15 October 2021 ~
No, we are not channeling our inner Charles Shackleford and using both hands. We’ve gathered Moe & Rocky to talk about amphibious operations in wargaming. Obviously, we’re focusing on WW2 and the ‘famous’ things like D-Day and Iwo Jima, but we talk about a variety of other actions and other conflicts, as well. We also spend some time talking about the challenges of how to scale the game when designing one on an amphibious operations. And no, Rocky was not speaking to us from underwater; it just a dodgy audio connection on occasion.
Don’t forget, you can always catch up with past episodes on the “podcast” tab of our site.
So we talk about Gallipoli, frozen French cavalry charges, Operation Mincemeat, D-Day at Tarawa, how many Marines you really need, riverine operations, Brad Pitt’s Saving Private Ryan-inspired beach assault from Troy, Sicily & Salerno, Fort Fisher, War in the Wind, Dunkirk, Washington crossing the Delaware, Denmark vs Canada, and the Scheldt campaign. We liberally name-check Harold Buchanan, Hermann Luttman, and Brian Train, among others.
What do you abstract? What can you leave in? At what scale? How’s Fred’s dog doing on his walk? How much planning vs execution? How much of it happened before WW2? And will we ever stop asking questions?
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So much depends on the scale. I would argue that at the low-level tactical end, the ADVANCED SQUAD LEADER system does an amazing job of depicting the mechanics of amphibious assaults, whether it be in the core modules or the HASL products like BLOODY REEF TARAWA, or third party products like OMAHA WEST and OMAHA EAST, among others. At a a higher platoon level, I’d argue that the Tactical Combat Series game OMAHA: THE BLOODY BEACH and Grognard Simulations DEATH RIDE: NORMANDY series titles are perhaps the apogee of realism. For the company level, my vote goes for the Grand Tactical Series THE GREATEST DAY: SWORD, JUNO, AND GOLD or the Company Scale Series games on Pacific battles, SAIPAN: THE BLOODY ROCK, GUAM: RETURN TO GLORY, and TINIAN: THE FORGOTTEN BATTLE. For another take, DAY OF DAYS is a very generalized treatment but still fun. Once you get to the battalion level or above, there’s more games that cover this than I can list.
Some great games in there, sir! Thanks for highlighting them 🙂
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I saw your podcast on Amphibious Wargames, and listened in for a bit, but was surprised not to hear anything mentioned about Death Ride – Tarawa or Death Ride Normandy. I am of course biased in my thinking they model many of the critical elements of amphibious warfare. They certainly handle the actual landings with such detail regarding the landing craft and getting from the transports to the beach, while combining naval gunfire support and air support. They highlight the terrible situation with the LCVPs running aground on the reef at Tarawa and the Marines being very vulnerable in the Lagoon as they wade ashore. The Normandy series has great detail on the Atlantik Wall WNs and accounts for tides and differing landing times for US and CW forces. If they interest you let me know.
http://www.grognardsims.com/death-ride-tarawa.html
http://www.grognardsims.com/death-ride-normandy.html
Hi guys, slowly working my way through al of your episodes and reached the amphibious episode which was very entertaining. You were struggling to find pre-WW2 examples of amphibious invasions that were opposed but a quite famous one would be Caesar’s first invasion of Britain in 55BC where the first landing site was so well defended the Roman fleet sailed further up the coast all the while being tracked by the local forces until landing opposed some time later.
Another “amphibious” operation of note, most definitely not an invasion would be the Raid on St Nazaire (AH has a wonderful solo game on this) and also the the raid on Zeembruggen in WW1, I would add the history of raiding coastlines obviously goes back millenia, whilst pre-modern naval invasions invasions usually involved landing away from any enemy force/city and then disembarking and marching to the assault.
Just random thoughts for you! Cheers Daniel