Axis and Allies: D-Day

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here is the AH homepage for A&A DDay-


http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/prod/axisdday

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here is a link for a european based website that plays all versions of A&A PBEM games -

http://www.flames-of-europe.de/

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here is a pic of the box art & game components Ect...

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here is a list of game pieces that come with the game -

The Piece Counts


Germans........... Americans........British and Canadians
52 infantry.........35 infantry........28 infantry
22 tanks............6 tanks............. 8 tanks
34 artillery.........15 artillery........13 artillery
17 blockhouses..4 fighters...........4 fighters
........................1 bomber...........1 bomber

You can see that the Germans have many more tanks and artillery, and nearly as many infantry, as the Allies put together. They have no air units, but they do have those nasty blockhouses.

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the following posts are a breakdown and explanation of the game, all info is from the ah website. each section shall be divided into seperate posts to make things easier....

As we work through the next ten columns, you should keep one mantra in mind. As you evaluate what's different about this game, always remember the following:

Axis & Allies is strategic, Axis & Allies D-Day is tactical.

The core game is the essence of global strategy. You control the wartime economies and military deployments of superpowers that can clash all over the world. This epic scale is what makes Axis & Allies the greatest of all World War II games.

D-Day, on the other hand, is not like this at all. It focuses on an area 100 miles on a side, smaller than most single spaces on the A&A map. Individual units represent actual forces that fought on the beaches and in the towns. Every important occupied village is seen on the map, and all of them can matter in the course of a game.

This is a different sort of game. If you get your mind in the right place, you will see that what Axis & Allies does on a global scale, it can do just as well in the fields of France -- but with a very different feel.

A Personal Feel

D-Day looks and feels different from Axis & Allies. When R&D started working on the Axis & Allies line, two packages came in from Larry Harris. The first was the basis for what became the new Avalon Hill edition of Axis & Allies, on store shelves now. (If you want to read more about that design process, you can read my last series of columns.) The second was the first draft of D-Day. It had planes on the box top, suggesting it would be similar to Axis & Allies Pacific, which also had a plane on it. That assumption couldn't have been more wrong.


In this game, every unit has a designator stating which historical military unit it represents, such as the 101st Airborne Division. When you lose a unit, you do not get it back. Ever.

Consider the effect of that in Axis & Allies. Imagine your side started the game with 10 tanks. As you lost them in combat, you couldn't build more of them. What would you do? Would you save them from combat? Would you try to get everything out of them you could? Would you even build the last one until you had to?

In D-Day, you get a certain number of units and no more. Some start in play, and others come in as reinforcements. You can never buy more units. In fact, you never buy anything at all.

A Shorter, Tighter Game

Because there is no economic activity in this game, you have only the troops at hand to make your victory happen. Worse, you must do it in a set amount of time. The Allies must launch their invasion and defeat the German forces within a limited number of turns or the Wehrmacht wins. The game can be played in less than two hours, meaning that if you have an evening free, you conceivably could play a tournament format, switching back and forth between playing the Axis and the Allies.

The game is for two or three players. The Axis is always played by one player. The Allies can be played by one player, or with one person as the Americans and one as the British and Canadians. That's right, the heroes of the Great White North make their first Axis & Allies appearance in this game.

The rulebook is tight. All the rules for the game are crammed into 24 pages. There's a lot in those pages, however, all of which I'll try to cover in the next nine columns.

The rulebook is flavorful, too, as you can tell from the quote that begins this column. It's salted with quotes from the leaders who participated in the activities around D-Day: Eisenhower, Rommel, Pétain, Churchill, De Gaulle. Whereas in Axis & Allies you represent all the decision-makers who control economies and deployments, in D-Day you represent these military leaders. Your decisions may mirror theirs, or you may approach them a different way. It's your call, for ill or for good.

What's In the Box

D-Day has a rulebook, map board, battle board, six-sided dice, and plastic pieces, just like Axis & Allies. That's where the similarity ends.

