Martin picks out a few of the new D-Day German Command Cards and looks at how they alter the formation and game play options available in D-Day Germans.
The new D-Day Germans command card deck continues Battlefronts new direction with command cards of using them to add more historical flavour to the game introduced with the D-Day Americans release in July. Again there is a concentration on adding depth to the game introducing specific formations using the new Title type cards , units and leaders from the Normandy campaign into the game along with the usual mix of a few standard generic cards as well as the Tiger crew upgrades.
The cards are spread across all the formations in the book with a concentration on the beach defender formations, as you might have expected, interestingly though there are very few cards related to specific Normandy Panzer formations. Maybe leaving room for cards for the SS book and the 21st Panzer releases.
Overall there are some really interesting cards in terms of game play and the types of formations you can build going forward with this book. If you have read the article from Duncan on the book itself you will know there are no fortified formations as such in this edition of Flames of War all the nests and bunker defences are tied to the new linked campaign scenarios but in the D-Day German Command Cards Battlefront have given us the ability to recreat Stuzpunkt forces. We get 3 cards for this Machine Gun Nests, Pakfront and Dug -in Panzers, there is also an Old Minefields card to represent fighting over old battlefronts from earlier in the war which you could combine with these three. This opens up a whole plethora of opportunities for the defensively minded player to try out and will make for some different and interesting battles. These will also work well if you are using the formations in this book to recreate the defensive battles in Italy.
I have highlighted a couple of the Title cards in this piece Eastern Front enables you to represent the 352nd Infantry Division as a slightly better force than in the book with platoons led by their eastern front veterans which improves their Motivation as well as their Assault rating compared to the standard formation. Air Force Soldiers allows you to represent the Luftwaffe field divisions that took part in a lot of the fighting in Normandy these troops again get the improved Motivation but this time its the Tactics value which is improved this will increase the effectiveness of their integral formation artillery assets particularly in meeting enagegments.
Next up comes a few of the cards that caught my eye the first is Friedrich Adario who commands an 8.8cm tank hunter platoon he is expensive but the opportunity to hide your big AT asset in plain site of your opponent dug in and gone to ground awaiting just the right moment to open fire makes for a great game mechanic to represent what really happened during the fighting. Needing at least 6’s to be hit until they fire a unit led by Friedrich is a serious problem for your opponent to deal with even when not ambushing.
The second card I have picked out is the Assault Gun Escorts these round out the options of how to use you Fallschirmjager StuG Assault Gun Comapny allowing for a really agressive style of play mounting up the infantry on the back of your supporting StuG’s and StuH’s and getting them up close to the enemy, playing like this would be a great way of representing a german force breaking out of a position encircled by the allies.
Well that’s it from me on the Command Card deck for now. Overall the deck povides lots of opportunity to style and theme your force to specific units and events within the Normandy Campaign and bring a much more historical feel into your gaming, for those more focussed on the history these provide access to that more detailed approach we saw in earlier versions of Flames of War.
That’s actually all of the Panzer divisions in Normandy other than the 21st Panzer, the SS, and of course Panzer Lehr who are the base one in the book.