Caranorn
Posts: 424
Joined: 8/31/2001 From: Luxembourg Status: offline
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Just saw that this game might be around the corner and had to read up a bit on its design... At first glance I must say I'm not shocked about the choice of a 10 mile hex. The fighting in Normandy was indeed in a very narrow position and the allies were bottled up for quite a while. Truly mobile warfare only started after breakout. Of course the 10 miles per hex could mean one of more of the allied beacheads being smashed in in the early turns (of a june 44 scenario) where a smaller scale (5 or maybe 8 miles per hex) could give the allies a buffer. Hopefully though this risk will be nulified by the fact that the germans could not bring significant reinforcements (21st Panzer was local, 12th SS Panzer arrived during this phase as did elements of Lehr) to bear on the bridgeheads during the vulnerable phase. Of course that would mean that in a Normandy focused scenario forces in Pas de Calais (mostly infantry, but iirc at least 2nd Panzer there) would have to be fixed as historical. How to handle a free June 44 scenario (where allies can pick among a number of landing sites (Normandy, Pas de Calais, Flanders, Bretagne etc., also Normandy variant with a landing on the west of Cotentin incl. the Channel Islands) would be another question, in most cases at least the Pas de Calais forces should be locked for a while... I think the 10 mile scale should also work for Italy, the fighting on the beaches and through the defensive lines was largely static, even movements such as the French at Garigliano were extremely slow due to terrain, logistics and German defenses. Here too there will be the possibility to see a German counterattack smash a beachhead in an early invasion phase. But again it should be unlikely for the Germans to concentrate sufficient offensive material to achieve this (assuming most german infantry formations will be appropriately weak on the offensive due to the TOE of 1943/44)... No problem either for the Bulge, this was a very narrow offensive and should 99% of the time die because the Germans cannot exploit the innitial penetration of the US front and the US can quickly bring reinforcements to bear on the saliant... Where I'm more sceptic about scale are the 1940 game as well as the 41-43 ones. That for different reasons: In 1940 high mobility has to be possible even against significant opposition and through rough terrain. Possibly the static character of most of the French, Dutch and Belgian infantry (not the British, the French Colonials and/or the mobile forces (DLC, DLM, DCR, DIM, possibly also the regular DI that had moved into belgium as they were in general better equipped, had better personnel etc.) and therefore their inability to project a ZoC into adjacent hexes will do the trick even at the 10 mile hexscale... For the war in North Africa (and I would hope East Africa could be included, of course also Syria and Irak, probably Persia too) it's not map scale that will pose a problem but rather unit scale. This war has to be conducted on the basis of German regiments and British brigades (probably divisions for the Italians) as divisions played minor roles in that conflict (particularly for the British who'd hand over new brigades to experienced HQ's thereby breaking up existing division structures). Then again, iirc divisions can be broken up in WiE (haven't played for over a year), so the game engine should be able to handle separate regiments/brigades with division HQ's transformed into another container for support units etc. One difficulty I could forsee with this game is how to handle the logistic problems faced by both sides. In the original Italian invasion of the Western Desert only a portion of the Italian Army could be brought to bear, that only at the cost of making other Italian units static (WiE can handle that iirc) and even then logistics played a role in the rapid collapse of that offensive and the success of the British counterattack. For the British, massive forces had to be held back in Egypt, Palestine and on other posts because they had been stripped of some of their equipment (at least in the early campaigns no British unit on the front ever had it's full complement of transport, that despite receiving transportation companies from other units and commands) and even had they had sufficient organic transport their movement to the front would have put additional strain on the supply network. That is, were the British player inclined to move more forces into the fighting he would rapidly face the same problem the Italians had at the start of the campaign and see their front collapse. Despite all this, I think this campaign (I'm talking North Africa 41 to 43 including Torch, East Africa and Syria/Iraq/Persia, Greece 41 very abstracted) would make the most enjoyable game of the series as it's mobile warfare, involves a lot of logistics, air and naval assets play a major role, local politics, forces from so many different countries (Italy, Britain, India, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, France, Australia, New Zealand, Iraq, Greece, Poland, Palestine, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, South Africa, Germany, US and i'm sure I've forgotten a few) etc. Note: I'm pretty sure you've completed most OOB and TOE research for the 43-45 game. But if you need researchers for the other games let me know as I have good orders of battles at hand for some of these topics (complete for 40, just would have to dig through my files, a start for 41-43) and would have no trouble whatsoever researching more on the others (cannot start work on another game project for the comming half year I expect, but these projects are not urgent either). Though there is the remote possibility that a conflict of interest might arise...
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Marc aka Caran... ministerialis
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