One of the pieces is the blockhouse, a brand new piece for Axis & Allies. A blockhouse is a machine-gun and artillery emplacement pointed at the ocean. It has a devastating effect in the game, which I'll discuss in a couple weeks.



Other than a single turn marker, there aren't any counters or tokens in the box. You don't retain control of territories after you leave them, so there are no control markers. Because each piece represents a historical unit, there are no counters on which to stack units. Similarly, there are no Industrial Production Certificates in the game. Instead of spending freely, you have to make do with the units you have.

D-Day also marks the first official invasion of cards into this great wargame line. I'll spend a lot of pixels on the cards in an upcoming column, but for now I'll just tell you that they're not like any cards you'll find in any other games by Wizards of the Coast. They are crucial to the game, and they will let you play four different games out of the same box.

There's a new, bigger type of card in the game, too: the reinforcement chart. Each side gets one. From the beginning of the game, you'll know what pieces you have to use. How you deploy those pieces is up to you.



The game is centered around the taking of three inland cities. Of course, for the Allies to do that, they must first get ashore.

Areas on the Map

There's a lot to this map, some of which you'll discover on your own. Here are a few key features to look for:

1. Unit Placement Silhouettes

Setup for D-Day is easy. It doesn't require separate charts like the core game. Just place every starting unit on its silhouette on the map board. For example, in this territory, you'd place one German tank.

The units noted on the board aren't the only ones in the game. Some will go on a set of reinforcement boards for later mobilization.

2. Victory Cities

Like the revised Axis & Allies core game, D-Day has victory cities. Unlike in the parent game, all of the victory cities start in the grip of the Axis. The three cities are Cherbourg in the upper left section of the map, St Lô located centrally, and Caen on the far right. Each city is surrounded by a spotlight circle to make it easy to find and to help players remember "this is the objective."

The object of the game depends on which side you're on: If you're the Allies, you must control all three victory cities simultaneously before the end of turn 10. If you're the Axis, you must prevent this from happening. On the left side of the map is a track of squares for monitoring the turn order, as well as spaces for the card deck and discards.

3. Beachheads and Airborne Boxes

This blowup of the Utah Beach area shows two types of special zones in the game. The first is the offshore beachhead on the right, in which the American units assaulting that beach are placed. The second is the paratrooper box, into which US soldiers descend from the sky.

These two types of zones are the only places in which the Allies can reinforce their troops. That means controlling these areas is of paramount importance for the Allies and thus for the Germans as well.

The territory here also shows the silhouette of a blockhouse, the new piece for this game. I'll describe more about this interesting unit in a few weeks. The other ground units in the game are infantry, artillery, and tanks, though I encourage you not to presume too much about them from your experience with Axis & Allies.

4. The Airfield

On the top edge of the map is an abstract zone representing the combined air forces of the United States and United Kingdom. These fighters and bombers launch from England each turn in an effort to give the Allied ground troops some needed relief. Planes return here every turn ... unless they don't make it home.

The Germans don't have an air force; the Luftwaffe is represented in some card activity. That said, the Germans do have plenty of defenses against the Allied air strikes. The air units are also a bit different from those in Axis & Allies, and I'll explain why very soon.

5. Reinforcement Markers

On the bottom of the map are road markers showing the routes that the Axis reinforcements use to get to the front lines. These are the only areas in which the Germans can reinforce their troops, so defending these lines is a crucial part of the German strategy.

The roads themselves are mostly window dressing. You can move between any two territories regardless of whether there's a road between them.

Capturing Victory Cities

The three victory cities drive the game.

The choice of these cities was driven by history. The game begins on June 6, 1944, of course, but it is presumed to cover most of June and July. Cherbourg fell on June 27, Caen on July 18, and St Lô on July 25. With these three key cities in the Allies' hands, the Allies had Normandy in their grasp and could move on toward Paris. If they hadn't controlled these cities by the end of July, perhaps events would have developed differently.

A key decision in the game is what to attack or defend, and with whom. US and UK forces come into the game as neighbors, but they don't have to stay that way. The Americans can peel west toward Cherbourg while the British and Canadians drive south to Caen. The Germans may choose to defend all the victory cities or leave only a token force in one or two while concentrating on the others. There are many roads to victory.

