Operation Market Garden

Version: 1.01 (December 2006)                                                                                              

Engine: Battles in Italy

Turns: 77

AI or PBEM: PBEM Only

Author: Kilgore Trout

Download Operation Market Garden


Run5 Note: A little bit different battleset for this one:  Two hour turns.  Full campaign and four short scenarios (covering 1st Abn at Arnhem, 82d Abn at Nijmegan, 101st Abn at Zon Bridges, and action along Hell’s Highway) are included. 

INSTALL Instructions:  Unzip the attached file to your Matrix/Scenarios directory. This will place a folder titled OM-G in the scenario directory inside that folder will be some files and another directory titled Bridge2far. Start your game, go to the OM-G folder and select Full Campaign. That’s it.

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Updated 1 December 06

DESIGNER NOTES (22 Oct 06):

This is the completed version of Operation Market-Garden. There may be updates released to address play balance issue, errors, various inconsistencies and possibly even a crash or two. I have decided not to make any additional changes that would be considered major due to a the upcoming release of Battlefront that will include a Market-Garden scenario. The following items provide the reasoning behind some of the decisions I reached while making the game.

 

  1. Basis of Design: The map and Order of Battle are based in large part on the SPI board game Highway to the Reich. In some instances I tweaked the map and OOB where I was able to determine with some degree of accuracy that the SPI version was incorrect.
  2. The scale of the map is approximately 600 meters to the hex and the game turns are 2 hours each. My original design included night turns and a night map that allowed units to redeploy relatively unseen by the opposition but the 79 turn maximum built into the BiI engine forced me to abandon that idea.
  3. The counter strengths and movement abilities were all done by feel. I tweaked the various units until they felt like they were moving and interacting correctly relative to each other.
  4. The ferries were bit of a design problem because there is no way to create new units from whole cloth in the game editor. I chose to use pontoon units as the basis of the ferries because they would allow the German units to cross the rivers but could not be used by the Allies. I gave them no movement ability and no VP value to simulate the German’s sinking the ferries in front of the advancing Allied units in some instances. The ferries can only actually be sunk by the Allies but they are worthless to the Allied player. The use of pontoon units means that the German player will need to deploy the bridge before the ferry can be used. Each ferry has a landing slip shown on the map to indicate the proper bridge location. Since I was unable to find a way to start the scenario with the bridges already deployed, it is up to the player to place the bridges.
  5. The major bridges at Arnhem and Nijmegen have been made “unblowable”. I thought this was a necessary step for both realism and play balance reasons.
  6. I made the divisional supply units into headquarters units because the division symbols that are the most recognizable would otherwise not appear in the game. Treat them as supply units that are very expensive to lose.
  7. The U.S. units have been made a minor country in the game so they can combine attacks with the British XXX Corps. This was suggested by JSS and it’s more historically accurate.
  8. Allied air support, airborne reinforcements and supply drops are based on weather conditions outside of the game area. For certain portions of the game players will notice that the German has unchallenged air superiority. The only bad weather in the Netherlands during the  Market-Garden occurred in the form of torrential rains on September 25.  Players can change the weather to “random” to provide more uncertainty if they wish.
  9. There was no way I could simulate the various raised roads in the lowlands so they were eliminated from the game. Road movement should only be allowed if the unit was already traveling on the road before entering the raised portion. Otherwise the movement would be according to the terrain in the hex.
  10. The dikes affect movement and combat in much the same way as streams.

 

Finally thanks to Robjess, Brubaker and JSS for their help in getting the game to it’s current state. They provided help and answers to all the questions that the manual didn’t address.

 

Please post any comments or suggestions to the Run5 Forum for fastest response.

 

Kilgore Trout