Panzer Campaigns 5: France '40

Released

Release Date: March 14, 2005

Strategy, Turn-based, Multiplayer, Singleplayer, Internet, LAN

Panzer Campaigns 5: France '40 is the fifth installment of a little-known series of strategy games, which is directed mainly to fans of board games in battle.

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With the newest edition to the Panzer Campaigns Series, France '40 covers one of the classic and definitive blitzkriegs of World War II and beyond. In the role of the Germans, you have your chance to try to storm through the Ardennes and reach the coast at Abbeville in two short weeks of fighting. Or, playing as the Allies, can you stem the tide and prevent the Nazis from overrunning Europe? For it is May of 1940. Germany has overrun Poland and Scandinavia, but now must face the Western Allies. The combined British-French armies have more tanks than the Wehrmacht, and the Maginot Line blocks any German advance westward. Yet within six weeks, the Wehrmacht will fight one of the most decisive campaigns in history and change the course of warfare as a continent shakes.

Smaller scenario lets players re-fight battles such as Sedan (1940), The Gembloux Gap, Dinant, Stonne, and Arras. This was a time when tank tactics were in their inception, and players can use their armor to gain the decision. Campaign optional setups allow for either free Allied play from 10 May or Allied commitment to deploy historically in central Belgium while lightly screening the Ardennes-until it is almost too late.

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France '40 contains twenty-five scenarios and campaigns focusing primarily on the period from 10- 24 May. This was the critical time while the panzers cut like a scythe through the Ardennes, and when the Luftwaffe was unleashed against the British and French troops trapped in the pocket at Dunkirk. For players who want to see what would happen had Hitler not halted the panzers before Dunkirk, there is an extended campaign portraying the apocalyptic battle on the English Channel. How long could the remnants of the Allied armies have held Dunkirk if the German had not let up the pressure?

By default, units are of battalion size. However, players may break them down into companies for more realistic play. France '40 comes with an extensive historical order-of-battle that includes German, French, British, Belgian and Dutch units. It is played on a massive map covering over 78,000 hexes that encompasses northern France, Belgium, Luxembourg and southern Holland.

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