What If? – The Long Tradition of Alternate History in Wargaming and Beyond (Part II)

In Part I of this series, we ventured through the fertile grounds of alternate-history fiction – from Harry Turtledove's imaginings of a Confederate victory to Eric Flint's time-displaced West Virginians. We saw how authors build convincing parallel timelines by asking "what if?" and following the ripples with rigorous logic. Now, in Part II, we shift from page to pixel and hexagon, from novels to battle simulations. Our focus is on how Wargame Design Studio has embraced those same what-if questions in its wargames. As developers (and avid history buffs), we at WDS - next to creating historically well-researched settings and scenarios - love exploring the thin line between what was and what might have been. In our Panzer Campaigns and Modern Campaigns titles, especially, we've built scenarios and even entire games around historical detours that never actually occurred – but could have, under the right (or wrong) conditions. This time, we focus on both games with a complete, hypothetical, but historically grounded setup, as well as major alternative-history campaign-sized scenarios within a game otherwise rooted in a historical setup.

Alternate-history wargaming isn't just about throwing extra tanks on a map or conjuring up fantasy armies. The key, much like in literature, is historical plausibility – weaving a story of war that is internally consistent with how real-world forces, logistics, and leaders operated. In other words, the goal is to craft a battlefield that makes players think "Yes, this could have happened", even as they know it didn't. Along the way, we'll keep our focus on what makes these scenarios believable and compelling. Get ready for a journey through the battles that never were, but could have changed the world.

The Eagle Over the Channel: Panzer Campaigns – Sealion '40

On a balmy September morning in 1940, as the sun rises over the English Channel, dark shapes loom on the horizon – hundreds of barges and boats bristling with German troops, all surging toward the beaches of southern England. The Battle of Britain has been lost; the Royal Air Force lies in ruins, and the Royal Navy, choked by minefields and prowling Luftwaffe bombers, cannot reach the invasion beaches in time. Unternehmen Seelöwe (Sealion) – Hitler's planned invasion of the United Kingdom – is underway at last. This chilling scenario is one of World War II's most infamous "what ifs." In reality, of course, the German invasion never came. Britain's pilots fought the Luftwaffe to a standstill, the weather worsened, and Hitler turned his attention east. But Panzer Campaigns: Sealion '40 asks: What if events had transpired differently, and the Germans had come?

Sealion '40 was actually the very first purely hypothetical title in the Panzer Campaigns series, and it set the tone for how we handle alternate history in our games. The scenario draws directly from Germany's actual invasion plans and timetables, grounding its fiction in meticulous research. For instance, the game includes two main invasion variants – a July 1940 landing and a September 1940 landing – reflecting real debates within the German high command about when and where to strike. The master map stretches from the beaches of Kent and Sussex to the outskirts of London, covering 61,200 hexes (approx. 53,000 square km) of southern England. Every piece of terrain, from Dover's cliffs to the streets of Brighton and the fields of Kent, is recreated based on actual topography, because internal consistency matters: if an invasion were to happen, geography would shape it.

German 17. and 111. Infanterie-Division moving towards Ashford, Kent

Perhaps most importantly, Sealion '40 painstakingly models the order of battle on both sides as they stood (or would have stood) in 1940. The British forces in the game are a patchwork of units that truly existed in that perilous summer: remnants of the British Expeditionary Force rescued from Dunkirk – brave but missing much of their equipment – plus rushed Home Guard battalions, newly raised infantry divisions still training, and even forces from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand hurried into the line. Opposing them is the German juggernaut fresh from conquering France – the same divisions that rolled over the Low Countries, now tasked with an amphibious assault they had never trained for. This contrast is historically accurate and sets up a plausible tension. The British were disorganized and under-equipped after Dunkirk. Still, they had the advantage of fighting on home turf and (in this scenario) the desperation of defending the last free territory of Western Europe. The Germans were victorious and confident, with elite Panzer divisions and veteran infantry – but they lacked experience in amphibious landings. They would be stretching their supply lines across a treacherous Channel. The scenario forces reflect these realities. For example, British units in the Sealion campaign often have heavy equipment shortages (a nod to all those tanks and guns left behind in France).

