Amphibious Assault Scenario

[Ruckdog]

One of the things that I've long wanted to do is a D-Day style beach assault in DW. I think there is a lot of potential here given the way that DW ties in land, air, and sea forces into the same table space. Heck, I even have day dreams of running a convention event game using such a scenario! I wanted to bounce some ideas off of all of you to get your perspectives on what you might like to see in game such as this. Me personally, I'd like to include some of the following points:

-Driving landing craft up to the beach and discharging units ashore.
-Having some kind of beach defenses/bunkers to overcome.
-Allowing naval units to provide shore bombardment support.
-Allowing defending naval units a chance to try and intervene in the landing.
-Having some kind of reinforcing units available to the defending player(s) "inland" that can be moved up to try and defeat the attacker's beach head.

[Dakkar]

We had a 2-table scenario kind of like that at Tacticon, just not with actual landing. In hindsight, I'd maybe just "T" one Naval/water 6x4 into the midpoint "beach" of the land 6x4. And assume Indirect fire with Spotter from anywhere.

One easy adaptation is to have Carriers serve as Troop Transports, and just "launch" them onto the beaches when within 4" (No need for the actual landing craft). Each token point could translate to Infantry.
Or if you really want landing craft, have the carriers spit out Light Tanks/Boats and such as dedicated landing vehicles.

The super-large Carriers could be seen as Tank Carriers too.

And the giant Robots would be the best in that scenario.

[Ruckdog]

Interesting ideas! I would probably use either the official Spartan landing craft or the LSTs that I scratch-built years ago for the mini-campaign that I ran for Landlubber and another friend of ours, instead of carrier models, though. I think that the deployment zone for the landing craft would have to be close to the beach; no more than one or two moves away, I think. I really want to have craft that physically drive to the beach, sort of Saving Private Ryan with landships .

[Dakkar]

sort of Saving Private Ryan with landships .

That's why I'd favor a 2-table "T" set-up, to make the actual landfall area quite limited, and a real shooting gallery. This would reflect that it's all too easy to deny armored vehicles a beach-head, simply by use of bad terrain. So they must all funnel to those small areas where terrain is favorable.

Key to the scenario would be lots of burning markers to enhance the devastation.

Hmmm ... Maybe our next Martians scenario should be a beach landing like this....

[Charbe86]

This sounds really good, particularly as part of a campaign.  I assume that you would have the landing craft deploy from the larger ships, but would you assign specific land forces to specific ships?

[Ruckdog]

I can't speak for Dale, but the scenario I had envisioned would use the rules for the existing landing craft; the land units would start on the landing craft, and the landing craft would be placed close enough to the beach for the land units to disembark by Turn 2. I'll try to get a diagram put together with what I'm talking about.

[McKInstry]

Cigar Box Battle Mats makes a 6x4 mat that is a perfect beach transition, 40% land, 20% beach, 40% water. We did a beach assault using it back in Georgia about a year ago and had a ball.

It gave the FSA the one and only time a Washington was useful.

[Ruckdog]

I know exactly the mat you are speaking of! I've drooled over it a couple of times myself.

[Ruckdog]

So, I've continued to chew on the concept of an amphibious assault scenario in the back of my head. Here is a mock-up of how I'm thinking I would lay such a scenario out:



The amphibious landing assets would deploy into Zone A, the supporting fleet into Zone B. The defending player would deploy their land units in the inland zone (still working out where exactly) and would also have defensive emplacements of some kind on the beach. Initially, the defending player would have no naval assets on the table; on turn 2 or 3 these would enter via the two Zone C's to try and disrupt the landing effort.

Only the landing craft, medium, and small Naval models would be allowed to enter the Shallow Water zone, and I'm contemplating the Beach Zone either slowing movement or making units that are in that area easier to hit. The two inland objectives are intended to be reachable by the invasion force within 4-5 turns.

I've drawn up the above diagram to use a 4x6 table using the short edges. The Cigar mat might work, though it is geared to use the long edges:

http://cigarboxbattlestore.bigcartel.com/product/beachhead-4x6-plus-160



That could be paired with other mats to get the right geometry, I suppose!

[Dakkar]

Good ideas!

You could go for broke and plan it with three 6x4 tables. The Cigar-Box mat in the middle, one wholly sea based, and one wholly inland. That scale, you could do an all-day massive event.

Cigar box mat by itself would really just be a land and air battle, and ships would have to hug the water edge.

And after you play it out as D-Day, you can totally reverse it and play a What-If for DUNKIRK (after the new Nolan movie gets you fired up of course)

[McKInstry]

We played an all day DW in my basement in Atlanta last year on 3 mats as an invasion where the action moved from sea to beach onto the land. We had a 4x10 table space and started sea/beach and as the action flowed, moved to beach/grassland sliding mats as needed.

[Ruckdog]

We played an all day DW in my basement in Atlanta last year on 3 mats as an invasion where the action moved from sea to beach onto the land. We had a 4x10 table space and started sea/beach and as the action flowed, moved to beach/grassland sliding mats as needed.

That sounds awesome! Do you have any pictures from that game? I'd love to see them.

[McKInstry]

Alas we never were much for photographs other than the odd model.

I need to figure out that whole Flicker/Dropbox thing.