Description
The second installment in our series of Memoir ’44 Battle Maps includes 2 Overlord scenarios, six Tiger Tanks and 2 bonus scenarios.
Tigers in the Snow
Hot on the heels of their success in Operatsiya Bagration, Soviet forces struck deep towards the Baltic coast, rapidly severing communications between German Army Group North and what little was left of Army Group Center.
By early October 1944, the Soviets were in view of the Baltic Sea, near the port of Memel, definitively cutting off Army Group North from any retreat route through East Prussia.
Despite Guderian’s plea for an evacuation by sea and subsequent redeployment in Central Europe where forces were desperately needed to help stabilize an increasingly dicey situation, Hitler stubbornly refused.
Instead, he ordered the 200,000+ German troops to entrench themselves, in the hope of using the Courland Pocket as a springboard for a future offensive.
Little did the Führer realize that what he insisted on calling a bridgehead (the Kurland-Brückenkopf) would only become a bridge to oblivion for his haplessly trapped German divisions; They would go on to resist six major battles before finally surrendering to Marshal Govorov on May 8, 1945.
The majority of the 200,000+ men of Army Group North would be marched into Soviet prison camps to the East, most of them never to return.
Operation Market Garden
The largest airborne operation of all time, Operation Market Garden was a bold attempt by Field Marshal Montgomery to drop three entire Airborne Divisions behind the enemy lines, in German occupied Netherlands.
Their tactical objective: To capture and hold all the major water crossings along a narrow 60-mile stretch of highway and into northern Germany.
British XXX Corps would then rush onwards from the Dutch-Belgian border and across the Maas and Lower Rhine to outflank the Siegfried Line and choke off the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial heartland.
The daylight drops were initially successful, with the capture of the Waal bridge at Nijmegen, but German resistance was stronger than expected; the British 1st Airborne Division failed to secure the bridge at Arnhem. British ground advance was hampered by marshy ground.
Eindhoven was eventually captured by a joint Airborne and Armor assault, but British XXX Corps failed to relieve the 1st Airborne Division. Despite the latter’s valiant hold out at Arnhem bridge, the planned advance had to be abandoned and Monty wouldn’t cross the Rhine until the spring of 1945.
Bonus Standard Scenarios
This Battle Map set also includes 2 Standard scenarios playable on a regular Memoir ’44 board and featuring the new Tiger tanks – Villers-Bocage and Wittmann’s last stand at St-Aignan-de-Cramesnil.
NOT A STAND ALONE GAME! Requires one copy of Memoir ’44 and the Operation Overlord expansion, or two full copies of Memoir ’44.
