First Wave at Omaha Unboxing

At 06:30 on June 6, 1944, the first landing craft dropped their ramps on Omaha Beach. The tide was low, so the men had about 300 yards of open sand to cross before they reached the seawall. The veteran 352nd Infantry Division was waiting on the bluffs above, and Allied intelligence had missed it. On the western half of the beach, in front of Vierville, Company A of the 116th Infantry was nearly wiped out in minutes.

That western half is First Wave at Omaha, Critical Hit’s 2009 historical module for ASL. It covers the 116th Regimental Combat Team’s landing, from Dog Green to Easy Green, on three big maps.

Getting It

Critical Hit gets a lot of grief from ASL players, for editing, playtesting and recycling old products under new names. I’m not here to judge all that. I’ll show you what’s in the bag and let you decide.

This is the first edition, and I bought it secondhand on eBay for $80. That’s a steal, since first editions seem to go for $200 to $300 these days. It’s long out of print. Critical Hit has re-released it twice since, under new names.

• First Wave at Omaha (2009): three fold-out paper maps and 1,150 counters. This is mine.
• Omaha West (2012): the same maps and scenarios, with new counter art.
• Omaha West Monster Edition (2014): 27 glossy map panels with oversized hexes, and no counters.

What makes the first edition special is the counters and the traditional fold-out maps. The later maps look brighter, but they come in a pile of panels you have to assemble, and the hexes get huge. Critical Hit doesn’t list any Omaha products on its site right now, so the secondhand market is the way to go. The newer editions also turn up at Noble Knight from time to time.

Contents:

• 15 scenarios, plus one monster landing scenario, Black Day for the 116
• Three linking 24″ x 36″ color maps
• A special rules booklet
• Ten 116th RCT landing play aids, four German strongpoint play aids and two destroyer cards
• Six sheets of die-cut counters, over 1,150 in all

It isn’t a complete game. You’ll need the ASL Rulebook, plus your own fortification counters and German and American concealment counters.

Bloody Omaha

Omaha was about 3.6 miles of beach between two sets of cliffs. Behind it, bluffs rose about 100 to 170 feet. Five draws cut through them, small valleys with roads that led inland. The Germans knew the draws were the only way off the beach for vehicles, so they built their strongpoints, the Widerstandsnester, around them.

Here’s the whole beach on D-Day, with the sectors, the draws, the strongpoints and the first-wave companies. Amber letters follow the day. Blue and gray numbers are the module’s scenarios, keyed to the table right under the map.

The blue dashed box is the Omaha West map, which is this module. The purple one is Omaha East, the other half of the beach, which I unboxed later in its boxed edition. Hook the two together and you’ve got the whole landing on your table… if you own a very big table.

Almost nothing went to plan. The rough sea pushed most boats east of their sectors, and the bombing missed the bluffs. The tanks that did get ashore were shot up at the waterline. Since the draws were so heavily defended, most of the men who got off the beach did it the hard way, by climbing the bluffs between them. It took most of the day to open the draws for vehicles.

A Map That Matches the Ground

This map is the star of the module. I’m a little obsessed with it. I overlaid it on the wartime invasion maps, and the bluffs, the beach, the draws and even the roads line up really well. Kurt Martin and Greg Sarnecki designed it, working from the Top Secret BIGOT invasion map sheets, and the team walked the ground in Normandy.

I even checked the scale. The Omaha West map runs about 86 hexes from one end to the other. At 40 meters a hex, that’s 10,958 feet. Measured off a historical map, the same stretch of beach comes out to about 10,875 feet. They missed by 83 feet. That’s closer than most of my artillery spotting.

Some players say a historically accurate map doesn’t always make a good game map. Maybe so. That’s what balance and special rules are for.

The Rules Booklet

The special rules booklet opens with a couple of pages of history, and then it gets into the beach. You get the tide line and surf, beach obstacles like Belgian gates, hedgehogs and stakes, the seawall, and known minefields. Most of it’s printed right on the map, including the trenches, the perimeter wire and the anti-tank ditches in front of the draws.

