Note: Most aspects of the game are subject to modification before the official release; this is not to say that it will become a game about murder hornets battling COVID-19 in 2020!
There are many wonderful recreational non-competitive board games available. Airborne 200: Utah Beach is not one of them. The goal is to win. It’s war, after all! Designed to be educational, this game has an authentic map and strives for historical accuracy throughout.
At the simplest level, the goal is to gain victory points by collecting pairs of the 35 Hero Site cards and their related Hero Buddy cards (see the #7 Thomas Meehan III and Robert Burr Smith pair below). Both kinds of cards include biographical information. In this case, both earned Purple Hearts (right side) and both were Currahee men (bottom left), meaning that they trained at Camp Toccoa near Currahee Mountain in Georgia. Burr Smith's card also includes some information for the advanced game: Morale, Intel and Weather values.
Hero Site cards are always held by the player controlling the corresponding Hero Site on the map (location K18 in this example).
The Hero Buddy cards and related Hero Suit cards are drawn from a deck or captured from the opponent. Cards can be played to affect the results of combat, such as improving your adds with the Violette Szabo Special Ops card.
Sample back for a site card—all site photos were taken on my tours to Normandy (Band of Tours).
More than 440 unit counters are included in the game, gray for the Germans and green or blue for the Allies (mostly Americans). The top text is an identifier, the middle includes an image or insignia, and the bottom text is two or three numbers. The first number always indicates the Combat Attack Factor and the last number is always the Movement factor. If there are three numbers, the middle value represents the Combat Defense Factor (normally it's the same as the Attack factor so only two digits are shown).
The Basic game utilizes infantry, artillery and armor, with the more advanced Super and Ultra games bringing in ships, aircraft, and obstacles such as minefields. This sample shows some of the various unit counter types.
There are three sets of rules. As the level of complexity increases, additional rules and units come into play:
See the Charts and Game Board pages for more.