At 7 PM on August 25, 1944, the guns and mortars of the 43rd (Wessex) Division laid smoke across the Seine at Vernon. Under it, the 5th Wiltshires and 4th Somersets pushed off in storm boats and DUKWs. The river was 200 yards wide there. German machine guns on the chalk cliffs above Vernonnet were waiting.
The British called it Operation Neptune. It’s not the Normandy landings, which carried the same code name. This was the first British crossing of the Seine, and it opened the road for XXX Corps’ dash toward Belgium.
Getting It
Operation Neptune is a historical module from Bounding Fire Productions, released late in 2021. It came out pretty quietly. Mine took the scenic route from Texas through Tennessee before it reached me in the Seattle area.
Bounding Fire sells it direct for $70, or $95 outside the US. That’s up from the roughly $60 it cost when I got it. Ritterkrieg has it in stock at $80. As usual, the links are at the bottom of the article.
Contents:
- 10 scenarios in full color, plus a campaign game
- One 25″ x 25″ historical map of Vernon and the Seine
- 90 full color 1/2″ counters and 32 5/8″ counters
- Rules pages for the map terrain and the campaign game
- A divider card with the special rules for quick reference
It isn’t a complete game. You’ll need the ASL Rulebook, Beyond Valor and For King and Country, or West of Alamein in place of that one. Two counters come from Bounding Fire’s Poland in Flames or Onslaught to Orsha 2.
There’s no box this time. It comes shrink-wrapped with a cover sheet, a lot like a scenario pack. After the Prokhorovka! box, that felt a little thin.
Light on Rules, Heavy on Campaign
The cover sheet doubles as the divider card. It holds the campaign game tracking boxes for both sides, the purchase point charts and a summary of the map. Then there’s a campaign roster and purchase records. That’s a lot of cells to fill in.
The rules run about 18 pages on glossy, three-hole-punched stock. Only two of them are special rules for the map, and yes, there are slopes. I know how some of you feel about slopes. The rest is the campaign game, and anyone who’s played an MMP-style campaign will feel right at home with the refit phase and perimeters.
The campaign game has six dates, and the second one is at night, so brush up on your night rules. Each date runs 6 to 8 turns. That’s 36 to 48 turns if nobody quits early. It’s a nice healthy campaign on a map you can fit on a normal table.
Ten Scenarios
Seven of the ten scenarios play on parts of the historical map, and the cards show which part. Valiant Sacrifice uses a tiny corner of it and runs 3.5 turns. Scott and I could probably finish that one in about eight hours.
There’s a Sweeping East, a Sweeping West and a Sweeping North. No Sweeping South. I was disappointed. The other three play on geomorphic boards: A Blow Too Late on boards 81 and 83 from Forgotten War, An Unexpected Complication on 1b and 4b, and Chateau of Death on 7a. The b and a boards come from Action Packs 6, 8 and 9.
Markers and a River
There’s one counter sheet, and it’s all utility counters. You get perimeter and campaign markers, victory points, bridges, boats, weather and initiative. There aren’t any units at all, so the British and Germans come out of your own collection.
The map is the star, on nice thick paper. Vernon sits on the west bank, and Vernonnet sits across the Seine under the heights. You get brush and marsh along the river, an island by the rail bridge, the wrecked road and rail bridges, and a stream running down a small valley. Behind Vernonnet, the hills climb into dense woods toward Tilly and Bois-Jérôme. My Map Spotlight has more on the map and the battle.
Crossing the Seine
The fighting covered a few miles of the river valley, from Pressagny down to Vernon and up into the Forêt de Vernon. This map shows the British advances, the German counterattacks, a short chronology and where each scenario sits. The dashed purple outline is where the game map falls on the real ground. The numbers match the scenario table right under the map.
| Scenario | Title | Scenario | Title |
| ON 1 | Freedom! | ON 6 | Sweeping West |
| ON 2 | Wet Feet | ON 7 | Sweeping North |
| ON 3 | Stuck Ducks | ON 8 | A Blow Too Late |
| ON 4 | Valiant Sacrifice | ON 9 | An Unexpected Complication |
| ON 5 | Sweeping East | ON 10 | Chateau of Death |
Blue markers are the fights where the British or the French attack, and gray ones are where the Germans do. The British side is all 43rd Wessex Division, against the German 49th Infantry Division.
Wet Feet and Stuck Ducks
The module opens a week before the crossing. In Freedom!, the Vernon resistance rises against the German garrison on August 19, after a failed try at blowing what was left of the road bridge. Then the Germans pulled back across the river.
Wet Feet is the 5th Wiltshires’ assault crossing on the evening of the 25th, in the shadow of the two broken bridges. Stuck Ducks is the 4th Somersets on the left. They reached the island by the rail bridge easily enough. Then they found the channel beyond it wasn’t dry, as they’d been told. Oops. It was 60 feet wide, with steep muddy banks.
In Valiant Sacrifice, what’s left of A Company holds a house 200 meters from the bank against the German counterattack. That’s the one that’s only 3.5 turns.
Clearing the Heights
By the 28th, the British had to get the Germans off the heights before they could finish the bridges. Sweeping East has the Wiltshires clearing the cliffs, and Sweeping West sends the Somersets through the valley after the flak guns firing on the crossings. In Sweeping North, a company of the 1st Worcestershires sticks to the main road and walks into machine gun fire at the fork.
Chateau of Death is B Company of the 4th Somersets in the woods at Bois-Jérôme. Two members of the resistance guided them to a chateau on the edge of the village, and they took it by midday. Then the Germans wanted it back. Badly.
The Germans finally sent their reserves on the 29th. In A Blow Too Late, Kampfgruppe Schrader comes down from Tilly with three Tigers, after the British are already across. An Unexpected Complication is Kampfgruppe Meyer hitting the DCLI near Pressagny, as the British push the bridgehead north.
Where to Buy
Bounding Fire Productions: Operation Neptune
Debriefing
Operation Neptune is a small, focused module. It gives you one good map, ten scenarios and a six-date campaign game about a river crossing most people have never heard of. The price felt steep to me for a module with no box and no units, but the content looks great.
If you’re new to it, start with Valiant Sacrifice or Wet Feet. They’re short, and they’ll teach you the river and the slopes before you take on the campaign. Bring a lot of boats.
Academy Out!
GET TO THE CHOPPA…!!! 
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I like the size of the included scenarios. Some are really small in scope, others are med size.
Looking forward to this one in your replays!
We might just try the 3.5 turn scenario for shits and giggles. One bad roll and game over. 😂
Remember that that $60 price is inclusive of shipping. If you take the cost of standard priority shipping rates off (which knocks about $10 off of today’s rates) we could have charged $50+shipping. So I guess it’s a matter of perception, but we aren’t far off from where you were thinking the price point should be.
Hi Rick, someone made a similar post in the Youtube comments and I agreed.
Your copy appears to be missing pages. In the YouTube unboxing video the last page shown (BFP 18) is clearly not the last page as it ends mid-sentence and is only on rule 4.323 when the RePh rules go up to 4.326. You might want to contact BFP for the missing pages!
Hmm, I’ll have to pull it off the shelf and take a look. thanks.