Last Saturday, I attended my first Megagame, Don't Panic Too. The scenario explores a German invasion of the UK in 1940, assuming the historical Operation Sea Lion could feasibly take place. This requires significant reductions to the strength of the Royal Navy, and the RAF, but as a German commander, these were much appreciated. This was the second time the scenario had been run; the first time, the Germans had landed on the Sussex coast, and had made it roughly 40-50km inland at their high-water mark. This gave us something to work towards, and hopefully beat.

I'd originally expected to be an operations officer for the German navy, the Kriegsmarine. However, the person cast in the role hadn't turned up, and so I had to step into the shoes of Admiral Lutjens, commanding the tiny surface forces, and massive submarine fleet of the Kriegsmarine. Other players represented the Luftwaffe, Army Group A headquarters, and two armies (9th and 16th) down to the division level. We were opposed by the RN, RAF, and two corps of South East Command. There was also a team representing the World Press, who we completely mismanaged – they spent the entire game printing incredibly pro-British stories, and ignoring everything we'd told them.

I had several strategic principles I would attempt to follow throughout the game. Most importantly, I wouldn't commit my capital ships until I knew what Home Fleet was doing. While having capital ships swanning around the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic was an attractive proposition, I had no desire to lose them trying to sneak past Home Fleet's base at Scapa Flow. Capital ships would avoid the Channel as much as possible, as it seemed like they'd be an easy target in such restricted waters. The remaining forces would build the strongest possible blockade of the eastern and western boundaries of our operational area, and hold off the RN at all costs. Throughout the game, I expected the entire RN to steam southwards, and sweep the Channel clear, so the majority of my personal planning focussed around minimising the effects of this, and making it as costly as possible for Home Fleet.

The game started with a two hour planning phase, allowing us to work out where we wanted to land. At the highest level, the commander of Army Group A held a conference for his two army commanders, the Luftwaffe command, and myself. Various outlandish schemes were proposed, including a landing on the north Kent coast, near Chatham. This was quickly vetoed by all involved. Eventually the plan took shape. Ninth Army would land between Dymchurch and Hythe on the Kent Coast, and advance along the coast to the ports of Folkestone and Dover. They would then use these as a logistical base to push towards London. Sixteenth Army would, in the original plan, land in the region between Hastings and Newhaven, with the ultimate goal of taking the railway junctions near Tonbridge. With this worked out, planning moved to the Army level, with individual Corps being given targets. I had to give each Army the shipping necessary - 9th Army, having the more important job of seizing the ports, had the majority of the sealift capacity available to us, while 16th had to make do with less. At this stage, the plan changed somewhat. The commander of 16th Army wanted to push the western boundary of his landing zone further west, so his forces could hit Brighton from two directions. After consulting me, and the Army Group Commander, he received permission for this. Once the armies knew what they were doing, the Corps began to load their transports. They were loaded with a sensible mix of infantry, artillery, and logistics, as we'd been warned that this had been a problem in the previous game. I assigned naval forces to escort, clear mines, and support the landings.

Once the planning phase had been completed, we moved on to the actual invasion, which played out in 20-30 minute turns, each representing 12 hours. In these turns, I had to fight battles at both ends of the Channel, discuss the progress of the battles with the Army and Army Group headquarters, brag to the press if things went well, talk to the corps teams about their transports, ask the Luftwaffe for more support, and plan for next turn's battles. This meant that I spent the entire day dashing around like some kind of demented meteor. Thankfully, a few turns in, one of Army Group A's liaison officers was reassigned to me as an operations officer – I told him his job was to “stick next to me, and do anything that would require me to be in two places at once”. Still didn't cut down on the amount of running about I had to do. There was one massive miscommunication, at the start of turn 3. I'd not told the Army teams when they needed to have their transports on the map, and they ended up missing the landing phase for that turn. After this, however, we were able to work out timings, and I was able to leave them to it, for the most part.

