Should we set limits on BEF force in Case Yelow?

[NotaPacifist]

Kill them!

all I can do is tell you what I did

Once I knew he was committed to a max BEF I did the following:

1. grind forward killing them (use Italian's when activated - they will be key for Sealion)
2. sub's concentrate on RN
3. probe UK City Port's with GAR (he then has to build more GAR to Garrison them)
4. Sealion after two more turns whilst still grinding forward in France - you will need the Italian's
5. kill the RN as often as possible
6. when he see's Italians in Europe he attacks in the desert
7. when the Med fleet moves to the atlantic - outflank with a sea landing in the desert

The main difference between yours and mine was that I didn't use Italians in the attack on France. And he must be lucky with the dice because he wiped out a PZ, Two Mech's, and a few inf even when I left no way for them to be attacked from more than two hexes at once. He was realy good at finding my subs as well. What all of this led to was no way for me to launch an effective Barbarossa.

It all just seems very ahistorical.

[richardsd]

lucky, I lost 2 ARM and still don;t know how! but a fair trade to cripple the Brits

[richardsd]

You should be happy that he finds your subs!

If I had been a little more careful I would have lost a standard percentage (multiplied by the extra time it takes).

Also I wanted to test not accepting the French Armistace, which I knew was a mistake given the way the game had gone - but I wanted to 'feel' the effect. Really, for him the Russians now have to win the game with some help from American's.

I intend to delay Russia until I have the Middle east oil and then go tech/oil heavy.

He has a big choice, try and swamp me in 42/43 with early attack's or wait till his tech gets higher and wear me down in 43/44.

I kind of want him to try and swamp me as I expect I can really shrink his Army early on.

Because I explored the French Armistace option I might not actually win this game in the end, but I really do think the 'big BEF' is a massive error in Strategy for the British.

That said I am don't know what one of the top players would do handling it - maybe prevent Sealion but in the end I think its a crippling loss of PP's (labs really) for the Brits.

[NotaPacifist]

Well... I would like to tell you what to expect in Russia. But some sketchy ethics concerns prohibit dropping a spoiler. I hope you do better than me. My African drive for oil met with a simliar lost two pz, Two German mech, and all of my Italians originally there.

[richardsd]

my ARM loses were in France

I fail to see how he can stop me in Africa, he has some GAR's left and I will not invade Russia so he will only have the American's from late 41 by which time I will have Suez.

the oil gambit is so much more 'certain' once you rule out Russian intervention early

I haven't done the Math, but with no 8th Army, no Britain and no Russian help how does he stop you?

[NotaPacifist]

Well, the killer was that he stopped me everywhere. It cost the Brits a lot, but I couldn't take Britain. Like I said, I only got 3 corps ashore before bad weather hit, and he wiped them out in a few turns by building inf after inf. I've no idea how he got the PP to build them without selling labs. However, with him managing to find my u-boats when they were in need of repair meant I wasn't able to hinder lend-lease.

I had to slog my way through his gars in France, getting my Arm and mech hammered by his mech (somehow!?!)...this was after me piercing Maginot by the way. Like I said, I kept my troops in a status of not being attackable by more than 2 units at once...flanks protected etc.

The only thing I might be able to ascribe his success to is the fact that I selected un-averaged combat losses or odds, or whatever that option is when I started the game.

In Africa I made it to Alexandria, then saw my PZ's destroyed very quickly. I'm still baffled.

Then in Russia...I never made it 5 hexes east of Brest-Litovsk. So, by Aug 42', it was all over.

We're starting another...this time with averaged combat odds. Hopefully I don't suck so bad this time.

[richardsd]

hmm, now bad thoughts fill my mind

[NotaPacifist]

Allowing the Russkies to build 2000 or so PP's is bad news. When I surrendered, I still had over 1k oil.

[richardsd]

depends on what they do with it and more importantly, when they are allowed to use it

[NotaPacifist]

Well, think of your DOW as Christmas Day...because they have no reason to wait to use every last PP.

