First time playing Don't Panic - an alternate history invasion of Britain in 1940

Note for first time megagamers: this game and summary is not representative of a typical megagame and skews much more towards a mechanical military war game than blend between war game and LARP or role-playing game.

Since the roots of megagames lie primarily in historical war games, it seems appropriate to begin this blog with an after-action report on "Don't Panic: The Planned Nazi Invasion of Britain." On March 29th, 2025, we joined over 30 participants at the University of Minnesota to simulate the proposed invasion and explore the scenario of 'What if the Germans had invaded Britain in 1940?' hosted by the Yelling for History club.

Several days before the event, I was assigned the role of divisional commander of the 6th Mountain Division in the German Army, Generalmajor Ferdinand Schörner. Unlike many megagames, this one was very light in the roleplaying aspects and very chunky mechanically - there were a lot of different rules to keep track of. For example, how many spaces in a landing flotilla does a Light Transport column (Horse drawn) take up? Can logistics units carry supply tokens on the landing flotilla or do the supply points need to be transported separately and then loaded onto the logistics units for transport?

Two players placing forces during our initial deployments. Faces covered to protect the allegedly innocent.

The military troops for the German faction were organized into armies, which were further subdivided into corps, which were further subdivided into divisions. The 6th Mountain Division, the forces under my command, were only 9 total tokens on the board. I needed to coordinate with the 26th Infantry Division who comprised the other half of the XXXVIII (38th) Corps of the Army.

Communication was key to a lot of our success; we had to respect a hierarchy of command, but German high command was very limited in their ability to receive information from the map and relied a lot on handwritten notes and verbal communication passed through our chain of command. The original plan from German high command was to launch a concentrated deployment around Dover on the far Eastern tip of Britain and then pushing through overland up to London. This changed only a few minutes before it was time to deploy to the map and the 9th Army, consisting of myself and 3 other divisions, was ordered to assault the southern coast.

The fog of war was real for us - we had no ability to see what British forces were deployed nor where before committing to the initial distribution, though we could make minor adjustments once it came time to land our craft. We had no idea what the Luftwaffe nor Kriegsmarine (German Air Force and Navy) were doing, only which areas of the sea to deploy our landing flotillas and what we'd loaded onto the flotillas for our initial landing.

The first turn was very lucky for the XXXVIII (38th) Corps - although the British Navy and shore defenses repelled about half the forces we had initially deployed on landing flotillas, the other half landed without issue on the southern coast. My original orders were to make use of the special ability of the mountain divisions and land forces up the cliffs east of Brighton and form a strong western flank of our southern assault. When we neared the coast, however, we found the English forces had left the coastal city of Brighton undefended. So instead, my forces were able to gain a strong foothold and slowly expand northwards as I was able to land reinforcements and supply points.

The deployment after the first turn or two. My forces were in the center of the board, the westernmost blue (German) military.

As is typical in megagames, it took the first two turns for us players to get into a regular rhythm and understand the flow of the game. Once we had gone through a rep or two of deployment, resupply, and battle, things seemed flow a lot more quickly. This is an area where I think a lot of megagames could improve by building a structured or scripted learning turn or teach at the beginning of the game. Even though the majority of the players had read the briefings, there's really no substitute for actually going through the motion of various actions. Players and moderators alike were gracious and there was never any air of power-gaming or trying to abuse the game mechanics beyond the limits of the spirit of the game.

After a few turns, the 9th Army had such great success on the southern coast that command began to throw significant additional forces to reinforce our position in order to expand rather than just holding the English back. We realized that the English had committed so much of their supply (standing in for munitions, materiel, fuel, etc) to the Dover region stalemate and left themselves unable to push back against us on the southern coast. We managed to build a strong logistics column up from Brighton and drove our forces straight north on the roadways, ending the game with 3 regiments of armor within sight of London.

End state of the game map with 3 regiments of armor within sight of London after a successful push in the southern salient.

In nearly every megagame, players operate with strong limits on the information available to them or their methods of communication. Unlike a game like Warhammer, Catan, or others, you're not operating with perfect omniscience and the ability to talk to whomever you'd like whenever you'd like to. In this game, we were very limited on who we could talk to and when; messages up and down the military had to follow the chain of command and there were definitely situations where we ended up with misunderstandings or command having to send officers back to speak with us for clarification.

It was a blast to be able to play in a game for a change instead of just facilitating, but it really drove home how different the game experience is for moderators versus players. In games that I've helped facilitate, I'm able to see a much larger swathe of the game experience. The English faction had a whole political game going on with the morale of the citizenry and politicking of the lordship of which I was completely unaware.

All in all, this was a fantastic way to spend a Saturday. The game ran from check-in at 8:30am to 4:00pm when the final turn was ended. The Yelling for History Club members moderating the game did a great job of making judgement calls on the fly when rules were unclear and both players and moderators were good about cascading these judgements across the player base for consistency.

Finally, I'd like to give a massive thank-you to the Yelling for History Club at the University of Minnesota. I can't wait to attend another one of their games!

Cheers,

Lucas

Lead Game Coordinator

Midwest Megagames

Appendix:

For more information on Operation Sealion, there's a great Wikipedia page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion

Additionally, the game we played today has a pedigree of serious military war game simulation in a 1974 war game carried out by the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, which you can read about here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion_%28wargame%29 Finally, if you or a game runner near you would like to play the game we played today, Don't Panic! is available for purchase at Stone Paper Scissors' website here: https://www.stonepaperscissors.co.uk/games-recreational/dontpanic-atnnt-zpwnh

Note: the purchase is for the digital game material and briefing files. As with most megagames, you would need to print your own maps and tokens to play.