Repaired trackBombed track (repair to use)Port linkFront line⚑ Railhead · bar = condition · ? reported German build-up · hover a station for its stocks
August 1944. The Allies have broken out of Normandy. You run supply for three armies racing for Germany. The generals fight; you decide what reaches them. Take Antwerp, Aachen and Metz before the deadline (US First Army passes through Paris on its way to Aachen). The real armies ran out of fuel in September: can you do better?
Difficulty
⚓ Everything comes ashore: the beaches and Mulberry, then ports. Channel storms cut the beaches to a quarter for a few days, and from September the weather wears them down. Ports arrive wrecked: put port companies on them (⚓ Ports panel) to clear them. Le Havre feeds the line at Rouen, Antwerp right at the front, but Antwerp is useless until the Scheldt is cleared: port companies, plus the British & Canadians holding at Antwerp with ammo. Forward ports also feed US First Army along a port link: Le Havre's trains via Rouen to Paris, Antwerp's to Liège, once its railhead gets there.
🌉 Blown bridges: the Germans blow the river bridges as they retreat. The railhead stops at a blown bridge until your engineers rebuild it, which takes many battalion-days. Move fast and you may take one intact.
🚂 Trains run only on repaired track. Allied bombers wrecked the French railways before D-Day, so your trains stop where the repaired track ends: the railhead. That can be past the last station. Each line takes only so many trains a day (shown as line takes); you can't send more, and any extra go back to the pool at the start of the day.
🔧 Trucks wear out. Each army's columns lose condition as they drive, and worn trucks carry less. Columns you take off an army rest and recover; put rested ones back on. The 🔴 Red Ball button gives one army one-way roads: its trucks go much further but wear faster, and the other armies' trucks carry less.
⛽ Fuel is the crisis. The ports land plenty of ammunition but only so much petrol. If the armies' mixes ask for more fuel than came ashore, each gets a share and the rest of the train space carries ammo. The count above the Train mix shows it. Petrol not carried forward waits in the beach dump and is used on days the mixes ask for more than lands, but only by armies whose lines have room.
🚚 Trucks carry supplies from the railhead to the front. The further the front gets ahead, the less they carry, and they burn fuel doing it.
🛠️ Engineers repair track and stations: 🛤️ Track pushes the railhead on, Station 🚉 fixes stations first. The Germans wreck stations as they retreat: the faster you take them, the less damage.
✈️ Fighter-bombers slow German resistance. Put them where air recon reports a build-up to weaken the counterattack. They burn fuel from that sector's depot.
🪖 New divisions land at the beaches. Send them forward by train: infantry is cheap, armour moves fast but drinks fuel, artillery beats counterattacks but eats ammo. Every unit you add needs feeding.
⛽ / 💥 Pick each sector's fuel and ammo mix. The button underlined in green refills what it needs: it leans to fuel or ammo when the army is short of one.
⏸️ Hold when supply can't keep up: a front on a trickle barely moves and wastes what arrives. A holding sector digs in (much stronger defence), its engineers repair and lay track faster, its guns wear the Germans down, and the trucks stock it up to 5 days. Every day in hand makes the next push faster, so a pause followed by a big push beats crawling.
🏃 Behind? It catches up. An army that falls behind its neighbour finds the Germans in front pulling back so they aren't cut off: it moves up to 30% faster. So you can push one army hard and let the others catch up.
🛡️ German counterattacks hit the weakest sector. Keep ammo at the front, or they break through. Near the German border resistance stiffens every day.
💥 The Luftwaffe sometimes hits the fullest depot. Don't pile everything in one place.
Each sector row shows its supply line and a line of advice. The numbers above the rows are what's still free to assign. Hover a station for its stocks and traffic.
Open this again any time: 📖 How to play at the top, the ? next to End day, or press H.