Impossible to game moments of history

[wodin]

Due to the ideas of balance in games etc very few games will be able to replicate those amazing victories against the odds.

This is where emphasis on leader skills as well as clever victory conditions can overcome this kind of problem, so with clever game design all conflicts should be doable

[Ostwindflak]

The battles of Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift during the Anglo-Zulu War.

[RFalvo69]

ORIGINAL: Simulacra53

Fall Gelb.
The Anglo-French were completely outmaneuvered, but on paper they were not weak, that’s why a lot of games have a difficult time recreating those “12 days in May” historically.

You can't recreate the German success in France without using special rules. However, my favourite game on the topic, "The Blitzkrieg Legend" by MMP, solves the problem by creating two kinds of campaign scenarios: in one the Allies already took the bait and are deployed along the Dyle Line; all the others see the Allies tackling the German plan with one of their own (with some randomness in the setup making the things even more varied). I played solo a "you are in charge" campaign two summers ago and it is much more fun - even if I managed to defeat the Allies anyway.

Now that we talked about it, I wonder if it is still possible for the Allies to "take the bait" and win anyway. Things for the Germans got hairy at least a couple of times during the dash for the Channel. It is easy, now, to side with blokes like Guderian and Rommel - with von Kleist and Hitler relegated to the TV trope of "the stupid superior". However any serious analysis of the campaign based on what the various commanders knew at the time can't fail to recognise how von Kleist possibly lost some years of life and a lot of hair every time he glanced at his situation map. There was no hint that the French were panicking, and for sure no hint that they were tying their shoes together every time they tried to organise a counter-attack against the salient's base. A lot of "soft" and imponderable factors contributed to the German "blitzkrieg" - to the point that Guderian, the "Father of the Blitzkrieg" himself, openly admitted that the breakthrough at Sedan took everybody by surprise. Had the French got their s**t together the following narrative could have been quite different.

[RangerJoe]

And Chuckie De Gaulle was counterattacking at Sedan and almost made it. At Arras, the Germans could not handle the Matildas until Erwin used the 8.8cm AAA against them. Think if there were mobile 25 pounders to put the hurt on those 8.8cm guns right away. Think if the German panzers were cut off with no supply . . .