On 11 September 1944, a patrol from the U.S. 5th Armored Division crossed the German border, beginning a campaign that would last three and a half months and cost over 140,000 casualties as the Americans tried to break through the Siegfried Line defenses, known to the Germans as the West Wall.

Soviet armies began their offensive to isolate the Hungarian capital of Budapest in October 1944. The city would be surrounded in December. During that time, as German and Hungarian troops fought to keep the Soviets from completing the encirclement, fighting stubborn defensive actions backed by repeated counter-attacks.

Your college history books were wrong. There never was a “dreadnought race” between Britain and Germany before the First World War. There was a marketing campaign by the Vickers-Armstrong shipbuilding combine to create a threat that could only be answered by more spending on more dreadnoughts.

The RAF's planned campaign objectives for the night bombing campaign against Italy was laid out in this excerpt from the "Defeat of Italy by Air Attack Alone" report, issued by the Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee. 16 April 1943.

In the mid-1930’s, Thai military dictator Plaek Phibunsongkhram commissioned a modest naval building program. The Royal Thai Navy quickly received modern coast-defense ships, submarines and torpedo boats from Japanese and Italian shipyards. In 1940, Thailand challenged Vichy France over the provinces lost to French Indo-China in 1893, leading to a Thai invasion of Cambodia and the January 1941 naval battle of Koh-Chang.

In February 1942, the German Navy prepared a top-secret mission, known as Operation Cerberus, to move the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau (known to British sailors as the “Wicked Sisters”) and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen from Brest in western France to Norway. Without special training operations or any other moves that might alert the British, they would suddenly dart up the narrow English Channel. The daring “Channel Dash” caught the British by surprise, and all three ships made it to German though Gneisenau suffered damage that would never be fully repaired.

In February 1904, a surprise attack by Japanese torpedo boats on the Russian Pacific Fleet ignited 19 months of war that propelled Japan into Great Power status and began a series of calamities that would bring down the Russian Empire. Russo-Japanese War covers the naval side of the Russo-Japanese War, which opened with a Japanese surprise attack on the Russian Pacific Fleet’s base at Port Arthur in northern China. There are 36 scenarios, including the climactic battles of the Yellow Sea and Tsushima.

In 1907, the Imperial Chinese Navy proposed a new building program to provide three regional fleets, each built around a new modern battleship. Two years later a naval commission headed by the Regent's brother, Prince Tsai-hsun, recommended a fleet of eight dreadnoughts and 20 cruisers plus supporting vessels, and began soliciting bids from shipyards around the world.

The 1916 Battle of Jutland was not the only action on the North Sea during the Great War. The battle cruisers of Britain’s Grand Fleet and Germany’s High Seas Fleet met in the January 1915 Battle of Dogger Bank, and both fleets continually sortied into the waters dividing them.

On the last day of May 1916, the British Grand Fleet met the German High Seas Fleet off the coast of Denmark, in what would be the largest battle ever fought between dreadnought battleships.

Immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces began their “Strike South” against the American, British and Dutch colonies in South-East Asia. The combined American-British-Dutch-Australian fleet resisted as best they could, but would be crushed in February 1942 in the Battle of the Java Sea.

Great War at Sea: Jutland Second Edition is a game tightly focused on the Battle of Jutland in May and June 1916. Jutland: North Sea 1914 extends the story into the battles that happened, or could have happened, before the Battle of Jutland: Helgoland Bight, the Scarborough Raid, the Yarmouth Raid and more.

In August 1939, France’s Armée d’Afrique mobilized ten Moroccan infantry regiments; all of them would fight in the coming campaign in France, three of them forming the elite 1st Moroccan Infantry Division. The “Swallows of Death” already carried a fearsome fighting reputation from the trenches of the First World War, and they would only add to their black swallow insignia’s legend in the Second.

During the 1930’s, France built up a force of modern warships, the Force de Raid, to counter German naval construction. Britain seemed far less ready to stand against Hitler, and French leaders felt they had to be ready to fight Germany again, this time alone.

