block houses and his bombers concentrated on some lone panthers, which were destroyed. My blockhouses did some major damage across the beaches, removing a sherman and hurting Omaha’s landing forces badly. My German forces at Omaha beach would end up holding their position the entire game and repel all landings. His U.S. forces came in slow enough he kept to Utah, and when he did have a few on Omaha they managed to land adjacent to my units because he got the positive effect from a fortune card.
I thought hard about bringing a notepad and counting out the times we would roll to see if his fighters were as inconsistant as I thought mine were. This way I could do the math and say my fighters really did suck wind, but alas I neglected to bring one. With the way I rolled for some fortune cards, I was kicking myself for not tallying the rolls. Quite a few times allies rolled a 6 for shore bombardment and his six dice had to hit blockhouses on 1’s. At least four times when I rolled for the movement phase fortune card, I rolled a 6 and received “fuel shortage” meaning I could only move units from two zones! This completely crippled my movement from the reinforcement areas and pretty soon Caen was swimming in a huge army of Brits due to my lack of counter attack. I picked some off where I could, but I was severely slowed. My reinforcements were coming in quickly and soon the bottom and east side of the map was saturated with zones stacked 8 high.
Around turn 7 Caen was still out of my control, Cherbourg was close to being taken, but St Lo had the bulk of a fueless German front languishing around it. I realized that it would be difficult for him to swing his U.K. army to take St Lo, while protecting Caen from the two German armies I had massed to the east of it. The U.S. army that managed to reach Cherbourg was so far removed from St Lo it couldn’t pressure it and I moved Germans towards Cherbourg to prevent any ease of travel south. The game ended on turn 10 with St Lo still in my control. I knew I’d win even if I didn’t press for Caen or Cherbourg, but I went for it anyway.
Caen was still contested by the end of turn 10 with Germans and Brits fighting it out on the streets. Cherbourgs fighter defenses strafed my stack to oblivion, leaving panther left to swing and miss at the defenders… it died in the return fire. I faced a lot of fighter cover attacking Cherbourg, no one in their right mind would face that volley. Last turn, I hoped the odds would be with them, they were entirely in his court. The 1’s popped up everywhere.
So it ended in a German victory by holding St Lo. Here were some funny occurances due to the cards.
Allies once rolled a 6 for fighter coverage and on a 4+ roll for each fighter would ground it for that turn. He rolled 8 dice, and at the end only 1 fighter could provide strafing coverage for that turn. Of course on that turn I also rolled a 6 for my movement and only 2 zones could move so no benefit for me.
The Axis and Allies have a card where artillery can make a targeted attack againsted an enemy unit in the zone adjacent to it. I used this card and got over 7 shots at allies and managed to take out a few units to include 2 shermans.
I once rolled a 1 for the blockhouses firing to sea and needed to hit on a 5 or less, on the other hand he devastated a unit of tanks when he rolled a 1 for his bombers, allowing them to hit on a 5 or less, and then compounded the pain by using the tactic which allowed his bombers to roll an additional die.
Once we went a few turns with the cards it became pretty easy to know what was coming next and the gameplay accelerated. Again we had a good time with this game, a few beers, some pizza, and famous tank battles going on in the background!