A Panzer III Tauchpanzer under test (1940); the crane ship Viper, which was to support Tauchpanzer operations, is in the background.

In contrast, German amphibious units face disruption penalties and higher fatigue to simulate the chaos of beach landings. These are subtle game design choices that add up to an internally consistent narrative. You're not just moving generic blue units against red units; you're reenacting a believable alternate campaign, where each side's strengths and weaknesses mirror what would have been the case in 1940.

Of course, for the invasion to even be possible, certain preconditions have to be met – and the game acknowledges those too. The scenario background assumes that the Royal Air Force was beaten in the weeks prior. This was Göring's hope in the real Battle of Britain: to gain air supremacy so the invasion barges could cross. Sealion '40 takes that as a given "what if." The game narrative essentially asks: Suppose the RAF's Spitfires and Hurricanes hadn't stopped the Luftwaffe. In play, this is reflected in the fact that German air units have a relatively free hand in the scenarios (with much less Allied air interference than in any historical 1940 battle). Another assumption is that the Royal Navy is largely kept at bay, at least during the critical first weeks. Historically, the Royal Navy was Britain's trump card – even if the Germans had landed, the Home Fleet could have potentially smashed the invasion flotilla. The alternate scenario imagines the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe managing, through mines and air attacks, to delay the Royal Navy just enough. This is modeled by game rules and scenario conditions, such as extensive coastal minefields, restricted naval movement, and German coastal guns and air support that threaten any Allied ship that comes near. By building these conditions into the scenario, we ensure the alternate history is logically consistent: we basically say, "If the RAF and RN had been neutralized to this extent, then an invasion might play out like this." It's a big "if," but one grounded in documented German strategy.

Home Guard post at Admiralty Arch in central London, 21 June 1940.

When you play Sealion '40, the experience is meant to be both educational and engrossing. You might find yourself commanding German regiments as they push inland towards London, capturing towns like Brighton or Canterbury that in real life never saw a German boot. As you do, you quickly gain respect for the myriad challenges the German planners faced. That English countryside, crisscrossed with hedgerows and dotted with resilient towns, becomes a nightmare for attackers once the initial surprise fades. On the other side, playing as the British, you're scrambling to plug gaps in the line, throwing ad-hoc units into battle, and praying for reinforcements. Every lost town or port feels dire. The game scenario can diverge wildly: perhaps the Germans secure a port early and rush armor ashore, driving on London; or perhaps British mobile reserves counterattack and split the invaders into isolated beachheads. All these outcomes are plausible, given the starting conditions. This is what we mean by historical plausibility: the scenario doesn't guarantee a German victory by any means – in fact, many analyses (both WDS internal and historical studies) suggest that even if the Germans landed, they might eventually have been repulsed. We want players to explore that very debate through gameplay. Can you succeed where Hitler perhaps would have failed? Or, as the British, can you recreate the heroic national defense that Churchill so vividly prepared for? The fun of alternate history wargaming is that you get to test the theories.

German units are closing in on the location of William the Conqueror's victory over Harold.

It's worth noting that our portrayal of Operation Sealion isn't done in a vacuum. There's a rich tradition of studying this "what if" in military history. In fact, two detailed wargame exercises were conducted in the 1970s by actual British and German officers to simulate the outcomes of Sealion, producing both a dramatized account and a rigorous analysis. We drew on many sources like these (some listed in the game's bibliography and designer notes) to calibrate factors such as how many divisions the Germans could realistically land per day and how far British reserves might march in 24 hours. For example, one insight from those studies is that the timing of Sealion was critical: an attempted July 1940 invasion (while Britain was still reeling from Dunkirk) might have had more initial success on the beaches, whereas by September the British had reorganized enough to present stiffer resistance. So we included both a July and a September scenario, letting players explore each variant. Little touches like this reinforce that Sealion '40 isn't a fantasy battle thrown together arbitrarily; it's a thoughtful extrapolation of real plans and historical context. The result is a game that feels eerily authentic. When your virtual German columns reach the outskirts of London, you can't help but shiver at the thought: if fate had tilted slightly – if the RAF had faltered, if the weather had held – this nightmare might have been reality.

