Verdun 1916 - Operation Gericht

A single-player hex wargame recreating the Battle of Verdun, the longest and one of the bloodiest battles of the First World War. You command the German 5. Armee as it attempts to "bleed France white" along the fortified heights of the Meuse. The French Army is run by the computer, fighting the historical defensive battle — holding the forts, feeding fresh divisions up the Voie Sacrée, and counter-attacking under Pétain and Mangin.

The campaign runs 60 turns (roughly five days each) from 21 February to December 1916, across the Verdun terrain: the Meuse river, the wooded ravines, and the ring of forts — Douaumont, Vaux, Souville — that anchor the French line. Your goal is to capture forts and key ground for victory points while inflicting a favourable casualty exchange; the French AI is trying to deny you that and grind your offensive to a halt, just as history did.

How to play

The goal. Score more victory points than the French by holding objectives (the forts and towns are worth the most), while keeping your own casualties lower than theirs. Watch the VP bar and casualty totals at the top.

Each turn has phases — you move through them with the END PHASE button:

1. Artillery Allocation. Spend your shells using the +/− controls: Wire-Cutting (clears defensive wire ahead of an assault), Creeping Barrage (softens enemy-held hexes — attack into these for a big advantage), and Counter-Battery (suppresses French guns). You can also fire gas — pick the type (Mustard lingers, Phosgene is deadly but brief, Tear Gas harasses). Mind the wind shown in the weather readout: gas drifts downwind and can blow back on your own men.
2. Movement. Click one of your units, then click a highlighted hex to move it. Moving next to an enemy unit puts you in its zone of control, which stops further movement; slipping past an enemy costs casualties. Deploy arriving reinforcements from the rotation pool onto hexes behind your own front line.
3. Assault. Click a unit, then an adjacent enemy to attack. Attacks supported by artillery, a barrage, and intact machine guns/mortars hit far harder than an unsupported charge — especially against the forts.

Handy buttons: Mass Advance pushes every unit forward one hex; Mass Assault orders every unit in contact to attack at once; Entrench digs a unit in for better defence.

Reading your units. Click any unit to see its strength, morale, and composition. As it takes losses you'll see specific elements knocked out — "MGs destroyed," "HQ lost," "field guns knocked out" — each with a real combat effect, so a battered unit fights much worse than its raw numbers suggest.

Optional flavour: toggle AAR Narrative: ON to get a short after-action story window after each battle ("the creeping barrage opened with a preparatory bombardment… the riflemen charged home…"). There's also an AI vs AI spectator mode if you'd rather watch the battle play out.