Game of the Week, Jun 3 to 9

Hi everyone,

It’s time for another Game of the Week, and we thought it appropriate to honor the 80^th Anniversary of D-Day.

This week’s Game of the Week is Panzer Campaigns – Normandy ‘44.

The Battle of Normandy marked the return of the Allies to north-west Europe in June 1944, four years after the fall of France to the Nazis.

Panzer Campaigns – Normandy ‘44 is latest 4.04 version, released last week, and our product description encapsulates this engagement well:

Normandy '44 is an operational level simulation of the D-Day landings and subsequent battles to move inland fighting your way off the beaches. This is a battle largely of attrition where you will slug your way through bocage to break the dead lock in one of the best know and recorded campaigns in history. After 4 years of German occupation, the Allied forces in England were ready to liberate France. An enormous force of infantry, armoured, airborne naval, and air forces stood poised to strike at the German beach fortifications and dense bocage of Normandy. All hopes for the liberation of France and the end of World War II would depend on the success or failure of this invasion. Will Eisenhower's plan succeed, or will Rommel's panzers throw the Allied invasion back into the sea?

There are 96 scenarios included, of various sizes. Below is a list of the major engagements included many with multiple scenarios:

• The Normandy Campaign: June 6 - August 19, 1944.
• Utah Beach
• Omaha Beach
• Gold Beach
• Juno Beach
• Sword Beach
• American Sector
• British Sector
• Buron
• Caumont
• Villers Bocage
• Carentan
• Cherbourg
• Epsom

The Master Map is 25,564 hexes and covers the entire area from Cherbourg in the northwest to Argentan and Falaise in the east. All the air and seaborne landing zones are included. 19 sub maps are also included.

Panzer Campaigns – Normandy ‘44 includes the aforementioned playable scenarios, as well as a Getting Started scenario to introduce new players to the game system. The included scenarios are a good mix of small (division), medium (corps) and large (army) engagements.

The Order of Battle includes 7,300 units from two Allied Army Groups and a German Army Group including units from Wehrmacht, SS, and Luftwaffe formations as well as UK, US, Canadian, Belgian, and Dutch units.

We included a lot of historical documentation and notes with this title, you can review each by clicking on the links below.

Getting Started Guide

Designer Notes

Situation Map 1

Situation Map 2

Situation Map 3

Scenario Map

Planning Map

Planning Map Full

There has been a range of books covering the Normandy Battles. Following are some representative books for anyone that would like some more background on the operation. You can click on the book images below to be taken to the Publisher or Amazon, if applicable.

Informational

Niklas Zetterling’s books have provided a lot of data for various WDS titles. The following was used when researching the Normandy Panzer Battles title.

Georges Bernage specialises in analysing photos and the stories behind them. He has spent years visiting the battlefields and talking to the ordinary people caught up in this momentous campaign.

James Holland book is the general history of the campaign you need. See his latest video below as well.

Stephen Ambrose has a range of titles, including Band of Brothers, covering the American experience during the European Campaign.

The British Commonwealth weathered some of the hardest fighting with the bulk of the German Panzer Divisions facing them around Caen

Tim Saunders is an exceptional author with many books covering various engagements during the Normandy Campaign.

I was fortunate to attend a battlefield tour of Normandy with Tim in 2022. You can read more about that by clicking the image below.

Nuno over at Strategy and Wargaming has just released a list of Normandy titles. Click the image below to see his article.

Now for video content:

The Mack has multiple videos relating to this title. See his dedicated playlist here.

Smart Wargames has also reviewed Normandy ’44, though it has been mdified with Jison’s Mapmod and is the JTS version, not the latest WDS version. Link to watch

The series by Historian James Holland is riveting and follows-on from his book listed above. The latest on D-Day at War Stories has just dropped:

Following are some in-game screen shots of what to expect. Each image can be clicked for a full-sized view.

As mentioned, the build we are making available today is a new 4.04 version that was released last week. A range of new features are included, and you can read the Changelog here. All new purchases will be this latest version.

If you already own Panzer Campaigns – Normandy ‘44, please note that you will have a new installer available in your store account. There will not be an update available for existing Panzer Campaigns – Normandy ‘44 installations.

Beginning with the recent Squad Battles updates, then Panzer Battles then Musket & Pike updates, Civil War Battles and now on to Panzer Campaigns - we have been requiring a complete clean install of your games to get the new version. There's a variety of reasons for this - core changes to file formats (moving to PNG files in some cases), new infrastructure for future A/I enhancements, Windows 11 compatibility changes and the enormous size many of the updates have grown to be. Regarding that last point, many of the updates were retaining backwards compatibility with ancient installers, in some cases back to the HPS days! This required inclusion of a huge number of files, and in some cases an additional Batch file to reorganize everything into the new file structures. It was getting problematic on several points, not the least of which was some security software packages were blocking the batch files from running.

So, these fresh installs will resolve all of those problems in one fell swoop. You uninstall your existing copy of the game using the built in Windows "App Management" feature in the Control Panel. You then do a clean install of the game, and everything is in its proper place. 

We will be doing this for every game series we publish, in time - if all goes well during the course of 2024. Once the new "base line" is established we will begin to offer incremental updates again on the site. These will only include files changed since that new baseline for that series. With that said, you can ALWAYS do a clean install at any time, and the installer linked in your Store Account is the most recent version.

So, again, how do you get these new versions? 

You must go and login to your Store Account to download new full installers. 

Notes regarding Store Accounts.

1. If you go to login using one of the above links and it tells you "no account found" - don't worry! - just send us an email at the Help Desk and we will locate your records. It's just a matter of completing the account setup process.
2. When you login you will see all your orders listed there. Under each order number is the word (Downloads). If you click that it will take you to a page where you can do a new download of the game and it will also display your serial number. Again, each of the installers is fully up-to date with the latest patches already included.

 If you don’t already own this title, what are you waiting for? You can buy it directly from the dedicated product page.

We hope you enjoy this week’s, Game of the Week. We thought it was important to showcase this title on the 80^th anniversary of the largest amphibious invasion ever.  Like all WDS titles, there is a lot of game play included at a very attractive price.