Taking Rommel to Hart with Normandy ’44

RockyMountainNavy, 13 November 2024

Normandy ’44 4th Printing is the latest edition of a popular entry in the GMT Games “ZOC-Bond” or “‘4X” series of wargames designed by Mark Simonitch. Normandy ’44 covers the invasion of Europe from June 6 to the end of the month at the regimental-level using daily turns. Though the latest printing includes a “big box” option with mounted map, Normandy ’44 is far from a monster game. Rather, Normandy ’44 delivers a playable viewpoint of the invasion and campaign that opened up the Western Front using a proven game system and a reasonable degree of historical abstraction.

 

Version wars

Normandy ’44, designed by Mark Simonitch, was first released by GMT Games in 2010. Rereleased in 2015 (2nd Edition), the latest 2024 publication is being called the 4th Printing. As the GMT Games website states, “Note on 4th Printing: This printing will be identical to the 3rd Printing, except that any known errata will be corrected.” The current rule set is the 2024 Edition 2.3, which is an update from the “3rd Ed. Rules” listed on the GMT Games website which are actually 2021 Edition 2.2. Confused? Well, suffice it to say that if you acquire Normandy ’44 4th Printing along with the Normandy ’44 Mounted Map + 3” Box you will have the latest (as of the time of this posting) version of the game. 

click images to enlarge

 

With a 3” deep box option, one might be tempted to view Normandy ’44 as a monster wargame. The actual contents lead to a different conclusion. The map, when fully laid out, is 22” x 34”. There are five Player Aid Cards but only two are really needed by each player during play (the others are set up assistants) so playing on a table as small as 3’ x 4’ is possible. The three countersheets (actually two and a half) deliver a mere 288 counters. The rule book is 36 double column pages, of which 25 are rules, and the balance are scenarios, an extended example of play, and Designer’s Notes along with some end matter.  The basic contents of Normandy ’44 (with the folded paper map)will barely fit into the standard 2” deep box the game comes in; that is, if you dispose of the insert to enable storage of bagged counters or trays. The new 3” deep box provides plenty of space for the mounted map (replacing the original paper folded version which does not fit into the 2” deep box with other contents) as well as any counter storage solution you desire. [My personal preference is the custom CUBE4ME set.]

 

Bonded wargaming

As befits a game system that has been around for over a decade, the game system and rule book for Normandy ’44 is quite refined. A unique characteristic of Simonitch ‘4X games is the ZOC Bond rules.
Rule 8. ZONES OF CONTROL in Normandy ’44 lays out the rules. As is normal for many wargames, every unit has a Zone of Control (ZOC) consisting of the six hexes immediately surrounding a hex occupied by one or more combat units (8.1 General Rule). When entering an Enemy ZOC, all units must stop; when starting in an EZOC a unit can exit by paying one additional Movement Point (8.2 ZOCs and Movement). However, rule 8.5.1 How to form a ZOC Bond states:

(8.5.1) How to form a ZOC Bond: Any unit or stack that exerts a ZOC can form a ZOC Bond (exception: Scattered units [20.2]). When two such units (or stacks) are two hexes apart (with one vacant intervening hex) they create a bond between them that no enemy unit may enter or cross. Due to the pattern of a hex grid, there are two types of ZOC Bonds—Hex Bonds and Hexside Bonds.

 

The presence of ZOC Bonds in Normandy ’44 leads to other interesting game effects:

(8.5.2) Effects of ZOC Bonds:

• • Units may not enter an enemy Hex Bond or cross an enemy Hexside Bond.
  • Units forced to Retreat into an enemy Hex Bond or across an enemy Hexside Bond are eliminated.
  • Units may not Advance After Combat into a ZOC Bond or across a ZOC Hexside Bond, unless they are entering the defender’s vacated hex.
  • Supply can never be traced into an enemy Hex Bond or across an enemy Hexside Bond.

(8.5.3) Negating ZOC Bonds: A Hexside Bond is negated when enemy units are located on each side of the intervening hexside (as in units D and E in the diagram below). A Hex Bond is negated when the intervening hex contains an enemy unit (as in units E and F in the same diagram below).

(8.5.4) Intersecting ZOC Bonds: If both players have intersecting ZOC Bonds, then neither player may cross the other’s ZOC Bond until it is negated.