Once you take a victory city, you might not be able to keep it. Remember that territory is controlled only if it's occupied. If you don't have units in the areas you need to control at the end of the turn, you don't win. Annihilating the other side is not good enough if your units don't move into the cities

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D-Day introduces cards for the first time into the official Axis & Allies game line. This causes a few fans some trepidation. Before I discuss how the cards work, I'll quell the concerns of those Axis & Allies fans who have issues with cards invading their game.

The cards are not collectible. There's a fixed set of cards in the game, and you never need any more of them.
The cards are not randomized. They will appear in the same order, though some may be added or subtracted by decisions you make.
The cards are not played out of your hand. In fact, they're not hidden information at all. Any deceptiveness you bring to the game will come from your strategy.
Now that I've covered what the cards are not, I'll tell you what they are. The deck is broken into three sets of sixteen cards, which allows you to play at least four different games with the components in this box. Each of the three sets has its own card back so you won't get them confused. Here are graphic designer Abigail Fein's card backs.



The card deck has three types of cards: order cards, fortune cards, and tactics cards. Only the first type is used in every game of D-Day. You can play with just the order cards, the order cards and the fortune cards, the order cards and the tactics cards, or all three sets. Each combination can be a very different game from the rest.

Here is a summary of each card type.

Order Cards

The order cards drive the sequence of play, which doesn't have player turns as you've come to know them in Axis & Allies. Instead, order cards break each turn into distinct phases. During a given phase one side (either the Axis side or the Allies side) is active. For example, in the case of order card 1, the activity is done by the Allies player(s), as the Allied paratroopers attack. The Axis player doesn't act during this order; he must wait for his own orders to come up.

During each turn of play, you follow the instructions on the order cards, one at a time from the lowest number to the highest, then place the card face up in the “Completed Orders” box. When you have completed the instructions on all the cards, check for victory. If no one has won, the turn is over but the game goes on. Flip the deck over, return it to the “Orders” box, and begin the next turn of play.

Sometimes, order cards go away, after their usefulness is exhausted. For example, after all the paratroopers have landed, you don't need the Airborne Assault order card any more. As the game progresses, the deck becomes smaller.

The order cards are numbered 1 through 16 and are always played in numerical order. Each order card has a symbol or symbols corresponding to the active player. Sometimes the other side can respond. This is indicated in smaller text below the first line. The remainder of the card describes the actions to be taken that turn.

At the end of the turn, if the Allies have the only units in Cherbourg, St. Lô, and Caen, they win. If it's turn 10 and the Allies don't control all those cities, the Axis wins. Otherwise, the deck flips over and the next turn begins.

Fortune Cards

The success of the Normandy invasion depended as much on chance as it did on planning. Paratroopers went off course, supply lines collapsed, and orders got garbled or lost. For both sides, the surprises of D-Day led to the loss of thousands of lives.

The D-Day game recreates this effect through fortune cards. These cards are numbered 1 through 16, just like the order cards. Before the game, each of these cards is placed in the deck before the similarly numbered order card.

When you flip a fortune card, you roll a die. On a 1, you get a positive development. This can be a change of the results needed on the next order or an effect on the pieces used in that order. For example, the example fortune card's positive development is the doubling of the effectiveness of paratrooper attacks.

If you get a 6 on the roll, you get a negative development. This fortune card's negative development is the Axis choosing some paratroopers to be eliminated and stopping the rest from attacking.

You can change your tactical plans between determining the fortune result and acting with those pieces. For example, if a fortune card indicates that some of your units hit more effectively or not all of your units can attack, you know that before committing to any specific action.

Tactics Cards

Strategy is the heart of any Axis & Allies game, so deciding when to uncork your boldest effort is a key part of the decision-making. In this game, tactics cards represent strategic maneuvers each side can perform outside the course of normal events.