On the American side, there are Bangalore torpedoes and Bangalore heroes. The Germans get Tobruks, blockhouses, tunnels, cupolas and covered-arc pillboxes. Then there’s the hardware. You get LCI(L)s, LCTs, DUKWs, DD Shermans, bulldozers and onboard rockets. Destroyers close in and fire straight into the bluffs. Kurt Martin, Pedro Ramis and Ray Tapio did the design.

Fifteen Small Fights and a Monster

The first 15 scenarios are traditional size, five to nine turns, each on a slice of the map. Plan Two is the 2nd Rangers’ Company C climbing the cliffs west of Vierville. Buying the Farm and Ace are German counterattacks against small groups of Americans who made it inland to the Ormel Farm.

General Norman Cota gets two. In Off the Beach!, he walks upright along Dog White at 07:30, waving his pistol and getting men off the seawall. In Texas Tea, he goes down the Vierville draw to find out why nothing is coming up it, while the destroyer McCook pounds the strongpoints. Both scenarios give him special powers.

Sergeants Lead the Way is the 2nd Rangers landing opposite WN 70. Trapped Like Rats and No Footprints are the 743rd Tank Battalion’s Shermans and the 116th at the Vierville draw. A Brutal Task, Three Story House and Blood in the Water are the fight at the Les Moulins draw, where Company F of the 116th landed straight into the teeth of WN 66. Engineer Team 8 shows up too, hauling explosives for the Belgian gates.

Rocket Men has the 116th’s 3rd Battalion climbing the bluffs east of Les Moulins as German rockets start landing. Frontal at St. Laurent is the 115th’s afternoon attack on the church and a big stone barn. Lesson One has the 116th and the 5th Rangers learning about bocage west of Vierville. Smashing a Breach brings in the 16th Infantry and the 741st’s tanks near St. Laurent.

Then there’s scenario 16, Black Day for the 116. It covers the whole map for 39 turns, with wave after wave of landing craft. Random tables decide which leaders and squads are aboard each boat.

The German side sets up in the historical strongpoints, and the off-map guns at Pointe et Raz de la Percée fire from a card you mark instead of from counters. The destroyers McCook and Carmick steam in late in the game. I’d love to play it. I’m just not sure I’ll live long enough.

Counters and Maps

Honestly, the counters are better than I expected. The die cutting is clean, and most corners would trim up nicely. You get 5-5-7 assault engineers, covered-arc bunkers and pillboxes, landing craft, DD Shermans, Bangalores, rockets, and even a British destroyer counter. Two of the sheets are doubles of the American and German infantry.

The three maps are old-school folded paper with a matte finish, so there’s no glare. The colors are muted compared to the reprints, but the hexes are normal size. Laid out, the map is 6 feet long by 3 feet deep, and it fits perfectly on our kitchen table with the leaf in. Omaha East and Omaha West together would need two of those tables.

From the beach and the promenade, the map climbs up to level 8, and the bluffs go from level 0 to level 5 in about three hexes. The strongpoints have dashed perimeters printed on the map, so the Germans set up inside them. Inland, it’s hedgerows, orchards, small villages and minefields everywhere.

That’s the whole Omaha West map, in the brighter art of the later editions. If you ever play East and West together, the Texas ASL folks put together a consolidated rules rewrite with flow charts that combines both modules into one set. Search for Texas ASL and you’ll find it. For more on the ground itself, my Omaha Beach Map Spotlight covers the real beach.

Where to Buy

Critical Hit

Noble Knight Games

Debriefing

First Wave at Omaha is probably Critical Hit’s most ambitious module. It has 15 small scenarios, a 39-turn monster landing and over 1,150 counters. Best of all, it has a map that nails the ground at Omaha down to the last 83 feet. I can’t speak to the balance, and I’d expect the Americans to win most of the time. That’s history for you.

If you find one cheap, grab it, even if it’s just for the map. Start with Plan Two or Off the Beach! to learn the beach rules before you try the monster. Then clear your calendar.

Academy Out!

GET TO THE CHOPPA…!!!

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