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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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. 

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Hunting in the forests of Lithuania, Grand Duke Gediminas lay down to sleep and had a dream. An iron wolf was howling on the top of the hill under which his party camped. Returning home, he consulted Lithuania’s high priestess, Kriviu Krivaitis, who told him to build his new capital on that hill. “The symbol of the iron wolf means that the city will be large and formidable city,” she said. “The city will stand as strong as iron and will protect the land from its enemies.” And so was Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, founded. Ever since, the Iron Wolf has been the symbol of Lithuania’s defenders.

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.

On the combined-arms battlefield, it’s the armor that slashes through and the infantry that takes and holds ground. But it’s the artillery that destroys, that creates the breakthroughs and crushes attacks before they even begin.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.