The tactics cards are also numbered 1 through 16. When included in the game, each tactics card is placed after the correspondingly numbered order card. (That puts the cards in alphabetical order: Fortune card, Order card, Tactics card.) Each tactics card states which player can use the card and describes its effect.

Each tactics card can be used just once by the appropriate side. This sample tactics card gives the Allies a new batch of paratroopers, but then the card is removed from the game. You might want to invoke this card on turn 1, or you might want to wait for the beaches to clear out first. In the second case, the Axis player knows you haven't used this card yet so he or she may change tactics to take advantage of that information.

Tactics cards and fortune cards allow you to try new strategies against the same players. Changing the card mix allows you to add complexity and choices to the game, at the possible expense of it taking a little longer. You decide in advance whether you want to play with just the order deck or add in one or both of the other two decks. This way, your first game can be a different experience from your 10th and 20th games.

Those are the three card types.

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In this column I'll guide you through the first few order cards. This is fairly easy to do because the first seven cards all have the same theme: death raining down from the sky. The Allies begin each turn by aiming their considerable air and sea forces at the occupied countryside.

As I stated last time, the order cards are followed in sequence. To start the first turn, put the turn marker on Turn 1 on the left side of the map. Order card 1 is dealt off the deck, and its instructions are followed. Then order card 2, then 3, and so on. Each card has one player acting while the other reacts.

In these orders, you will see that units do not follow the same rules as they do in Axis & Allies or its sequels. All the units have been customized for this game.

Order Card 1: Airborne Assault

The text of this Allied order is Roll one die for each infantry in the Airborne boxes. A roll of 1 is a hit. (Blockhouses cannot be chosen as casualties.) Remove this card from deck after use.

Paratroopers -- the US 101st, the US 82nd, and the British 6th airborne divisions -- are essentially normal Allied infantry pieces, but they have a special attack as they drop from the sky. Each paratrooper gets a free shot if there are German land units (not blockhouses) in the zone surrounding the airborne box. The Germans do not get to fire back, so anything hit dies without retaliating. (The Axis still chooses its own casualties.)

After the paratroopers' free attack, order card 1 is removed from the deck. This turns the paratroopers into regular infantry from that point on. Here's a key paradigm to understanding this game: Acting on one order does not prevent a unit from acting on another. When the Allied units attack later on, these paratroopers can join in even if they attacked on order card 1. They're just normal soldiers at that point.

Order Card 2: Naval Bombardment

The text of this Allied order is Roll six dice, targeting blockhouses only. A roll of 2 or less is a hit.

The navy that gathered at Piccadilly Circus -- the nautical marshalling point for the Allied invasion -- unloads on the Atlantic Wall in this order, attempting to clear the beaches for the landing units. The Allied players choose their targets one at a time, rolling a die for each bombardment. Each hit removes a blockhouse from the game.

This is the first occasion of "targeted" attacks in this game line. A targeted attack is one that specifies a single unit as its target. The blockhouses start on most of the coastline spaces, and cannot be moved out of the way of this targeted bombardment. The hit blockhouses do not get to fire back before they are destroyed.

When all the blockhouses are destroyed, this card is removed from the game.

Order Card 3: Fighters Patrol

The text of this Allied order is Place fighters in selected zones.

The United States and United Kingdom start with four fighters each which they can move to any land territories they choose. Up to four total fighters may be placed in any given zone.

Fighters do not attack at this point. In fact, at no time does an Allied player say, "I'll attack with my fighter now." That's because fighters have a special role in D-Day: They exist to punish the Germans for moving their forces. I'll discuss this more in the next column, which covers unit movement.

Order Card 4: Antiaircraft Fire vs. Fighters

The text of this Axis order is Roll one die for each artillery in a zone containing fighters. A roll of 1 is a hit.

The first Axis order targets those fighters just placed by the Allies. As there are no antiaircraft guns per se in this game, the multitude of German artillery -- the massive 88s -- in the same zones as Allied fighters can fire one shot apiece, with each 1 knocking a fighter of the Axis's choice out of the sky. Hit fighters do not get to fire back. A single fighter can be shot at by multiple guns in the same territory, which doesn't happen in Axis & Allies.

