My wargaming journal - #1. The Longest Day and Vassalengine

The Longest Day is a wargame depicting the Allied landing in Normandy in June 1944. It was designed in the 1980s by a gaming company called Avalon Hill.

This is the image on the cover of the original game box.

Originally it was a paper based (or table top) game. Even between wargame addicts it was described as a 'Monster Game' due to the hundreds of hours needed to play it to completion. Also its sheer size was monstrous with more than 2000 game pieces and a very large map area.

Here is an example of how the real game looked like when played

At the time you would spend entire evenings moving small counters on the map.
I especially like this game because it is the one that introduced me to the wargaming hobby.

At the time I must have played 1 or 2 games, and never got to the end of it. Years passed and life moved on. But some years ago I discovered a tool called Vassalengine that allows to recreate all these ancient wargames in computer format.

Here is how the game looks like on the Vassalengine.

This allowed me to rediscover the game I had played nearly 35 years ago.

I have now been playing the computer based adaptation of the game for 6 months. And I have found a few other aficionados that enjoy the same activity. We then play each our turn and send the results of our actions to the opponent by mail.

If you want to learn more about wargames here are some useful links:
Vassal Engine website: vassalengine.org
The Longest Day page at BoardGameGeek: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/5651/longest-day