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Xookliba — 2008-06-09T12:46:33+00:00

cyberboard gamebox

Thread: Re: Anybody have the scan of the 1977 revision rules book?

hoop — 2008-05-22T15:59:25+00:00

I can scan them for you - send me your email address and I'll pass along a PDF.

John

Thread: Anybody have the scan of the 1977 revision rules book?

Amuro_ray_nt — 2008-05-21T23:48:29+00:00

Just got the 1965 edition from ebay. But it looks like the 1977 rules revision is better.

Thus my question is anybody have a scan of the 1977 revision rules?

Or maybe know the changes make and can provide a list of changes.

Many Thanks.

--- Ken ---

Thread: D-Day(1961 edition), an acrostic review

bigbadsteve — 2007-01-05T20:45:18+00:00

Decisions-This game contains a
fair amount of decision making. If you are
the Germans, how do you defend the beaches?
Lots of units near one beach, or do you spread
out over several beaches? If you are the
allies, which beach do you land on? Depending
on where you land, you may get more units
faster, or you may have different terrain to
deal with. After the initial setup,
maneuvering is important. The Germans must
quickly set up a defense, while the allies
must be careful to not spread themselves too
thin.
Details- The board represents
mostly France, with small parts of
neighboring countries(one Allied objective is
invading Germany). It looks very similar to
the board from Tactics 2. Not very visually
appealing, but it's functional. The same can
be said for the counters. In fact, most of
the units are the same as Tactics 2
-infantry, tanks,
paratroopers, and HQ's. Even the gameplay
reminds me of a slightly more complex Tactics
2. Maneuver around, trying surround
enemy units, tipping the combat odds in
your favor, roll a die, and check the CRT.

Anti-climactic-One of the problems
with this game is that it tends to
be decided on the first few turns,
but it takes a couple hours of
playing to make it official. If
the majority of the Allied units
safely land on the first couple of
turns, the Allies almost always
win. If the Germans defend the
beach well on the first couple of
turns, the Germans almost always
win. It just takes a while to play
it out.
replaYvalue-Not all that high. This isn't
really a bad game, it just isn't one
that begs to be played over and over.
Mostly it's fun to break out once in
a while for something different.

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cmhladik — 2006-10-30T03:26:10+00:00

Avalon Hill catalog listing from 1975

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Herr Niemand — 2006-03-10T01:14:19+00:00

30th Anniversity Commemorative Issue of the Normandy Landings

Thread: Re:Anyone know the number of counters for this game?

Brackers — 2005-03-12T15:35:08+00:00

There are 195 counters. I have the original counter tray and it is 15 rows of 13 counters per row. Simon

Thread: Anyone know the number of counters for this game?

AndrewPetty — 2005-02-16T06:29:40+00:00

Have this version and would like to know if there are any missing counters, thanks!

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NigelFisher — 2004-08-23T18:19:38+00:00

Close-up of map showing 1961 date

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NigelFisher — 2004-08-23T18:19:38+00:00

Battered Components from my 1961 copy

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NigelFisher — 2004-08-23T18:19:38+00:00

1961 Version Box

Thread: User Review

goldenboat — 2004-08-20T19:27:09+00:00

In a bit of nostalgic whimsy I bought a 1965 copy of Avalon Hill’s D-Day off of eBay a couple weeks ago, and in a fit of lunacy, I actually played a solo game to completion a few days later. It was pretty much the game I remember from thirty years ago, when as an ambitious ten-year-old I took the game down from my brother’s shelf and tried to puzzle it out on my own.

The game was very much as I remembered it -- luxuriously produced, in an old-school AH sort of way, with a hard mounted map, a manageable number of counters, four pages of basic rules and a few more pages in the battle manual. The box cover is a collage of vintage newspaper headlines about the Normandy invasion and breakout. The counters were nothing special – in truth, the unit ID’s were thin and hard to read – but there was a time when those Panzer counters were the coolest thing I’d ever seen. And it didn’t matter at all that the German units were pink.

The map covers all of France and Germany’s Rhine frontier. The game lasts up to fifty weekly turns (did anyone ever have a game run fifty turns?), starting with the invasion the first week of June, and continuing through the breakout, an optional second invasion, and the campaign to cross the Rhine.