The surest way to avoid this effect is to place fighters in zones without artillery. Unfortunately for the Allies, following this advice means the Germans might be able to move with impunity.

If all the fighters are destroyed, this card and order card 3 are removed from the game.

Order Card 5: Bombers Strike

The text of this Allied order is Place bombers on selected zones that do not contain Allies land units. Roll one die for each bomber against a target Axis unit. A roll of 3 or less is a hit.

The US and UK each have one bomber at the start of the game. These planes can be placed anywhere that Allied land units are not; otherwise, the bombers would hit friendly forces. This restriction exists because of the small size of the territories and the imprecision of bombing. Unfortunately for the Allies, for much of the game this excludes the beaches from the list of viable targets.

Note that the bombers' strikes are targeted against a land unit of the Allies' choice, and they hit on a 3 or less (not the 4 or less from other Axis & Allies games). Also, unlike in the core game, these strikes happen before antiaircraft fire against the bombers. (There is no strategic bombing in this game because there is no economic component.)

Order Card 6: Antiaircraft Fire: Bombers

The text of this Axis order is Roll one die for each artillery in a zone containing bombers. A roll of 1 is a hit.

Now the 88s get to open up on the bombers, if the Allies have put them in harm's way. Even if they fired on fighters before, these artillery get a shot at the bombers now. Multiple artillery in the same zone can target the same plane, but each artillery only gets one shot even if it has more than one target.

If a bomber or fighter is destroyed by antiaircraft fire, it isn't returned to the airbase. In fact, there is no way to get destroyed planes back, so be careful where you put your bombers!

Order Card 7: Bombers Return

The text of this Allied order is Place bombers on airfield.

The surviving bombers return to base, where they are safely out of the rest of the turn's hostilities. The bombers can be redeployed on the next turn.

If all the bombers are destroyed, order cards 5, 6, and 7 are removed from the deck now.

That's the first seven of the sixteen order cards. Next, I'll cover unit movement, fighter strafing, and something some Axis & Allies players have been requesting for years: stacking limits.

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I ran through the first seven cards in order, but I'm going to diverge from that pattern now. The next couple of columns will cover the rest of the order cards but not in numerical order.

This week, I'll discuss the cards that deal with movement on land. These two cards are never removed from the game.

Order Card 8: Allies Move

The text of this Allied order is Move land units to adjacent zones. Do not move land units from beachhead boxes.

Three types of land units are capable of movement: infantry, artillery, and tanks. As in Axis & Allies, infantry and artillery can move one zone per turn, and tanks can move two zones.

"Which zones?" is the key issue.

A mobile unit can move into any adjacent zone. A unit can't move out of a territory, however, if that territory contains hostile land units, including blockhouses. These land units are considered "locked in combat" -- they pin each other in place. By extension, a tank must stop its movement if it enters a zone with a hostile unit (because it's not allowed to leave).

Also, a mobile unit cannot move into a zone if that zone already contains eight land units from its side (Axis or Allies). This is the first real stacking limit in an Axis & Allies game. No more than eight land units from any one side can be in a zone together. The stacking limit applies at all times, not just after all movement is finished. Air units and blockhouses don't count against the limit.

The stacking limit changes quite a bit about gameplay. Once a zone gets filled with units of your side, you can't move through there. Sometimes you can move around a logjammed space through other zones, but in other cases (say, on the beaches) you can't go anywhere. A bottleneck that stops your troops' movements will cost you time and, if you're the Allies, you need all the time you can get to capture those three victory cities. Some of our playtesters started calling this "the crush," because they couldn't freely move pieces as they pleased.

The stacking limit also has another effect: It forces you to make interesting choices about which forces to send where. If you have eight US infantry outside of unoccupied Caen, but eight artillery a space beyond that, do you send all the infantry into Caen? Maybe, maybe not. If you do, you won't be able to stiffen them with the artillery next turn. Without artillery, those infantry might get sliced and diced by the eight Panzers sitting two zones away, costing you your infantry and the city. The motto: Think before you reach your stacking limit.

