Hello everyone, and thank you for your interest in SGS Overlord, which has already been a great success just one month after its release! Thanks to all those who have sent us their feedback, we’re always listening. Don’t hesitate to use the game’s discussion page on Steam, and/or tell us what you think of the game on the reviews page.

On the program for this update are a few corrections to minor bugs detected during testing or gameplay. For example, in the Cherbourg scenario on the American side, the AI should now progress normally, and the player will no longer draw a card to detect… his own units! Adjustments have also been made to limit frustrating situations, such as bunker units that must be destroyed to progress. However, they may occur from time to time, and this uncertainty is also part of the game and the challenge it offers players. There can be no victory without a certain amount of luck, or rather “friction” as defined by the great war theorist Carl von Clausewitz. Player can occasionally be frustrated in their perfect plans as real generals are.

A number of small adjustments have also been made to the map, events and order of battle to better reflect the characteristics of the troops in the summer of 1944. For example, German coastal batteries now do slightly more damage. All the more reason for the Allied player to try to get rid of them quickly.

The major new feature of this update is the addition of a large alternative campaign scenario called Directive 51, described on the scenarios page. It offers two alternative deployments of the German army in line with the opposing defensive concepts of Rommel and von Rundstedt in the spring of 1944. Player (or IA), choose between them in turn 0. In reality, Hitler never made a clear decision between them and squandered their potential by dispatching armored reserve and personally reserving the decision to commit the bulk of them (Historical campaign).

With the Rommel plan, defenses were concentrated as close as possible to the beaches, and several panzer divisions were immediately available at Carentan, Bayeux and Caen to counter-attack. This posed a real mortal danger to the Allied bridgehead during the very first turns, but also a great risk for the German defenses of exhausting their forces too quickly. In a test game, the Germans briefly recaptured several beaches, bringing the tension index dangerously close to 0, but failed by a hair’s breadth in the face of Allied reinforcements, losing two complete armored divisions in the process.

The other option, the Rundstedt plan, significantly weakened the coastal defenses, which were no longer the priority. The Allies will no doubt find it much easier to make headway in the first few turns of the game, but they will soon come up against a veritable mass of powerful armored and mechanized maneuvers rising from the Paris basin. The Battle of Normandy should then be much more fluid and mobile than in reality, but again with shared risks. Aviation should play a major role. Will Allied reinforcements arrive in time to make the bridgehead indestructible? We hope you’ll enjoy coming face to face with these new situations and tell us what is the result.