The major impact of ZOC Bonds on play in Normandy ’44 is that units tend to not bunch together as much as in other games; the lines seemingly have holes in them where ZOC Bonds are. For grognards, this might lead to issues as one perceives the battlefield; a ZOC Bond may be present but not always seen. It might sound a bit gamey, but players who are more comfortable with the ZOC Bond system tend to have an advantage over those who struggle to imagine—or forget—the bonds across hexes or hexsides.

Combat in Normandy ’44 is, like ZOC Bonds, a mix of classic and more modern game systems. A Combat Results Table (CRT) is used with odds, but each attack must declare a Main Assault Force (10.3) which attacks at full strength whereas all other supporting units attack at half-strength (11.1). There are few die roll modifiers (DRM) but most adjustments to the CRT take the form of column “shifts.” Taken in combination with a Combat Strength Limit of 18, the combat system certainly forces players to think in terms of “Division-level attacks, rather than piling as many factors as possible against a defender” (10.4 Design Note).

 

Rommel’s Hart

Part of my background reading for playing Normandy ’44 4th Printing was to peruse my personal library for books about D-Day. I found I had few, but one stood out to me for how it related not only my own personal wargame experiences but also that of the German Wehrmacht in June 1944. In The Rommel Papers edited by B.H. Liddell Hart (Liddel-Hart, B.H. (1953) The Rommel Papers. New York: De Capo) German Lieut-General Fritz Bayerlein, Rommel’s Chief of Staff in the Afrika Korps, writes their recollections of discussions with Rommel after the latter’s appointment as General Inspector of the Western Defenses. In the course of those discussions, Rommel talked about how many German officers, who had learned warfare on the Eastern Front, were unprepared for combat in the West. In some ways my own wargaming focus the Eastern Front left me in the same state as the German officers facing the Allies on D-Day.

“But the West is the place that matters. If we once manage to throw the British and Americans back into the sea, it will be a long time before they return . . . .” (Liddell-Hart, p. 453)

In The Rommel Papers, Bayerlein relates a conversation they had with Rommel on 17 May 1944 on the differences between the Eastern and Western Fronts. Rommel spoke:

“Our friends from the East cannot imagine what they’re in for here. It’s not a matter of fanatical hordes to be driven forward in masses against our lines, with no regard for casualties and little recourse to tactical craft; here we are facing an enemy who applies all his native intelligence to the use of many technical resources, who spares no expenditure of material and whose every operation goes its course as though it had been the subject of repeated rehearsal. Dash and doggedness alone no longer make a soldier, Bayerlein; he must have sufficient intelligence to enable him to get the most out of his fighting machine. And that’s something these people can do, we found that out in Africa.” (Liddell-Hart, pp. 467-468)

Rommel went on to discuss the misguided views of fellow German officers:

“You have no idea,” I remember Rommel saying, “how difficult it is to convince these people. At one time they looked on mobile warfare as something to keep clear of at all costs, but now that our freedom of maneuver in the West is gone, they’re crazy after it. Whereas, in fact, it’s obvious that if the enemy once gets his foot in, he’ll put every anti-tank gun and tank he can into the bridgehead and let us beat our heads against it, as we did at Medenine. To break through such a front you have to attack slowly, and methodically, under cover of massed artillery, but we, of course, thanks to the Allied air forces, will have nothing there in time. The days of the dashing cut-and-thrust tank attack of the early war years is past and gone—and that goes for the East too, a fact, which may, perhaps, by this time, have gradually sunk in.” (Liddell-Hart, p. 468)

The “cut-and-thrust” school had advocates, such as German General Geyr von Schweppenburg who was responsible for training all armored units in France. von Schweppenburg wanted to form a Panzer Group under their command that, after the Allies landed and made an initial penetration, would lead a grand counterattack to throw the Allies back into the sea. As Bayerlein tells:

[Schweppenburg’s argument] fell on fruitful ground, as a majority of the senior German officers had hitherto fought only in the East and only knew war in its two-dimensional form. These officers were unable to have any idea of the effect that the British and American command of the air had on the southern theater of war. Moreover, they regarded the British and Americans as comparatively incompetent at mobile warfare and considered that our Western enemies could not possibly be any sort of match for the German Eastern front veterans. (Liddell-Hart, p. 466)

The above thoughts occupied my mind in my playthrough of the Campaign Game of Normandy ’44. In particular, I paid attention to the rules for anti-tank guns, air support, and the German Panzer Divisions.