Because each unit represents an individual military force in Normandy, no chips are used in this game like they are in Axis & Allies. A particularly crowded zone can look like the one in this photo.

As noted in the card text, the Allies don't move units in beachhead boxes yet. I'll describe that activity next time.

Also, this movement order doesn't apply to air units. They have unlimited movement, which they already exercised in orders 3 and 5. Now we'll see just how important those air moves were.

Order Card 12: Axis Moves

The text of this Axis order is Fighters strafe Axis land units moving into or out of zones they patrol. Roll one die for each fighter per unit that moves. A roll of 1 is a hit.

Several orders after the Allied move, the Axis takes its move. The Germans have a serious limiter that the Allies don't have. All those Allied fighters sent out on order 3 now prove their worth by strafing Axis land units that choose to move. Allied planes cut German convoys to ribbons in the actual invasion of Normandy, and they'll likely do the same thing here.

Any Axis land unit that moves into or out of a zone containing a fighter is strafed by that fighter. If two tanks move into a zone containing an American fighter, the US player rolls two dice, one against each tank, and hits on any 1s he or she rolls.

In certain circumstances, this can be a hailstorm of bullets. The limit of fighters per zone is four. The limit of mobile land units in a zone is eight. Imagine a column of eight German infantry moving out of a zone containing four US fighters and into a zone containing four UK fighters. That's up to sixty-four dice rolls against those eight infantry -- four in the first zone against each infantry and four in the second. A little back-of-the-envelope math shows that this move would be sheer suicide. A smart German player would not make this move unless he was absolutely desperate.

That's what the fighters do: they change the decision-making on the part of the Axis player. There are nowhere near enough fighters to cover the board, so the Allied side makes decisions about what movement paths the Allies want to defend and which they want to leave open. The German player can take the easy paths or run the gauntlets.

Sometimes, you must run the gauntlets. You might, for example, need to get pieces to a beach that the Allies have taken. Slowing them down is one of your most important tasks. Even if you must sacrifice men to get to the Allied forces, at least the enemy won't be walking into any victory cities.

Even though this is the last movement order for the Axis, the Allied fighters don't go home just yet. They have important business to do when reinforcements arrive.

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The blockhouse is the most fearsome image from the battle of D-Day. As the Allied soldiers charged the beaches, they ran straight into heavy fire from these massive cement structures. Bristling with guns and mortars, encampments like Dog One and the Casino etched their names into history with their punishing fire against the landing forces that dared to face them.

So, of course, the D-Day game would make these colossi crucial to the battle. Here, for the first time, is the Axis & Allies D-Day blockhouse, designed by art director Peter Whitley.

Basic Features of the Blockhouse

The seventeen blockhouses in the game are land units, just like tanks or infantry. A blockhouse can fight in combat, but it cannot move. It can be selected as a casualty, though most players avoid this until it's absolutely necessary. A blockhouse can be hit by bombers and naval bombardment, but paratroopers can't damage it on their airborne assault. There are no reinforcement blockhouses, so once a blockhouse is destroyed, you can't build a new one in the basic orders game.

The naval bombardment and bomber strikes merit special attention. These are meant to tenderize some of the blockhouses before the Allies come ashore, but they're not guarantees. Once the Allies land, bombers can't hit the blockhouses any more, because they can't be placed in a zone with Allied forces.

Meanwhile, the blockhouses start knocking off the Allied invaders.

Order Card 9: Blockhouses Fire to Sea

The text of this Axis order is A blockhouse can fire on the beachhead box connected to its zone. Roll one die for each blockhouse against a target Allies land unit. A roll of 3 or less is a hit.

Blockhouses have a new concept in Axis & Allies called "firing arcs." These are marked with red arrows on the map. A blockhouse's firing arc shows which beachhead the blockhouse can hit. Some blockhouses, the ones on the far left side of the map, can't hit any beachheads because the Allies don't come ashore near them.