The naval battles began on turn one, with RN ships from Portsmouth attempting to hit the western end of our landings. Unfortunately for them, they hit a minefield laid by the Luftwaffe, and retreated without doing any damage. At the other end of the Channel, they didn't make the same mistake, and began clearing away the mine barrier. As the turns progressed, they kept sending penny packets of ships into the Channel, from both ends. As we only had to defend two points, we could gather an overwhelming force at these points, which could easily fend off the weaker RN forces. In addition, I began to leverage our heavy submarine force, targeting their ASW capable forces with my surface ships to open the way for the submarines. This culminated in the sinking of two British heavy cruisers in the same turn, about midway through the game, one near Portsmouth, and the other in the Straits of Dover. Our unquestioned superiority over the Channel led to several jokes about renaming it the 'German Channel'. A third heavy cruiser came south a few turns later, but ended up holing up behind a minefield in the Nore. I lost a couple of submarines trying to sink it, and handed that task over to the Luftwaffe. Towards the end of the day, one of 16th Army's command team pointed out that instead of worrying about trying to sneak our capital ships around Scotland and into the North Atlantic, I could just run them through the Channel. After some contemplation, I ended up doing it on the last turn of the game. As it happens, the movement of our capital ships was the trigger for the Home Fleet being released. In an excellent display of the fleet-in-being concept, the fleets of both sides were terrified of whatever the other's fleet could do, and so did nothing. Had our capitals broken out successfully, they'd have terrorised the shipping lanes, driving Britain to a speedy surrender. If the Home Fleet had successfully intercepted them, then there was nothing stopping them cutting the lifelines supplying German troops in southern England.

On land, the two armies had wildly differing experiences. Parachute units landed around Ashford, and began to hold out there, awaiting reinforcements from 9th Army. They'd had a relatively unchallenged landing, making it ashore in good order, and facing little resistance as they marched on Folkestone. Most of the troops in the area turned out to have been decoys or Home Guard units. Folkestone, defended partly by Royal Marine troops, fell by Day 2, and Dover soon after. With these captured, the Panzers began to land. Ashford fell quickly, opening the door to fast advances towards London. The roads were practically undefended – Canterbury fell to VIII Corps, opening the road along the north coast of Kent, assisted ably by the Luftwaffe destroying a major concentration of troops at Faversham. With the ports captured and Channel secure, we were able to set up routine shipping patterns, allowing tons of supplies to reach the frontline troops.By the end of the game, Panzers had reached Maidstone, with only Home Guard units between them and London. Sixteenth Army had landed in two areas, with the majority of their forces landing between Worthing and Brighton, while a roughly division-sized force landed around Newhaven. The Brighton forces ran into the vast majority of the British army, and spent the entire game struggling to capture Brighton. They managed to towards the end of the game, only to see it, and all the troops in the area, wiped off the map by the RAF (who blamed it on the Luftwaffe, using stolen bombers). The commander of 16th Army decided to move his headquarters across the Channel to the Brighton area, but his transport was sunk by British coastal defences. He and his team were sent to go and take a selfie at a Tescos ten minutes walk away, to represent the time taken to rescue him, and set up the HQ again. The forces landed at Newhaven marched north, bypassing a major concentration of British units at Lewes. They didn't cover their flanks, just marched northwards. By the end of the game, they were about to link up with 9th Army at Sevenoaks, but had lost their line of communication back to the beaches. Every time I came over to the map, I'd marvel at this snake of blue counters reaching towards London. Half-way through the game, all the senior German commanders had a meeting with a member of the Control team, posing as Der Fuhrer. At this meeting, we committed to reaching London in three days. We'd have been a bit out on that timetable, but could have made it in four.

The Luftwaffe and RAF did something, but I don't know what. They played their own air combat on separate boards, and only ventured onto the main map to make bombing raids. The Luftwaffe seemed to ably keep Bomber Command away from my ships and transports, and were reasonably responsive to my requests to bomb RN ships. They also made heavy ground strikes, such as the strike on Faversham I mentioned earlier. These were much appreciated by the ground troops. All this suggests that they must have done something right?

It was a great experience, and I fully intend to try more megagames in the future. While I was rushed off my feet for the entire day, that just added to the experience. The teamwork aspect was really fun, even if I never quite knew exactly what was going on with other teams. However, that just added to the whole style of the day.