Interestingly, the only anti-tank guns that appear in Normandy ’44 are on the German side. The vaunted Flak 88 has its own special rule (17.7 Luftwaffe 88 Flak Units) which modifies the Strafe die roll of air units attacking the same or adjacent hex in addition to the anti-tank rating which denies an enemy armor shift (see rule 11.4.3 Anti-Tank Units). Rommel’s fears of masses of Allied anti-tank guns turning back the Panzers is not directly shown in Normandy ’44; indeed, it is the Allies who must worry about facing anti-tank guns, not the other way around.

Rommel’s fear of Allied command of the air is abstractly represented in Normandy ’44. Starting on Turn 2, the Allies receive Air units according to a die roll on the Weather Table (19.1.1). An Air unit can be used to support an attack, providing a positive column shift (19.1.2). On Clear Weather turns the Germans consult the Jabos Table (19.1.3) to see what, if any, defensive column shift results from German air support. The fact the table can only be used on Clear Weather turns and has a built-in 50% chance of no effect shows the relative ineffectiveness of the Luftwaffe over the battlefield. Finally, Allied Air units can be used for Strafing of Silhouetted Armor units (the unit symbol is a literally a silhouette vice NATO symbology) as they move across the battlefield (19.1.4). The impact of this rule is that German armored units, such as those that are part of the Panzer Divisions needed to throw back the Allies, are the majority of the units that can be targeted by Strafing. The Strafing rule is perhaps the most direct—and powerful—reflection of Rommels’ fears of Allied air power depicted by Normandy ’44.

With regards to German Panzer Divisions in Normandy ’44, their appearance is governed by the At Start and Reinforcement Cards. The German player is not given any flexibility as to the timing of their release or arrival. The 21st SS Panzer Division, which starts the game deployed to the board, has its Movement Allowance reduced by half on Turn 1 (20.4). Arrival of subsequent Panzer units is dictated by the Reinforcement Card which designates the units and the entry hexes. Normandy ’44 also depicts German Tiger tanks as a sort of wonder weapon with extra Armor Shifts but no chance of breaking down like many did before they reached the front (11.9 Tiger Tanks).

 

That said, if the German player is going to try to pull off a scenario like Peter Tsouras’ alternate history book Disaster at D-Day: The Germans Defeat the Allies, June 1944 (Greenhill Books: London, 1994) they will have to do it within the general historical conditions. That is, perhaps, the true story that Normandy ’44 tells. Normandy ’44 is a well-refined wargame running on a proven game engine with most of the kinks in the design worked out over the years. The scale of the game, while seemingly grand, is actually quite manageable; this is no monster wargame. The ZOC Bond game mechanism allows for a lower counter density that keeps the physical footprint small while the campaign depicted is vast. Most importantly, however, the story presented in the game is a lightly abstracted but relatively true-to-history version of events. Players can certainly make their own impact on the outcome of the campaign but will have to do so within the broad contours of history. Normandy ’44 is an enjoyable, playable wargame seemingly intent on delivering a pleasurable gaming experience over any sort of deeper immersion into history. It is not a bad wargame, but it certainly is a war game.

 

 

[I recognize that, given the recent controversy over NAC Games The Other Side of the Hill which lifts the title from a Liddell-Hart book, some may take exception to my citing of B.H. Liddell-Hart who some view as an apologist for German officers and their association with the Nazi party in World War II. Further, I recognize that as a source Liddell-Hart may be biased and likely provided selected quotes from Rommel to portray them in a more positive light. It is also important to note the events taking place around the time The Rommel Papers were published. When The Rommel Papers were first published in 1953, West Germany was working to stand-up a new German Wehrmacht for the Cold War in Europe. Thus, some viewed it as very important to rehabilitate the reputation of the Wehrmacht in order to make them a valued partner in NATO, even at the cost of ignoring some unsavory aspects of history.]

Thanks to GMT Games for graciously providing the Armchair Dragoons a review copy of both the 4th Printing and the Mounted Map + 3” Box.

 

---

Thank you for visiting the Regiment of Strategy Gaming and riding with The Armchair Dragoons.
Rather than list a bunch of social media links, the easiest thing to do is to check out our LinkTree, which connects you to all of our various locales around the web.
You can also support The Armchair Dragoons through our Patreon, and find us at a variety of conventions and other events.
Feel free to talk back to us either in our discussion forum, or in the comments below.