I have completely de-designed Dan Holte’s Battle for Normandy - effectively I have created a new game. The counters are different, the rules are different and the map has been changed. If anyone might be interested in playing this game on Vassal with me please let me know. Get me at neil.wakefield@coop.co.uk
Do you know Breakout: Normandy from AH games, too ? Very innovative game mechanics, although it’s already 30 years old!
Check it out, if u are interested in the D-day scenario. I’m fed up with traditional Igo(all units)-ugo(all units) wargames.
Hi. I haven’t played Breakout; Normandy. Mine is a traditional I go, you go game. Back in the 80s I briefly played Operation Crusader which used simultaneous movement. I thought it was great. I bought a copy of the game 10 years ago but there’s no Vassal module for it so I have no opportunity to play it again
Well, I know ‘simultaneous movement’ only from PC games, sounds rather chaotic for a board game:-)
There are several phenomenal changes in the design of B:N and it’s predecessor Turning Point: Stalingrad compared to the traditional wargames.
-There are ‘areas’ instead of hexagons, which can hold up to 10 combat units( of each side). When it’s your ‘turn’, here called Impulse, you can activate ONE of the areas to perform any kind of action for each of the units there, some could move to another area, some attack, some entrench etc.
However, the number of impulses per day are unknown! The roll of 2 dice must be higher than the current impulse number. The more impulses had been played at this day, the less likely it will continue for another round. That forces the players to make different decisions as in traditional hexagon wargames.
What is the most important move now?
And the absolutely most important effect on gameplay is that you don’t have to watch another player for an hour or two to move all his pieces.Instead it’s a matter of seconds or sometimes a few minutes for a tough decision, before it’s your ‘turn’ again.
Both games have a breakout or breakthrough scenario, which increases the thrill and urgency of your decisions.
Because after a breakthrough, the defenders are usually too weak to re-conquer an area. But that is not their job here!
The defenders want to slow down the attackers, which have overwhelming forces in both games, but unlike most other wargames both games are played in weeks, that means after each week the VP score is checked, and only if the VP score is a certain number, which means a ‘tie’ has been scored, the game continues in the next week. Otherwise a winner is determined by the VP.
The gameplay and strategies are asymetric for the two sides. Attackers never lose troops permanently, instead they need a different amount of days to be replaced and resupplied, depending on the combat result(=remaining inactive with reduced defense value meanwhile). This radical change and some others, like that the combat value of attackers and defenders are calculated in a different way, confused or surprised new players who played traditional wargames before, including myself 
Some even thought the games were totally unbalanced, which is not the case. I can’t deny an advantage for the attacking nations, (especially in TP:S, which makes is most suitable for beginners to start with the series) but it is rather slight. The problem is that the design concept of an overwhelming force with a time limit is very different from traditional wargames and if the defending side don’t comprehend that he should trade lives for time, aka slowing down the enemy most of the time, by clever planning, instead of attacking by himself, this slight advantage becomes huge.
In B:N the Germans have some elite SS units, some coastal artilleries are monsters, so some counterattacks will happen and it is not as much ‘only-defensive play’ as in TP:S for the Russians, however that depends on the weather also, without some storms or bad weather the Allied air suppority will prevent the most German offensive actions because of the risk.