If you want to learn more about the German planning of this operation, we can recommend: Schenk, Peter. Operation Sealion: The Invasion of England 1940. Greenhill Books, 2019. – The book analyzes the vessels, strategic preparations, and operational plans of the navy, army, and air force. The planned invasion is described in detail, including the sequence of events and estimated chances of success. (Clicking the cover brings you to Amazon)

Operation Downfall: Panzer Campaigns – Japan ’45 & Japan ’46

On the other side of the world, an equally dramatic What-If looms: the planned Allied invasion of the Japanese Home Islands in 1945-46. Codenamed Operation Downfall, it was to be carried out in two massive phases: Operation Olympic – the invasion of southern Kyushu in November 1945 – and Operation Coronet – the follow-up invasion of Honshu (near Tokyo) in spring 1946. As history went, neither phase was needed; Japan surrendered in August 1945 after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet entry into the war. But had those events not induced surrender, the Allies were grimly ready to launch the largest amphibious campaign in history. Panzer Campaigns: Japan ’45 and Japan ’46 let players step into this alternate finale of World War II – a conflict so gigantic that it almost defies imagination. The challenge was to make it imaginable and playable by leveraging every available bit of historical data on the forces, geography, and plans on both sides.

First, let’s set the stage. By mid-1945, the Allies had island-hopped across the Pacific and stood at Japan’s doorstep. Okinawa had fallen; Iwo Jima had fallen. An invasion of Japan proper was the next step, known collectively as Downfall. The plans were extraordinarily detailed. Olympic (scheduled for November 1, 1945) would see Allied armies assault the southern island of Kyūshū to seize port and airfield infrastructure. If Kyushu could be secured as a forward base, then Coronet (targeted for March 1946) would send an even larger force into the main island of Honshū, aiming to capture Tokyo and the Kanto Plain – effectively cutting out the heart of the Japanese Empire. Our two Panzer Campaign titles mirror this structure. Japan ’45 covers the invasion of Kyushu, and Japan ’46 covers the invasion of Honshu. Together, they form a duology that answers the haunting question: What if World War II had dragged on into late 1945 and 1946?

Allied plans for the invasion of Japan (Operation Downfall).

From a plausibility standpoint, one thing that makes these scenarios especially compelling is that Operation Downfall was actually in advanced planning and preparation by 1945. This is not a fanciful “Germany invades the USA” scenario dreamt up after the fact; this was a real operation with real troops assigned. In fact, by the time of Japan’s surrender, the Allies had already allocated dozens of divisions, amassed landing craft, stockpiled supplies, and trained for the invasion. The Japan ’45 and Japan ’46 games make full use of this historical order of battle. All the units that were earmarked for the invasion are present in the game, right down to their historically projected strength and equipment. When you play Japan ’45, you’re commanding the actual divisions that would have hit the beaches on Kyushu: U.S. Army divisions fresh from Europe (like the 8th Infantry or 2nd Armored), battle-hardened U.S. Marine divisions from the Pacific, British Commonwealth forces (yes, the British Commonwealth Corps was slated to join the invasion), and even divisions of the newly arrived U.S. 8th Air Force that would have provided massive air support from Okinawa. Japan ’46 ups the ante by introducing the Allied First Army – including units such as the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division and Commonwealth troops – which would have taken part in the Honshu landings. On the Japanese side, the scenario is equally well-founded in reality. By mid-1945, Japan’s military leaders, anticipating invasion, had redeployed significant forces to the Home Islands. In our game’s Japan ’45 scenario, you’ll find the Japanese Korean Army divisions that were secretly transferred back to Kyushu, the mobilized student militias and home guard (Volunteer Fighting Corps), and the remnants of the Imperial Japanese Army’s air and naval forces prepared for a last stand. Japan ’46 similarly features the Japanese 12th Area Army and other units tasked with defending Tokyo, along with elite formations like the Imperial Marine Landing Forces that might have been thrown into the fray. We even include the planned last-ditch assets – for example, squadrons of kamikaze aircraft and “special attack” boats, which were historically being hoarded for the invasion response. The order of battle files cover all forces that would have participated, with additional formations added for plausible hypothetical situations (like Japanese units that could have been raised or redirected).