[NotaPacifist]

OH...How many mechs can you build with 2000PP? Pretty sure the answer is 40. But it sure as hell looked like 200. Sorry...spoiler. So...two turns. 40 mechs, no waiting.

[richardsd]

hmm

40 MECH will hurt, but it will take time to get them into coordinated action, that said he has proven to be very aggressive

[richardsd]

just did a quick casualty check (usually I think such things are cheating, but thats just me and this game is more a test than a game)

so whats the view of the Brit casualties in Sept 41?

INF 508 Steps/41 Units
ARM 13 Steps/1 unit
AIR 85 Steps/4 units (hmm, thought more)
NAVAL 178 Steps/8 units

[NotaPacifist]

What is more important than British casualties is your Axis casualties. Mine in France and GB were catastrophic, and pretty much ended my chances for building new units for about 4 turns after it was all over.

[rkr1958]

What is more important than British casualties is your Axis casualties. Mine in France and GB were catastrophic, and pretty much ended my chances for building new units for about 4 turns after it was all over.

Gary, I can understand why France under these conditions may not fall until late summer or early fall 1940; but why were your axis losses so large? I haven't faced Morris' French defense but I have faced Neil's several times. I put Neil in the category with Borger, Joe Rock & Supermax (i.e., he's one of the GS player elites). While my losses were higher that normal and I may have lost one or two infantry units my losses weren't catastrophic. I make sure I advance cautiously protecting my armor, try to kill British units where I can but focus on capturing key French cities and PP. Eventually I get there by August or September 1940. What's really frustrating to me about Neil's defense is that he's a master at extracting and saving part BEF corps probably 60% of the time denying me the chance to kill them. Now these corps have taken losses but survive.

[NotaPacifist]

I've been playing this game hard against some very good players, and nobody has ever flogged me so badly in France. I'm accustomed to, when playing the French, see my attacks fail with only minor damage to German forces even when I can hit them from three sides.

However, I made certain that I never presented 3 sides to attack. He made heavy use of all of the RAF, BEF, and GB GAR's. But I have tried that too (with the exception of the GB GAR's), with miserable results. I can't explain it.

[zechi]

I've been playing this game hard against some very good players, and nobody has ever flogged me so badly in France. I'm accustomed to, when playing the French, see my attacks fail with only minor damage to German forces even when I can hit them from three sides.

However, I made certain that I never presented 3 sides to attack. He made heavy use of all of the RAF, BEF, and GB GAR's. But I have tried that too (with the exception of the GB GAR's), with miserable results. I can't explain it.

During the French campaign the British/French will normally have bad results with their first attack against a German unit, but much better results with secondary and tertiary attacks. Results also become better if the German unit was damaged before and if the Allies have air support and/or support by shore bombardment.

If you make sure that a German unit cannot be attacked by three sides (and no forced retreats are possible which allow more attacks), has air cover by Luftwaffe FTR units (you should have 3 or 4 FTR ready) and cannot be shore bombarded, you should normally not lose a German unit.

The Germans are also strongest after the fall of Belgium as all units in France as well as air units in Britain will get a high morale penalty. The next three turns you can usually hit the Allies hard, without any fear of strong counterattacks. Of course you should make sure, that you capture Belgium in one turn, which is easy to achieve during a fair weather turn.

Normally you should not lose more then one or at maximum two German units against the Allies during the campaign, often you should even manage not to lose any unit at all. I never lost more then one German unit against the French/British in all of my games I playe, but I also never faced a maximum BEF defense strategy.

Perhaps we should run several (hotseat) playtests with the maximum BEF strategy and perhaps an Elite-Player makes an AAR on how to break it.

[richardsd]

I have to say that losing the two ARM was entirely my fault as I got a little over zaelous because I wanted him focusing on France well I Sealion'ed.

I was however still shocked that he killed both of them in the same turn despite my FTR cover

[rkr1958]

Kudos to Morris for coming up with a very aggressive and so far a very effective allied strategy. We take seriously any such strategy that could tip game balance significantly in one direction or the other. So I'd like to fill you in on some discussions were having so you can weigh in too.

