Slitherine

I've just finished the scenario "Maginot Line" in GC '40 and was surprised by the appearance of minefields. Very nice touch as I had never encountered them before. I found it curious though that Pionieres suffer the same penalty as an Infantry unit when trying to clear a minefield. Pionieres are the western equivalent of Combat Engineers? Shouldn't they be able to clear minefields without casualties? Then there would be an incentive to have Pionieres in one's core?

It's true that "Pionieres suffer the same penalty as an Infantry unit" but that completely overlooks the fact that a Pionere clears the entire mine field in just one go, while other units will take several turns.

So while what you're saying is true, another way of putting it would be:

Engineers can clear a hex of a mine field losing only 1 Strength, while regular infantry will often lose 3 Strength (and other units will pretty much be blown up completely before the mines are gone)

PS. All of this assumes mine sweeps work the same as in Afrika Corps; Pioneres clear an entire hex for just 1 Str; regular infantry clears perhaps 3-4 points of mines per turn (and Str lost); other units (such as tanks) clear 1 point of mines per point of Str lost (not an good deal).

Pioneres still clear the same as Afrika korps, -1 for -10.
This only happens when the minefield is spotted before hand, otherwise it will run straight in to the mines and not deal -10 to them.
If you want another good way to beat them, I usually use simple Italian Infantry, which won't die to them, deal -4 ish each turn they attack for usually -2 and only cost 70pp, which makes replacements quite cheap (I think 5pp per strength point)

And in the equipment.pzdat, there is a special trait called "minesweeper" - this causes the -10, as the mines themselves have some trait to tell the game to -10 them if a minesweeper attacks

- BNC

It should also be noted that the pioneer unit doesn't actually have to be 10 strength either. I rather enjoyed taking 5 and 6 strength pioneers and watching them wipe out a full 10 minefield no problem. So you can basically take one pioneer and clear a chain of mines, one per turn, without having to stop to reinforce them back to full between every clearing.

Thanks, all. I used the Auxiliary Pionieres and Wehrmacht to clear the minefields in that scenario as I didn't want to take casualties to my core, not to minefields anyways.