Japanese school girls train with rifles. Armed civilians would aid in the defence of the home islands.

By basing the setup on the actual Downfall plans, the scenario designs achieve a high degree of historical fidelity. When you open Japan ’45, the sheer scale of the thing hits you. The master map of Kyushu in the game is enormous – some 87,000 hexes covering the entire island from the city of Kagoshima in the south up to the industrial areas of northern Kyushu. The beaches where landings were to occur (Miyazaki, Ariake Bay, etc.) are carefully mapped. The terrain is varied and often rough – a fact that worried Allied planners and that you’ll quickly appreciate as a player when trying to move tanks off a narrow beachhead into mountains and rice paddies. Japan ’46’s map is even larger (over 90,000 hexes, encompassing the Tokyo region and broad stretches of central Honshu). Major cities like Tokyo and Yokohama are represented block by block, and the open expanse of the Kanto Plain – prime tank country – lies beyond, dotted with towns and crossed by rivers that would have seen furious combat. The amount of detail is staggering, but every piece contributes to internal consistency: if you’re going to simulate the invasion of Japan, you need to capture how geography would have influenced operations. (For example, Kyushu’s southern peninsula is bisected by volcanic highlands – in our scenarios, advancing through those bottlenecks is a nightmare akin to real Pacific jungle fighting, which is exactly what Allied war planners feared.)

Let’s talk about scale and plausibility. The Downfall invasion would have been enormous – far larger than D-Day in Normandy. We’re talking about initial landings on Kyushu involving 14 Allied divisions (over 400,000 men) in the first wave, followed by many more, against perhaps 900,000 Japanese defenders on that island alone. Coronet would have been even bigger: two full Allied armies (the U.S. First and Eighth) totaling 25+ divisions (upwards of a million men) landing on Honshu, versus well over a million Japanese troops dug into the Kanto Plain. The casualty projections made at the time were sobering – figures of hundreds of thousands of Allied casualties and millions of Japanese deaths were floated by analysts. We made sure Japan ’45 and ’46 convey this sense of scale. The scenario list in Japan ’45 includes 44 scenarios , ranging from small skirmishes to a 285-turn campaign that covers the entire two-month struggle for Kyushu. Similarly, Japan ’46 offers 59 scenarios, culminating in a 608-turn monstrosity that spans the invasion of Honshu from the landings in March 1946 to the final collapse (or triumph) at the end of April. These campaigns are massive – and they have to be, to accommodate the forces involved and the grinding nature of operations that were anticipated.

The U.S. military, expecting the resistance of a 'fanatically hostile population', was making preparations for between 1.7 and 4 million casualties.

