Cities of the Damned: Aachen and Cassino

Cities of the Damned (published in ATO #60 magazine) features two challenging solitaire games in which the player must lead his Allied forces to victory in two of the WWII’s most intense battles.

Cassino: In early 1944 the western half of the German “Winter Line” in Italy was anchored by the town of Cassino high up on Monte Cassino, which also featured a centuries old Benedictine Abbey atop the peak. The position utterly dominated the surrounding valleys, so much so Allied troops HAD to take it to continue advancing on Rome. Facing some of Germany’s best soldiers, the area was only captured 5 months later after four separate assaults, with the vast majority of the city was destroyed by aerial bombardment and vicious street to street fighting.

Allied units (brown) are companies. German units (blue and grey) are KGs of 150-180 men—and tank units represent 10-12 vehicles. The map scales are printed on each map. Each turn represents 1 day of time. D6 combat resolution.

Aachen: Five months later the world would see yet another account of the terrible cost of audacity. Fresh from a string of victories across the length of France, the US Command set its sights capture of the supposedly weakly held German city of Aachen. The Americans confidently made plans to surround the city, isolate it, and accept its surrender. But being the former capital of the First Reich, and the first true German city to fall into Allied hands, the city’s propaganda value was simply too great: Hitler forbade surrender.

Unit level counters for both ground and air, d6 combat resolution. The game is nine turns long.

Aachen uses the solitaire system designed for the game: Stalingrad: Advance to the Volga, 1942