We know what happened after the American victory at Midway. What might have happened had the Japanese won instead? We pick up the story after the mutually destructive Battle of Midway. SNLF troops have taken Midway in days of bitter fighting and the Japanese must decide what to do next.

German paratroopers landed on Crete in May 1941, hitting four drop zones defended by Australian, New Zealand and British troops, plus hastily-organized Greek regiments and often the armed Cretan populace. Our Parachutes Over Crete game covers the air landings at Maleme, Prison Valley and Rethymno; this new Campaign Study looks at the battle for Heraklion, the capital of Crete, defended by the British 14th Brigade.

On 21 September 1939, as Polish troops continued to resist German and Soviet invaders, the Polish Army in France began to form. Polish soldiers who had escaped over the country’s neutral borders joined Poles from around the world, chiefly Polish workers resident in France.

The Second Great War at Sea alternative-history story arc looks at naval campaigns in a world where the First Great War ended in late 1916, allowing the great empires to survive for another generation and clash again in 1940.

For their June 1943 offensive at Kursk, the German high command bet a lot of its chips on the Grossdeutschland Panzer Grenadier Division. It had more tanks than any of the Regular Army panzer divisions, plus additional weapons from machine guns to Tiger heavy tanks, and additional assault guns and other battalions. Add to that enormous combat experience and unit cohesion (thanks to special perks for Grossdeutschland soldiers – who, for example, could not be sent to a different unit after a hospital stay, or seized by military police to join an “emergency” unit). On top of all that, the 200 Panther tanks provided for the Kursk operation all went to this one division.

The Second Great War is our alternative-history setting, in which U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s attempts to negotiate peace in late 1916 (which actually happened) are successful and bring the Great War to a close two years earlier than in our history. But not everyone is satisfied with this peace, and a generation later France, Russia and Italy renew the war against the Central Powers.

In May 1941, the newly-commissioned German battleship Bismarck set out for the North Atlantic in company with the cruiser Prinz Eugen on a commerce-raiding mission. She captured no merchant ships, but sank a British battle cruiser and was herself destroyed in a hail of shells and torpedoes. For a brief moment she captured the world’s imagination, and now you can re-play her mission – and many others – in the Playbook edition of Second World War at Sea: Bismarck.

They Shall Not Pass is a full-sized book about the battle and a complete historical game on the subject including everything you need to play except dice.

Between March 1941 and November 1942, the 2nd New Zealand Division fought in all the major battles in the Western Desert, Crete and Greece. After the victory at Alamein, the Kiwis helped lead the Allied pursuit of Erwin Rommel’s fleeing Axis army across Libya and into Tunisia.

In March 1939, the small, newly-created nation of Slovakia declared its independence from Czechoslovakia and immediately became a satellite of Nazi Germany. Slovak troops invaded Ukraine in 1941 and fought alongside the Germans for five years as the most minor of allies. The puppet government began mobilizing reservists just four days before the German invasion, and sent its troops over the border six days later. Those soldiers proved far less enthusiastic about the adventure than their proto-fascist leadership. Slovak formations performed poorly for the most part, with just one notable success.

ORSOGNA depicts the struggles of 2nd New Zealand Division to control the area around the Italian village of Orsogna in December 1943 and the stubborn German LXXVI. Panzerkorps defense led by the 26. Panzer-Division.

In the spring of 1942, the Japanese contemplated invading the British-held island of Ceylon. From there they could strike many strategic targets around the Indian Ocean basin, none of these more vital than the southern outlet of the Red Sea, controlling the sea route to the Suez Canal and on to Europe. Far more important to the Axis cause than Midway Island, Japanese control of the chokepoint at the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb would have broken British communications with India, Australia and New Zealand except for the lengthy and difficult route around the Cape of Good Hope, and made the entire campaign in North Africa superfluous.