However, big numbers alone don’t ensure plausibility; what matters is how those forces are used and how the campaign unfolds logically. We leaned heavily on actual operational plans. The Olympic invasion, for example, was to land on multiple beaches in southern Kyushu and then have the invading forces drive north to capture airfields. Accordingly, our Japan ’45 main scenario is broken into phases like “The Landing Phase,” “The Breakout Phase,” “The Linkup Phase,” etc., each corresponding to the objectives laid out by Allied planners. If you play the full campaign, you’ll experience these phases: first, establishing beachheads, then trying to push inland to connect those beachheads and seize ports like Kagoshima and airstrips in the Miyakonojo Plain. The Japanese, for their part, historically intended to defend the beaches fiercely and then fall back into rugged interior positions for a war of attrition (called the Ketsu-Go defense plan). Our AI scripts and scenario setups reflect that doctrine: Japanese forces might counterattack fanatically at the water’s edge, even using suicidal Banzai charges, and later form defensive rings in the hills, forcing the Allies to bleed for every mile. By building these behaviors and events into scenarios (through scheduled reinforcements, fortifications, and AI mission logic), we ensure the war progresses in a believable way. Players often report that the initial landings in Japan ’45 feel far bloodier than Normandy, and that is intentional. Contemporary estimates suggested the Japanese could concentrate up to 10,000 kamikaze airplanes and thousands of suicide boats against the Kyushu invasion  – essentially throwing everything at the invaders. In the game, Allied units coming ashore face unusually high disruption and fatigue, representing this intense gauntlet of fire. Casualty rates can be shocking. It’s not “balanced” in a game-y sense; it’s balanced in a historical sense, meaning both sides suffer horribly, and victory (for either) is hard-earned.

The U.S. Eighth Army in front of Tokyo.

The result of all this is that Japan ’45 and ’46 feel like a natural extension of WWII, not a fanciful spin-off. When you play, you almost get the sense that you are writing the final chapter of World War II anew. The names involved are real: generals like MacArthur and Eichelberger commanding U.S. armies, while General Ushijima (who in reality died in Okinawa) might be leading Japanese defense on Kyushu in our timeline. The internal logic is consistent with the era’s warfare – there’s extensive use of naval bombardment and carrier aviation by the Allies, gradually diminishing as Japanese airpower and kamikazes take their toll (modeled by diminishing naval support in prolonged scenarios). Supply is a constant challenge: just as Allied logisticians worried about feeding and fueling a million men across the Pacific, in the game, you will feel those supply lines straining as you drive deeper into Japan’s interior. The Japanese player, meanwhile, grapples with a desperate situation: you have powerful defensive terrain and prepared positions, but once those are pierced, you lack the mobility and armor to counter the Allied materiel advantage. It becomes a race – can you inflict enough casualties and delay the enemy long enough to force a stalemate or perhaps political negotiations? These were exactly the considerations of Japan’s war cabinet in mid-’45. There are no programmed “victory triggers” for Japan achieving a negotiated peace (the game still uses standard victory points), but players are encouraged to set their own narrative goals, like holding out beyond X turns as a moral victory. Such emergent storytelling is one of the joys of wargaming in a plausible alt-history sandbox.

Vought F4U Corsairs of Task Group 58.3 - As many as 42 aircraft carriers were marshalled in the Spring and Summer of 1945 for the invasion of Japan.

To underscore the dedication to plausibility, extensive designer notes and historical documentation are provided. The team cited sources such as D.M. Giangreco’s Hell to Pay and Richard Frank’s Downfall, which are serious scholarly works on the planned invasion. The bibliography and notes (which are included as PDFs) delve into why certain design choices were made – for example, why we rated Japanese coastal defense units the way we did, or how we estimated the number of artillery shells the Allies could expend per day. This transparency not only credits the historians whose research underpins the game, but it also gives curious players a trail to follow if they want to learn more about Operation Downfall. In effect, the game becomes an interactive companion to the history – you can read a chapter about the proposed landings at Miyazaki, then try them out yourself on the map, seeing if your experience aligns with the analysts’ predictions.

One thing that often strikes players after tackling these Japan invasion scenarios is a newfound appreciation that, horrific as the end of WWII was, it could have been far worse. Playing out this alternate history is sobering. You might finish Japan ’45's big campaign with casualty counts that dwarf those of the entire Okinawa campaign. You might witness (in the game’s after-action) whole divisions rendered combat-ineffective. It’s not a power fantasy; it’s almost a cautionary tale in interactive form. And that is a valid and valuable aspect of alternate history: by exploring the road not taken, we better understand why the road we did take was perhaps the lesser evil. Many players have commented that after Japan ’45/’46, they understand the relief of 1945’s abrupt end far more viscerally.