In theory, at least. In practice, I always found D-Day to be a "bang, you’re dead" kind of game. Rommel felt the battle for France would be won or lost on the beaches, and this game supports that view. If the Germans don’t throw the Allies back into the sea following the invasion turn, then, well, it’s almost certain they’re going to lose the game, although it will take an hour or two before its official. In theory, if the Germans fail to thwart the invasion, they’re supposed to fall back from the beaches and conduct a fighting withdrawal across France, but in the several times I’ve played the game I’ve never seen it. The map is too big, the German units are too few, and the movement allowances are too low (without any form of strategic movement) to allow more than a mad scramble of running for the Rhine and trying to form a scratch line of interlocking zones of control in front of an advancing Allied hoard that is both more numerous and faster than their German opponents.

The Germans do have some toys – a dozen or so armored and panzergrenadier units that can put a hurt on the Allies, particularly if concentrated against an over-optimistic extension of the Allied line. The problem is that as soon as the Germans concentrate in stacks, they can expect to get whacked by the hammer of God in the form of the 8th Air Force, abstractly represented in strategic air power rules that allow the Allied player to fly eight bombing raids during the game (with a very high chance of eliminating all or most of the units in a hex). The Allies did enjoy air superiority during the campaign (and I think some of this is reflected in low movement allowances for the Germans), but the power and the reach of Allied strategic air seems way, way too powerful in this game (and I understand it was adjusted for the 1977 revision, after having previously been added to the 1961 edition, where the Germans were the prohibitive favorite in this game).

So what you have in D-Day 65 is a graphically average wargame of dubious historicity with serious balance problems, where the outcome will be obvious to both players within minutes of beginning the game, but where a couple hours will still be required to attain the written victory conditions. The Allies hold the initiative throughout the game, getting to choose the invasion beaches and dictate the tempo of the match, while the Germans pretty much just run for cover and get pounded on the head. If the game were released today, gamers would reject it out of hand.

But I bought this game out of nostalgia, and through a backwards-looking lens I had fun with my solo play-through. I set up the best defense that I could, then picked a beach at random. The Allies got ashore at Le Harve, and established a perimeter with their paratroopers. Aggressive German counter-attacks failed, and by the second turn the Allies had made it to Paris. Germans rushed in from all over the country, abandoning everything south of Le Harve while maintaining beach defenses to the north, giving ground as slowly as possible while trying to contain the growing Allied salient. With the right side of the Allied advance anchored around Paris, I shifted the Allied attack to the left, and rolled up the German defenses along the French coast all the way to Antwerp. The Germans kept falling back and shifting their forces down the line to counter this threat, and even managed a counterattack or two, but the weight of material and air power was just too great for the Germans, and by the eighteenth turn the Allies had satisfied their victory conditions by having thrown ten divisions across the Rhine for a period of a month.

And so there it was – a game of a few tense turns followed by a meatgrinding "campaign" across France, and then a blowout at the end. As a two-player game I would have chucked it after twenty minutes, but as a solitaire exercise it was fun and relaxing. The rules were simple enough to hold in my head, and I still like the basic mathematical puzzle of a classic Avalon Hill game – the manipulation of units across a hex grid, mindful of zones of control (and their nullification by river lines and fortresses), and alert to the requirements of obtaining exact multiples to secure the most favorable columns on the odds-based (and very bloody) combat results table. The maps is functional and without ambiguities. The important data on the counters is easy to read. The objective of the game was as clear as the outcome was foreordained.

So, as a game, definitely lacking, but as the gaming equivalent of taking a Model-T out for a spin, a damn good time. I think most wargamers have long since moved on to other games (many migrating to Avalon Hill’s own Fortress Europa, a clearly superior game), and it’s entirely possible that my copy of D-Day will never come off the shelf again. Even its value as an introductory game is dubious thanks to outdated graphics and dodgy game balance (you can’t even give the newbie the Allies with confidence that he’ll succeed, because a successful invasion requires some veteran skill). But I’m glad I have that game, and I’m glad I played it. It was a fun diversion, and it helped me reconnect with the little kid that wanted to play wargames but had a devil of a time with concepts like odds ratios and supply lines. D-Day was honest, fast, transparent, and authentic in ways that modern games rarely attain – not bad for a game pushing forty years old.

Game: D-Day

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Thread: Re: Anybody have the scan of the 1977 revision rules book?

Thread: Anybody have the scan of the 1977 revision rules book?

Thread: D-Day(1961 edition), an acrostic review

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Thread: Re:Anyone know the number of counters for this game?

Thread: Anyone know the number of counters for this game?

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Thread: User Review