On this order, the blockhouses each fire one shot to sea. Such a shot targets (that is, the Axis chooses) an Allied unit in the beachhead box connected to the blockhouse's firing arc. A full fifty percent of the time, the blockhouse destroys the unit it's aiming at. Your Sherman crews are going to need snorkels.

As the game progresses, the blockhouses start getting cleared out. Naval bombardment and combat casualties will eliminate blockhouse after blockhouse. When the last blockhouse with a firing arc is destroyed, or when all the Allied reinforcements have come ashore, this card is removed from the deck. The focus shifts from the battle for the beaches to the clashes at the victory cities.

Order Card 10: Allies Land

The text of this Allied order is Move land units from beachhead boxes to adjacent zones.

This is when the beachhead boxes start clearing out. Those units that survived the blockhouse fire move into the land zones by the beachheads -- if they can.

Allied units that land often find themselves immediately embroiled in combat. Since units in territories with hostile units cannot move, they must first clear out every German unit on the beach before more units can come ashore.

Remember that in the last column, I described the stacking limits that apply to every zone: You can't have more than eight mobile land units from your side (Axis or Allies) in a single zone. Sometimes the beaches get clogged with units so that other units cannot come ashore. They are left to suffer in the beachhead boxes, subjecting themselves to more blockhouse fire and preventing other units from reinforcing there. This is especially nasty at Omaha Beach, D-Day's most brutal killing zone, where there are many German units and many American soldiers struggling ashore.

With these limits in mind, you can see how thorny Omaha Beach might be. There are eight American units in the beachhead box and seven German units on the beach -- and that's just at the start of the game.

You can, of course, intentionally leave your forces in the water. Once all blockhouses that can hit a particular sea zone are removed from play, units can safely be left offshore until the battle for the beaches is won.

When all the Allied reinforcements have come ashore, this order card is removed from the deck.

A Time-Sensitive Disclaimer

Every scholar of World War II knows that the beaches were cleared out by the end of the day on June 6th. The game, however, does not presume that time is passing exactly as it did in real life. That would force the battle for the beaches to conclude in less than a turn. A game about D-Day should make the invasion an epic event. It's possible here that the beaches won't be clear until several turns into the game. By then, it's possible that some Allied troops will have reached a victory city.

Of course, this happened in real life too. By 1500 hours on June 6th, a mere eight hours after the invasion began, the 12th Panzer division fell back to the south. This allowed the British troops to get all the way to Caen by the evening. So it is possible to abstract these events into a couple of days. Still, it's best not to demand rigorous historical timing in a game with a turn sequence.

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Combat is the heart of any Axis & Allies game, and D-Day is no different. As with most parts of the game, though, it's a bit different from the core game.

Combat centers around these two order cards, which are never removed from the game. Both have an active player and a reactive player, meaning both players have something to do on each order.



Order Card 11: Allies Attack, Axis Defends

The text for this Allied order is Conduct one cycle of combat in each zone having both Allies and Axis land units.

Order Card 13: Axis Attacks, Allies Defend

The text for this Allied order is Conduct one cycle of combat in each zone having both Axis and Allies land units.

These two cards are fundamentally the same, though they switch who has the role of the attacker. Note that the Axis moves in between these two cards, which may mean a very different set of circumstances in these two orders.

Each of these cards calls for one cycle of combat. As Axis & Allies players know, a cycle is one pass through the combat sequence.

The D-Day Combat Sequence

The combat sequence in D-Day has fewer steps than in the core game. Here is the combat sequence, using Abigail Fein's battle board design.

1. Place units on battle board
2. Attacking units fire
3. Defending units fire
4. Remove casualties
5. Determine control
For those not familiar with the Axis & Allies combat system, that means the following:

Put the units on the appropriate side of the battle board;
The attacker rolls dice for his attacking units, needing to roll their attack values or lower on the die;
The defender puts in his or her casualty zone a number of units equal to the number of hits;
The defender then rolls for all of the defending units (even those in the casualty zone), trying to roll their defense values or less;
The attacker designates as casualties a number of attacking units equal to the number of defensive hits;
Then both casualty zones are cleared of their units, which cannot return to the game.
In the final step, you control a zone if you have the only land units in that zone. A zone that does not contain land units does not count as controlled by either side. As I mentioned in my debut column, there are no control markers in this game because you need to stay in zones you want to control.