From a purely gaming perspective, Japan ’45 and ’46 offer endless replayability because the situations are so open-ended. This is not a neat fight with a predetermined outcome. Small decisions can lead to huge swings. For example, in one playthrough, an Allied player might concentrate forces to capture the city of Fukuoka quickly, securing a major port; in another, they might get bogged down and never take it, shifting the whole axis of advance. Japanese players can choose bold counterattacks that risk everything or a conservative defense that trades space for time. Both approaches have merits and pitfalls consistent with 1940s military capabilities. We’ve essentially created a sandbox where the historical context provides the rules of engagement, but the narrative is yours to write. That is the essence of plausible alternate history in wargaming – it’s not about scripting a novel; it’s about building a historical stage and letting players perform their own drama upon it, constrained and inspired by what we know of the period.

Further Reading: Giangreco, D. M. Hell to Pay: Operation DOWNFALL and the Invasion of Japan 1945-1947. Naval Institute Press, 2020.

Moscow '42 – Fall Kreml

On 28 June 1942, German panzers once again roared east – not toward the oil fields of the Caucasus, but straight at Moscow. In this alternate summer, the fields and forests west of the Soviet capital erupt with a second German offensive. Soviet commanders, already wary after months of ominous reports and odd German movements, suddenly realise the deception is over: “Fall Kreml” – the name that had appeared in intercepted orders and reconnaissance chatter – is no mere bluff. The question Panzer Campaigns: Moscow ’42 dares to ask is simple and brutal: what if Hitler had gambled on Moscow again in 1942, turning a deception plan into the main effort?

To appreciate why that idea is so compelling, it helps to rewind to the winter of 1941–42 and the uneasy spring that followed. The Wehrmacht’s first drive on Moscow ended in exhaustion and the subsequent Soviet counter‑offensive pushed the Germans back from the city’s gates. German formations bled white in snow and mud, clinging to improvised lines with shattered infantry battalions and frozen vehicles. At the same time, the Soviet Union had come perilously close to collapse: key industrial regions had been overrun, millions of men had been taken prisoner, and the Red Army had only just managed to stabilise the front. Hitler’s overconfidence had even led him to have the armament factories retooled away from army production in mid‑1941; by December, stockpiles were depleted, and artillery ammunition was running short. In January 1942, a desperate “Armament 1942” directive reversed course, but frontline units still faced shortages as they dug in for the winter. Meanwhile, the Soviets were dragging evacuated factories beyond the Urals back into operation, and new tanks and guns were starting to roll off assembly lines far from German bombers.

German StuG IIIA waits amid ruined buildings outside Kharkov 

The thaw brought renewed offensives. Stalin, emboldened by the winter successes, ordered attacks along the entire front. Some fizzled or were pre‑empted; others, like Marshal Timoshenko’s May 1942 offensive near Kharkov, ended in catastrophe when German panzers encircled and destroyed hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops. To Hitler, the Kharkov battle proved the Red Army was still vulnerable; to his generals, it underscored that Germany could not mount large operations everywhere. The summer plan that emerged, Fall Blau, aimed south toward the grain of Ukraine and the oil of the Caucasus – yet even as preparations for Blau were underway, the German high command launched a parallel deception. On 29 May, the day after Kharkov ended, Army Group Centre issued a top‑secret directive whose first sentence read: “The Army High Command has ordered the earliest possible resumption of the advance on Moscow”. In the first week of June, the army group distributed sealed Moscow‑area maps down to regimental level, increased reconnaissance flights over the capital, and interrogated prisoners about its defences; agents were dispatched to scout Tula, Kalinin, and Moscow. The aim was to let Soviet intelligence pick up snippets and build its own picture – and it played on Stalin’s pre‑existing fear that the Germans would try again for Moscow. 

