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Campaign for Cherbourg

C

coolbreeze

Guest
I think everyone is coming up with new Combat Mission ideas during the shelter in place. I've begun developing my own campaign for the Cotentin peninsula. Essentially the game will start D-Day +1, focusing on Utah beach and the subsequent American campaign for the deepwater port Cherbourg. I've attached below the proposed campaign rules and the Axis and Allied TO&E. I would deeply appreciate any rule suggestions/edits, historical notes, or already made map suggestions (for the special maps). I know the rule document is 13 pages long (and can be a bit boring), but do feel free to read as much as you want and comment on any suggestions on those portions you did read.

Short Version:
The allies want to capture Cherbourg, and the Axis want to delay that as long as possible. The sides switch off moving around the operational hex (each unit moves hex at a time).
Regarding Allied Air Power:
I've tried to incorporate it in an operational sense, but I believe that in-game CMBN Air Support can be ahistorically powerful. I made a conscious decision to not allied the Allied player(s) access to Air Support during the Tactical Phase but would love to hear any arguments against this.

Regarding Supply:
I wanted to incorporate supply during the campaign in order to create an operational continuity while balancing ease of administration. Each combat action cost one supply level (Full/Adequate/Limited/Scarce/Severe). Units can be resupplied with a limited amount of resupply points.

Regarding Unit Strength:
I really wanted to create a form of persistent casualty system and explored editing a campaign while playing it in order to tailor it into a dynamic operation(but that failed). However, I eventually abandoned that idea as too much work for the GM or players. I decided to balance it with having casualties cost victory points for the allies and the Axis use HQ indicators to reduce their persistent unit strength.

Victory Points:
While the main goal for each side may be Cherbourg, there are additional secondary objectives that add up to a substantial amount of victory points. At the end of the campaign, each side will compare their victory point total. Whichever side has a larger total wins the operation/campaign.

I want to reiterate that I would love any constructive criticisms on any aspect of my game design and I've attached the full documents of everything below with examples (Full TO&E and Stuff in Zip).

P.S. Orignal map comes from https://chindits.wordpress.com/2019/01/26/a-day-at-the-beach-normandy-1944/ -- Also I still need to find or make maps for all the special maps listed, so the campaign will not be launched for some time. I decided to release my ideas in order to get feedback in the early stages before I got too attached to anything.
 

Attachments

  • Cotentin Campaign.zip
    6.3 MB · Views: 6
  • normandy-cotentin-peninsula(Flood).png
    normandy-cotentin-peninsula(Flood).png
    2.7 MB · Views: 31
  • Map With Unit Example.png
    Map With Unit Example.png
    3 MB · Views: 30
  • CMBN Operation Design.pdf
    126.8 KB · Views: 6
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Thanks Titan! I'll let you know when everything should be ready to launch the campaign.
 
but I believe that in-game CMBN Air Support can be ahistorically powerful. I made a conscious decision to not allied the Allied player(s) access to Air Support during the Tactical Phase but would love to hear any arguments against this.

I'm actually not sure it is that powerful. Basic strafe planes are extremely cheap, but they don't seem to cause that many casualties (usually more than the planes cost though). Rocket planes are very expensive, and it's rare that the rockets hit anything.

I usually agree with my opponents to keep aircraft out of it, but thats more because I think they are not implemented well in the game - both from a realism standpoint and from a gameplay perspective.
 
Thanks @hungry animals! Great find, I'll message the creator. Saves alot of time of me making the map.

@Bulletpoint In my experience, regular and up strafe planes seem to decimate infantry squads and even take out PzIVs after a few strafing runs. Maybe its just cause I play germans more often, but my purely anecdotal expereince makes me wary of including them in the tactical phase of this campaign. Do you think there would be good way to implement them?
 
@Bulletpoint In my experience, regular and up strafe planes seem to decimate infantry squads and even take out PzIVs after a few strafing runs. Maybe its just cause I play germans more often, but my purely anecdotal expereince makes me wary of including them in the tactical phase of this campaign. Do you think there would be good way to implement them?

I'm fine with just leaving them out to be honest... Like flamethrowers, the way they are implemented seems half-baked. Especially since German AA is pretty much completely useless.

But if you want to include them, you could make a "special counter" system, where the US side has a certain amount of airstrikes that can be assigned to battles. Each airstrike counter would then give the right to buy an attack plane of the player's choice in the battle.

Especially if the German player doesn't know which battles will have air support and which ones won't, it will keep him on his toes...

Maybe give the German player a special heavy tank counter or similar, to balance and spice things up a bit.
 
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That could be interesting. Need to playtest the campaign system to actually see if the Allied side would need an additional boost.

I would be hesitant about giving the German player a heavy tank counter. But it could be interesting to provide like 6 additional light AA platoons that can be assigned to Combat Units. With the support units hidden, both Axis and Allied Players would have to worry about the possibiity of AA fire and Airsupport during the tactical phase.
 
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With the support units hidden, both Axis and Allied Players would have to worry about the possibiity of AA fire and Airsupport during the tactical phase.

The problem is that AA units are nearly completely useless against aircraft. I played the Bastogne campaign where there's a mission where you get like 30 strong AA units (quad, tri-mount) against 2 attacking aircraft. In several playthroughs, the most I shot down was 1 of those. And the accuracy of the planes is not affected. In several cases, the planes happily strafed the actual AA units. The whole air/AA system is poorly designed.
 
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