N44, 14th June

Overcast again in Normandy.

Utah.

German is bringing 17th Pz SS into place to cover the avenues towards Valognes and prepares a counterattack against American paratroopers. The final defense for this day will be decided after seeing the result of the attack and redistributing the good quality units of the 3FJ.

Omaha

After the big mistake on the precedent turn, German tries to recover the position by attacking American infantry units at St-Jean-De-Daye. His goal is to force Americans to get losses by being forced to retreat through flooded hexes. But it failed and American resisted in the village.

Caen

A big turnover at the outskirts of Carpiquet airport. German attacked British units with the force of the 12SS Pz Div and the valuable support of units of the 21st Pz and the 101 Tiger Battalion. With the quality shift, Tiger, armor and artillery support the attack moves quickly to 5-1. And German got a net '6'. This means that British needed to retreat 4 hexes, got two step losses and German got reserve status.

Now, German had the full 12 SS Div into reserve, being able to penetrate deep into British lines to hit the already heavily decimated 50 inf Div.

Again with Tiger support plus the Werfer Artillery support, German got two 4-1 attacks against Allied stacks with reduced infantry units. At the limit of already 5 cadres, British needs to save both attacks to survive this turn. But he fails. Completely destroying his tigers, German got his sixth cadre and as British had only one replacement, Automatic Victory is for German. We have finished the turn but there is no sense to report American movements.

Conclusion:
For the first game of N44 we had made a few mistakes in the rules that could outcome the final result.
First of all, we completely forgot about Allied IPs that could be useful for British. Also we have missed that replacements in storm turns can be either Brits or Canadians. We had assigned to British. A mistake.
More subtle mistakes were made when applying ZOC Bonds, DCBs or applying retreat. When possible we have corrected the  errors.
Strategically, British did not realize his delicate position until that it was too late. He needed to be more cautious.
German had also many errors, some of the quite evident.
American, as usual, played perfectly :-))
A great first game. We have now a good understanding of the rules and we are planning to play again the campaign.
We truly believe that this is an excellent game that deserves to play with. We are anxiously waiting to jump into Ardennes 44. Our only regret is that N44 is now out of stock as well as Ukraine 43 that, under a similar system, we would like to try.
Our deepest thanks for this wonderful game to Mark Simonitch and the people at GMT.