Description

Operation Roundup was the code name for a plan prepared by Allied forces to invade Northern France in 1943 in the Pas de Calais area. This game explores the first month of this never-run plan, set in September 1943 (instead of the historical landings at Salerno in Italy). Allied forces are not the mighty invasion armada of 1944 lacking both the armored "funnies" and Mulberries that worked so well in Normandy. For the Germans at this time their "Atlantic Wall" and panzer arm are more promises of what is to come than actual impenetrable defenses.

Yet the game remains highly re-playable time after time as, at start, neither player knows Hitler’s reaction to the invasion until it is rolled for during the first turn of the game. Will he give orders to: (1) Strip the East of as many divisions as possible transferring them to this new front so as to attempt to annihilate the landing, or merely try to contain it as a “self-sustaining POW camp”? OR (2) Redeploy the as-yet-unbroken Reich Air Defense fighter force to temporarily give up the war against the Allied strategic bombing campaign and switch to combat air support over the battlefield? OR (3) Mobilize the II Parachute Corps (standing by at air bases in southern France) to drop directly into the Allied beachhead? Depending on how many of them survive, they might prove decisive in upsetting the whole Allied plan. Or trigger powerful Allied countermeasures?

The map area covers the French coast from around Dunkirk south to the mouth of the Somme and inland to Lille and Arras. Operation Roundup uses a standard 34" x 22" large-hex (19mm) map and 216 medium (16mm) counters. The game is scaled at 2 miles (3.25 km) per hex, with 10 three-day game turns, and uses regiments and brigades (and a few battalions) as units of maneuver. The game system is an evolution of the classic old-SPI Cobra, simple enough to allow for a game to be completed in one sitting, and can also easily be adapted for solitaire play.

Operation Roundup is published in the Against The Odds (ATO) Annual 2021.

Contents and Information

Maps - One full color 22" x 34" hex mapsheet
Counters - 216 full color 9/16" die-cut counters
Rules length - 12 pages
Charts and tables - 2 pages
Complexity - Medium
Playing time - Up to 3 to 4 hours
How challenging is it solitaire? - Average.