Game - 134 - Anzio Beachhead

Description: Reprint of one of the two games included in issue #20. It has also been released in white box and black box SPI formats as a standalone game. The rules have been edited (a little). The game was designed to be played by two people in under 2 hours. One player controls the German forces while his opponent controls the Allied forces.

Anzio Beachhead is an operational level simulation game of the allied invasion of the Italian mainland near Rome during WWII. The invasion began January 22, 1944, under the code name Operation Shingle. It had the Alban Hills and the isolation of the German army as its objective. Failing in this, Allied troops would have to hold until relieved. Here Hitler recognized Germany's great chance to destroy an Allied invasion. Had his troops succeeded in destroying the beachhead, the war in Europe could well have been lengthened.

Each turn represents 24 hours. Each hex on the map represents 0.9 miles (1.34km). The unit size of the counters varies from Company -> Brigade. The map is 17" x 22". There are 100 1/2" counters. The rules are 8 pages long.

Contents:

• Wildcat or Whale? by Vance von Borries
• Predicting Future Wars , Half a Century Ago by Jim Bloom
• Voices Prophesying War by Jim Bloom
• Hitler’s Last Gamble - The Place of the Ardennes Campaign in World War II by Danny S. Parker
• Gamer’s Guide to Anzio Beachhead by Paul Dangel
• (FYI) Gun Running for Fun and Profit by Dario Benedetti
• (FYI) Backbone of the Army: NCOs in the Armies of 1914 by A.A. Nofi
• (FYI) Evolution of the Soviet Rifle Division, 1939-42 by Alan Vannoy
• (Datafile) Firearms and the Unification of Japan by Richard Gassan
• (Modern Notes) The Spanish Foreign Legion in the Rif Wars (1919-1927) by Richard Jupa and Jim Dingeman

Notes: Per Jim Dunnigan:

"AB was seen as another situation like the Bulge, where the attacker had a rapidly declining edge. The original American commander was not bold, and lost. So the idea with AB was to explore the what if's. At that time, I had been working on designing games for about eight years (since I first discovered the AH games.) Before that, I was always interested in the details of history, and how they were connected. AH wargames were the first time I saw someone else thinking the same way, and doing it in a novel way. I was always building on that."

"I had been designing a similar game, called Italy, which incorporated the rest of the Italian theater, with a smaller scale map of the Anzio area (ie, two interrelated games, one strategic and the other operational). But when Dave's game came in I thought it did a better job of the Anzio section. We had come up with some of the same solutions, and his game was more compact and suitable for the magazine."