Cambrai, 1917: The First Blitzkrieg
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Cambrai, 1917: The First Blitzkrieg is a board wargame published by Rand Game Associates in 1974 that simulates the Battle of Cambrai during the First World War.
By late 1917, due to the Germans' increasingly strong "defense in depth", the front line of the Western Front had remained almost unchanged for three years despite new Allied techniques and strategies designed to break through the German lines. On 20 November 1917 at Cambrai, the British tried a new technology, employing hundreds of mobile armored tanks. The assault easily forced its way through several lines of trenches. However, multiple mechanical breakdowns and the Germans' fierce counterattack using stormtrooper tactics and coordinated artillery strikes brought the British advance to a halt.[1]
Description
Cambrai, 1917 is a two-player wargame where one player controls the Allied attackers, and the other controls the German defenders. The game is not complex, having a relatively small 17" x 24" hex grid mapsheet, 72 die-cut counters and one double-sided sheet of rules. (In contrast, Game Designers' Workshop's wargame Bar-Lev, also published in 1974, has two large maps, 450 counters and two rulebooks.)[2]
Gameplay
The game uses a traditional "I Go, You Go" alternating system of turns, where one side moves and fires, followed by the other side. The only change to this is that the British also have a "Tank Attrition Phase" added to their turn. Each full game turn represents 24 hours of game time. Instead of one Combat Results Table (CRT), the game uses four, each used at a different point in the game to simulate the British element of surprise and the German counter-attack.[3]