On June 19, 1942, Major Joachim Reichel, a German staff officer, decided to fly to one of the final planning meetings. Somehow, he became disoriented and ended up behind enemy lines. His small plane, a Fieseler Fi 156 Storch, was hit by enemy fire and crashed. Surviving the crash landing, Reichel was quickly captured… along with the full operational documents of XXXX. Panzer Corps in Fall Blau. Even this reinforced the charade when Stalin dismissed the recovered papers as a plant. By the end of June, he had massed nearly 60 percent of the Red Army’s available ground forces in front of the capital.

Historian Earl Ziemke posits that Fall Kreml managed to reinforce both Stalin and Stavka’s bias that the only logical target for the German 1942 summer offensive was towards Moscow. The movement of von Weichs' 2nd Army and 4th Panzer Army to the Northern Wing of Army Group South confirmed the Soviet intelligence that the southern wing of any attack would be from this area towards Tula, and on to Moscow.

Ziemke highlights that, with the launch of Fall Blau on June 28th, the Germans were surprised when three Western Front armies, each with numerous tank corps, attacked the 2nd Panzer Army in the flank while contesting Voronezh. In tandem, further south, for the first time in the war, the South and Southwestern fronts performed voluntary strategic retreats. Giving ground in the south, including abandoning the resource-rich Donbas, while holding Voronezh at all costs implied that more importance was placed on the approaches to Moscow.

To reinforce that assumption further, a month later 2nd Panzer Army opportunistically attacked, assuming the Soviet armor had been transferred to the south. Instead, they found a 20-mile-deep belt of fortifications, with all the tank corps encountered in July still in place. If, as Soviet histories claim, Stavka had by March 23rd, 1942, intelligence that the oil fields in the Caucasus would be the Germans' primary aim, why would they leave much of their strategic reserve and most mobile units in front of Moscow, yet knowingly retreat where the Germans were expected to attack? You can read, in more detail, Ziemke’s analysis here.

Historically, Fall Kreml remained a deception. The main German effort struck south across the Don and toward Stalingrad. In Panzer Campaigns: Moscow ’42, however, the designers explore the road not taken. They ask: what if the same forces and strategic conditions of June 1942 were redirected toward the Soviet capital instead? To make that question meaningful, the Fall Kreml scenarios start from the actual order of battle and deployment on 28 June 1942. Army Group Centre (Heeresgruppe Mitte) still holds the line west of Moscow with four armies. Just to the south, earmarked in reality for the drive toward Voronezh and the Don, sits Army Group von Weichs with 2nd Army, 4th Panzer Army, and the Hungarian 2nd Army. In the game’s hypothetical campaign, those southern forces swing north and east to join a renewed offensive on Moscow. All told, the German player commands about 88 divisions – almost the same number committed historically in the south. Facing them are the Soviet formations exactly as Stalin positioned them: the bulk of four Fronts stacked in depth, three belts of fortified lines, and mobile reserves in the form of the 3rd and 5th Tank Armies and Guards rifle and cavalry corps.

Red Army soldiers manning heavy artillery in front of the Red Army Theater on Ploshchad Kommuny (modern Suvorovskaja ploŝadʹ/Suvorov Square) 

The research underpinning these scenarios is substantial. On the Soviet side, the authors drew on wartime publications such as Boevoi Sostav Sovetskoi Armii to reconstruct the July 1942 order of battle down to brigades and battalions; for the Germans, divisional histories and organisational studies provided detailed tables of equipment. High‑resolution Lage Ost maps and Glantz’s atlases were used to fix the daily positions of both sides. The resulting summer order of battle starts with units at full table strength – reflecting the heavy reinforcements poured into the sector – and then adjusts for fatigue and attrition over time. Infantry divisions, therefore, range from robust three‑regiment formations to others still limping from the winter. Panzer formations show the transition to the long‑barrelled Panzer IV alongside older models, while Soviet tank brigades include a mix of T‑34s, KV‑1s, and early lend‑lease types.

Armored spearheads of the German 4. Panzerarmee are closing in on Moscow in the scenario "Götterdämmerung".