1940: The Last Days of May is a Panzer Grenadier Campaign Study. with 11 scenarios from the final days of the German invasion of France, in two chapters, each with a battle game to link the scenarios together. You’ll need Panzer Grenadier: 1940 The Fall of France and Road to Dunkirk to play all of the scenarios.

Guderian’s Panzers: From Triumph to Defeat: Operation Barbarossa, which had commenced with such promise for Guderian’s panzers, and for the eastern army at large, ended in catastrophic failure. How did it come to pass that, with each dazzling victory in the east, final victory seemed to move further away from Germany’s grasp? This issue examines Guderian’s role in the first half-year of the Russian campaign, in the process opening a window onto the failure of Barbarossa as a whole.

In the spring of 1940, the French Army appeared invincible. They awaited the expected German offensive with great confidence, ready to repel their ancient foes and overwhelm them in 1941 with a massive wave of new armored divisions. Instead it was the German panzers that did the overwhelming. Despite heroic efforts in which over 90,000 French soldiers lost their lives, within six weeks France had fallen.

In May 1942, the Japanese sought to capture Port Moresby on the south coast of New Guinea and interrupt communications between the United States and Australia. Such a move, they hoped, would bring the Americans to battle.

In the spring of 1942, the Japanese contemplated invading the British-held island of Ceylon. From there they could strike many strategic targets around the Indian Ocean basin, none of these more vital than the southern outlet of the Red Sea, controlling the sea route to the Suez Canal and on to Europe. 

The U.S. Navy began its counter-offensive against the Japanese in August 1942, with landings on the islands of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. The Japanese struck back in turn, and fierce naval battles raged in “Ironbottom Sound” by night while aircraft carriers dueled by day. The Americans and their Australian allies steadily fought their way up the Solomons chain until the Japanese base at Rabaul was finally isolated in June 1943.

Saddam Moves South is an operational level two player wargame covering a hypothetical Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia in 1990. The assumption here is that after the Iraqi army overran Kuwait in the first week of August 1990, Saddam Hussein continued the offensive to grab the vital oilfields of Saudi Arabia. In response, the United States leads a coalition of states to stop the Iraqis and then retake lost territories.

The U.S. Army first enrolled black soldiers during the Civil War. Buffalo Soldiers saw action against the Plains Indians and in the Spanish-American War, while segregated African-American units also fought in World War One. In 1941, the U.S. Army began to create elite African-American units, including fighter squadrons, paratroopers and armored units including the 761st “Black Panthers” Tank Battalion.

The 1916 Battle of Jutland was not the only action on the North Sea during the Great War. The battle cruisers of Britain’s Grand Fleet and Germany’s High Seas Fleet met in the January 1915 Battle of Dogger Bank, and both fleets continually sortied into the waters dividing them.

During the Second World War, several Eastern European nations fielded flotillas of river monitors - armored, shallow-draft warships that operated on the great rivers. These gunboats (anything on a river is a “boat” no matter its size) were designed to provide artillery support, engage enemy troops and if necessary, to fight other river monitors.

On the morning of 4 June 1942, fifteen TBD-1 Devastator bombers of Torpedo Squadron Eight took off from the USS Hornet to attack the Japanese carrier force operating off Midway Island. All fifteen of them were shot down as they pressed their attack, yet not a single pilot veered away. While Japanese fighters slaughtered the low-flying torpedo planes, American dive bombers passed overhead and began their screaming dives onto the Japanese carriers, sinking three of them and dooming the Japanese Empire. The sacrifice had not been in vain.

In the late summer of 1914, the German General Staff informed their Austro-Hungarian allies that they would stand on the defensive against their common Russian enemy. Undeterred by this reality, the Austrians pushed forward with their plans to attack. After initial successes, the outnumbered Austro-Hungarian forces fell back with severe losses.

By the last years of the Second World War, the Waffen (Armed) SS had taken on a front-line combat role. Though not the elite units claimed by Nazi propagandists, these formations had priority for new weapons and manpower, giving them considerable fighting power.