[WarInEur] Attrition and France

[Chuck Sutherland]

It's broken record time for me again LOL!


1) the CWIE CRT favors defense to an extent that makes me wonder.  Most military experts regard 3 to 1 superiorityas being a good assurance of success.  IF playing the basic game of BWIE and CWIE(w/o attrition) this curtails counter attacks.  In campaigns in which this is a massive difference between the combat value of division sized units it pretty much eliminates them altogether.

It's not the CRT that is the issue for the defender it is that the mobility of the Armor is moot as long as you have 3 points in a hex during the mech movement phase, thus there is no exploitation! That is the real cause of the pro-defense CRT, you take away that and start to allow combat during the movement phases and the defense will become much weaker as EX and DE events are created by the attacker during his turn by pushing units around till they break apart the defense. The para rules partially make up for the lack of mobility of the armor but only partially! Because the attacker can attack with only one stack during movement he will suffer losses in what amounts to step losses because the good attacks will be against smaller hexes, thus a single division will usually flip during the exploitation in the mech phase. The same CRT with mobility makes the combat losses go way up for both sides as openings appear but those openings cost the attack some blood to exploit! Yes I am on the Attack on the March crusade again, it makes me crazy to see this type of talk and know the simple answer that is applicable to the board game is just waiting for someone to try it!


As for stopping the French 1939 campaign you simply need to up the political point costs for attacking the low countries in 1939 to simulate the still partial war footing. By waiting until 1940 Hitler built a case for having no choice but to resolve things militarily. Had he done so in 1939 the political fall out may have been larger as he would have been seen as even more the aggressor.

The root issues with WIE combat system is not the CRT it is the mobility of the Armor to exploit, because of it you get single 3-4 able to hold an entire panzer army up, and a 1-4 chained with 2 others in depth doing the same thing when the Germans are OOS, the attrition option is a great solution for the computer game but the ability to apply it to the board game is extremely limited!

I just wish you guys would just try AOM one time on a board game version of the game using France 1940 and see if the Frogs can hold out much over 6-8 weeks. With the 10-8 attacking at 3-1 twice in normal movement followed by regular combat and then again twice in mech you will see the frogs reduced to their real combat ability as a slow 1918 based army against a modern mechinized armor based force. No additional rules needed.

Additional rules are needed to fix Russia but that has to be done no matter because the Swedish gambit and the amph para tricks in Leningrad make it so. Along with the southern front of the campaign being broken because of lack of supply length

From: warineur-bounces at mailman.halisp.net [mailto:warineur-bounces at mailman.halisp.net] On Behalf Of Kent & Sue Haunschild
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2008 11:32 AM
To: Wardall Clark; warineur at mailman.halisp.net
Subject: Re: [WarInEur] Attrition and France

Bob wrote:

1) the CWIE CRT favors defense to an extent that makes me wonder.  Most military experts regard 3 to 1 superiorityas being a good assurance of sucess.  IF playing the basic game of BWIE and CWIE(w/o attrition) this curtails counter attacks.  In campaigns in which this is a massive difference between the combat value of division sized units it pretty much eliminates them altogether.

I am considering advocating a change to the CRT by adding A 1/2 ex and Ar.

The current sequence is  Ae Ae Ae Ae Ae Ae Aex Aex Br Br Dr Dr Ex Ex 1/2Ex 1/2 Ex De De De De De De De,  This sequence is then seeded into the four CRT's with the progression getting more favorable for the Attacker as we proceed from CRT4 to CRT 1.

I wonder what would happen if we changed the sequence to Ae Ae Aex Aex A1/2x A1/2x Ar Ar Br Br etc.

A chart constructed with this sequence would make the low odds attacks less all or nothing for the side making the counter attacks and might make it possible to actually do something when on CRT 4. As well as making attacking out of a pocket something less than suicide for the French.

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