The map is equally important to making Fall Kreml feel plausible. Moscow ’42 uses the full summer map of central Russia: tens of thousands of hexes stretching from Rzhev and Kalinin in the north to Orel and the upper Don in the south. In winter scenarios, snow and frozen ground dominate; here, the terrain breathes again. Marsh and swamp line parts of the western edge, especially around Bryansk and Kalinin; the Volga, Oka, Upa, Mecha, and Don rivers cut the landscape into natural defensive lines. Dense belts of forest – particularly north and west of Moscow – slow movement and channel armoured thrusts along the road network. South of the Oka, the ground opens into more tank‑friendly country, but at the cost of longer routes.

Logistics are handled with the same eye for operational reality. As in other Panzer Campaigns titles, supply uses the Virtual Supply Truck rule – a standard system in the series –, but the values and sources have been carefully calibrated here. German supply begins on the western map edge and degrades steadily as units push east, so spearheads will see ammunition and fuel levels drop the closer they get to Moscow. On the Soviet side, local supply sources placed in key cities reflect Stalin’s “not one step back” directive; these hubs allow hedgehog positions to remain in supply even when nearly encircled. The designers also enabled the wired‑bridge option to prevent players from gaming the engine by blowing every crossing; key bridges must be fought over rather than simply demolished. Units enter scenarios at full strength, with recovery managed through parameter data rather than the replacement rule. Consequently, these choices compel historically plausible decisions: the German player must conserve fuel and ammunition, while the Soviet player can establish resilient roadblock garrisons that immobilize enemy forces.

Fall Kreml offers a handful of major campaigns and several smaller scenarios that explore different operational choices. Four variants reposition Army Group von Weichs on different axes: north between 9th Army and 3rd Panzer Army, centre between 3rd Panzer Army and 4th Army, south near Orel and Mtsensk, and a “north–maximum effort” option that releases extra panzer divisions. These variants all start from the same historical baseline and simply ask which direction the main German thrust might have taken. Each plays very differently, but the important thing is that players can test multiple “what‑if” strategies within the same narrative framework.

More interesting than the number of scenarios is how the underlying history shapes their behaviour. German formations are powerful but brittle: high‑quality infantry and panzer divisions with good morale, but limited replacements and increasingly long supply lines. Soviet formations are uneven – Guards units and Tank Armies can hit hard, while many rifle divisions are less capable – yet they are numerous, dug into deep defensive belts and backed by a growing war economy. The interplay between those strengths and weaknesses is where the alternate history comes alive. Will a concentrated panzer blow smash through the Oka and roll up the defences before the Soviets can counter‑attack? Or will the Red Army’s depth, terrain advantage, and improving armour blunt the offensive and bleed it white short of the capital? From a design standpoint, the team leveraged the engine’s existing features to simulate these questions: starting formations at full strength, tuning unit recovery through parameter data, calibrating supply values so the German advance visibly strains its lifeline, and enabling wired bridges to force realistic fights over river crossings. Together, these choices make Fall Kreml feel less like a fanciful romp and more like a plausible summer campaign that could easily have happened.

Further reading: Ziemke, Earl F. and Magna E. Bauer. Moscow to Stalingrad: Decision in the East. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1987.

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This concludes Part II of our look at “What If?” – from the tabletop and the PC screen to the deep end of historical research. What began as a simple two-part idea has grown into a four-part tour through how WDS handles alternate history: from small, local twists like a reinforced bridgehead or a delayed counter-attack, up to grand campaigns that turn deception plans like Fall Kreml into full-scale operations.

In Part III we’ll move forward into the late Cold War and spend some time in 1985 – the year the Modern Campaigns universe turns from tension to open war. We’ll look at the four “Cold War goes hot” titles and how they imagine a general war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact across Central Europe, while Korea ’85 plays out a parallel “Korean War 2.0” on the far side of the globe in the same universe. Part IV will then step back again into earlier centuries, highlighting pre-20th-century what-ifs in our campaign games and how they let you explore roads not taken long before tanks, jets, and nuclear weapons ever existed.