Hi Paul, Duncan
CC Neil and Alec

It seems to me that Morris sends everything to France and that delays the fall of France significantly. What then happens is that the Axis player feels he has to go after Egypt and Iraq to compensate and even do Sealion. When you try all this after being delayed in France you won't be strong enough to challenge the Russians. You didn't get the income from Balkans and Norway etc. It seems Duncan lost his navy trying to do Sealion so maybe the Swedish iron ore was interdicted afterwards because Norway was neutral.

It also seems Duncan accepted defeat long before Italy and Germany was conquered by the Russians so we can't look at the defeat date. What probably has happened is that he felt he would eventually going to lose.

The source of these problems is the strategy with sending the entire British army to France. He even sends the units from Egypt / Cyprus etc. I don't think it's realistic that the British would empty their home defense just to protect France, but it's hard to prevent this from happening. The BEF was rather small. We can easily remove the garrison units in Egypt / Cyprus / Malta / Gibraltar and let these units spawn when Italy joins the Axis just as we do with the naval units. That means 5 less units to send to England. These units were meant for protection of UK in the Med and not France.

Most of the garrisons are in England. They actually spawned in the real war as HG troops once it was evident that an invasion of UK was possible. Then you had mobilization of troops to protect against Sealion. Many of those troops were old men from WW1 and the equipment was poor.

One way to do this is to let these garrisons spawn when Paris is Axis controlled or when an Axis transport is adjacent a British land hex. This way the Allied player won't have a big HG to send to France. We can keep the HG units in ports in the English Channel since those were the most vulnerable ones and it would allow a small BEF presence.

What do you think?

Should we make these changes (partially or completely) to prevent the strategy of emptying the Med nd England of forces to keep France alive longer?

I am hesitant to change anything at this date for just stability reasons. Second and as important, why not allow it?? I have always been hesitant to change the game to limit the commanders range of options. Exploring alternative scenarios is one of the joys of playing. Paul can tell you how many times I have crashed and burned – but I get better, learn a lot and it is starting to bear fruit…

What about a different approach? What if all UK units that are in French core hexes, including French North Africa, are returned to the UK force pool if the French Armistice is accepted by the axis player. I cannot image politically what would have happened if the Brits had stayed by force in France after it's fall. The way it is now, UK units in Vichy French core hexes are eliminated! Why should those units be eliminated and any UK units in the other part of France remain? I say send them all to the UK force pool.

And ... the UK is charged the transport cost of 8 PP's per unit moved to it's force pool. This would represent the cost of evacuating these units.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

One thing is that UK units in France NOT in a coastal hex would probably not have been able to evacuate back
to Britain so we can maybe make the rule like this:

1. British units in France in a coastal hex will be evacuated to the force pool with a cost of 8 PP's per unit.
2. Other British units in France will be eliminated when armistice is accepted. They will surrender because they won't
get to the coast to be evacuated in time.

This means that having the British units inland is risky and they will probably be eliminated. Dunkirk shows how
precarious the evacuation of the BEF was. Only units at the coast had a chance to get out before the Germans would
have surrounded them.

British units alone in France would simply not have any supply to continue fighting.

What do you think? Should we update the rule to what I propose? It would help a lot against letting players like Morris
swarm France with UK garrisons. The garrisons will delay the fall time of Paris, but after Paris is taken then they're
useless. Think about the situation for the British if they lose many garrisons in France because the units surrender.
They get a few back having to pay 8 PP's per unit. This means that their HG is so weak that Sealion will succeed for sure.

I think a good Germany strategy is to get units to e. g. Antwerp and launch Sealion just before Paris falls so you can threaten
the coastal cities on the English coast. Britain doesn't have the PP's to pay for losses in France, evacuation cost and for
new units in Britain to stop Sealion. They have to rely upon the RN to stop invasion attempts.