TSWW: Blitzkrieg

Blitzkrieg, by Diffraction Entertainment, is a MONSTER wargame to end all monster wargames. The map of Europe is phenomenal in its size, detail, and accuracy. It uses a scale of 1 hex is 15 miles! There are over 4,000 counters!!! It includes land, air, and naval units. As a bonus, the game can be broken down into smaller mini campaigns, very helpful when you haven't the table area for the full map!!! I was privileged to talk in detail with John Bannerman, one of the designers. This is part of the blurb from the game's web site. 4480 counters covering the ground, naval and air forces of (in order of “appearance”): Germany, Poland, Great Britain and The Commonwealth, France, the Soviet Union, Denmark, Norway, The Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. These are supported by a meticulously researched Order of Battle for the first year of the Second World War and include additional details for the United Kingdom and Germany until June 1941. 17 map sections (14” x 21½”) for a total of 35 sq ft of maps from North Cape to Bologna and Brest to Minsk at 15 miles per hex. Laid out, the maps occupy an area of approximately 7’ x 6’ and have been created using digital mapping software developed in-house by Diffraction Entertainment. Maps have been painstakingly digitised from period topographical maps in the 1:250,000 to 1:300,000 range. The extensive Rule Set has been devised from the start as a standard for the entire game series including a framework for an exhaustive set of Political and Economic rules defining each nation’s operational parameters and special cases. By the last game in the Second World War Series, these will have evolved into a detailed production model allowing players to explore different strategic options for the major combatants. Multiple modules covering Poland (Stab in the Back), Scandinavia (Operation Weserübung), France 1940 plus The Battle of Britain (War in the West), and of course, Blitz!, a grand module to link all these together to cover the first year of the Second World War. Ground unit values are derived from OLI formulas originally devised by Trevor N Dupuy, a methodology that allows many different weapon systems to be consistently rated then summed using the ground unit’s TO&E to give a theoretical operational combat value. Differences in national capabilities of training, leadership, communications and other “soft” factors are simulated using a Combat Effectiveness Value (CEV) for each nation which is then used as a multiplier to the basic unit combat value. CEV evolves for each nation during the war showing increasing competence for Allied forces and, after initial increases due to combat experience, a decreasing capability for German forces as manpower and unit TO&E’s degrade in capability. Naval units down to destroyers are shown as individual ship counters with lesser ships and submarines depicted as flotillas. Major liners also have individual counters so as to denote their special high-speed capabilities for transporting personnel. The naval system utilises a naval zone approximately 75 miles wide superimposed on the 15 mile hex grid so that the unique properties of naval and air-sea interaction can be modelled simply but still keep the essential flavour of naval operations with brief bursts of high intensity operations. Air Units are sized so that half units are available for carrier operations and have been rated by a bespoke system taking in to account a large number of performance parameters. To reflect the attritional nature of air operations, air replacements are required to be expended just to keep forces in operation in addition to replacing combat losses. Emphasis has been placed in the rules to encourage historical missions rather than wholesale commitment of airpower to offensive and defensive close air support.