The most important difference between this game and the core game's combat sequence is that there's no "Press attack or retreat" step. If you get into combat, you're stuck there until it's settled. Since you only do one cycle of combat per card (that is, a maximum of two such cycles per turn), major clashes will not be resolved in a single turn. This allows, for the first time in Axis & Allies, the ability to reinforce a battle while it is raging.

Combat Values

Each unit has an attack and defense value. Infantry attack on a 1 and defend on a 1 or 2. Artillery attack and defend on 2 or less.



Tanks, on the other hand, are different for the Axis and the Allies. The German Panthers attack and defend on a 3 or less. The Shermans are not as strong on defense as those Panthers. They also attack on a 3, but defend on a 2.

Some longtime Axis & Allies players are scratching their heads right now. Why, after the controversial decision to change tanks' defense in the core game from 2 to 3, are there two different tanks in D-Day? The answer is that you don't have to buy them. The lack of an economic component allowed the design team to have different units for different sides, and we took advantage of that.

The game play effect is significant. Allied tanks are just as good at crashing into a city and clearing it out as the German ones are. In the long battles that take place over multiple turns, however, the Germans have a better chance of holding their cities with tanks. That's why tanks tend to be the primary targets of Allied bombing. (Well, that and the fact that sending your planes after Axis artillery can get them out of the sky.)

The other land unit, the blockhouse, attacks on a 3 and defends on a 1. This last number might surprise a few folks, as blockhouses were great defensive fortifications. This ability is reflected in their firing out to sea on order card 9 and their solid attack score. Once the Allies can maneuver around them and even come at them from behind, the blockhouses can be sitting ducks.

Here is the example of combat from Brian Dumas's rulebook.

Example of Combat

Germany attacks the United Kingdom forces in the victory city of Caen.

Step 1: Place Units on Battle Board. The Axis is the attacker. Its player places the infantry, artillery, and tanks in the appropriate columns on the attacker's side of the battle board (1, 2, and 3, respectively). The United Kingdom's tank, infantry, and artillery are placed in the appropriate columns on the defender's side (in this case, all defend on a 2).

Step 2: Attacking Units Fire. Germany's player rolls three dice for the infantry and gets a 4, a 2, and a 5, all misses. Rolling one die for the artillery produces a 2, which is a hit, and rolling three dice for the tanks give two 2s and a 5, for two more hits. The UK player chooses two infantry and one artillery as casualties and moves them to the defender's casualty zone.

Step 3: Defending Units Fire. The UK player rolls seven dice, needing a 2 or less to hit on each: one for the tank, two for the infantry, and four for the artillery (even though two infantry and one artillery are in the casualty zone). The UK player rolls a 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, for a total of two hits. The Axis player chooses two infantry as casualties and moves them to the defender's casualty zone.

Step 4: Remove Casualties. The UK's two infantry and one artillery and the two Axis infantry are destroyed.

Step 5: Determine Control. The United Kingdom and the Axis Both have land units remaining in the zone, so neither side controls it, and a combat situation still exists. The next time an order card directs an attack, a new cycle of combat will begin.

Why Attacking is Mandatory

Any time you can attack, you must. Of course, sometimes you won't want to throw your forces up against the opposing troops in your zone. The game has a simple response to this reasonable request: Cowboy up, soldier.

We mandated attacking to render unworkable the tactic we dubbed the "scrub stall." This maneuver was to send one infantry into a zone with eight hostile units, decline to attack, and stop the enemy from moving on their next movement order. With mandatory attacking right after movement, the scrub stall is suicide. The stalling unit will be gunned down in a hail of ammo, and the surviving units will be able to move freely.

Speaking of losing units, at some point you'll want more than what you started with. Next column, I'll discuss the process of reinforcing and unveil the nifty reinforcement charts. Don't miss that.