Matt Foster  - Jul 3, 2006 9:56 am (#14417 Total: 14721)  
“No grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is
utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy.” Justice
Robert H. Jackson, Nuremberg, 1945. 

On the table again (sans le chat) is Avalanche’s Strange Defeat. Managed
to get in two games over the weekend – one of those play, swap sides and
play again adventures. 

The Germans won both games. I suspect in both cases that the Allies were
over-aggressive, but finding a successful strategy for them is
difficult. 

For my effort as the vile Hitlerite invaders, the Allies adopted a more
spread-out approach. Their defenses deployed fairly dispersed, mostly
one unit per hex with a few of the “AA” deployment group added for
stiffening where allowed. 

The dispersed deployment keeps the German armor from trying to ‘ooze’
the French defense, but it I think it opens up the Allies to defeat in
detail. My thoughts on it are that the best chance the Allies have of
inflicting step losses is when they’re defending. A good German player
will always have an armor unit of some type stacked with his spearheads
to gain the ‘Allies attack at half strength against armor stacks’
advantage – which means French counter-attacks frequently just bounce
off. 

Also, the bucket o’dice combat system punishes small stacks by making
them easy to overwhelm. A German attack that scores three ‘hits’ will
eliminate a single unit (two step) stack, but the same attack can be
absorbed with a single step loss and a two-hex retreat by a larger
stack. 

At any rate, the dispersed defense seemed only to delay things. I sort
of stupidly pressed a frontal attack against the Belgians along the
Dyle, which cost me some unnecessary infantry casualties. I ended up
bagging them eventually, but suffered from a few French/British
counter-attacks in the process. Most of the BEF evacuated via Operation
Dynamo, although once again the courageous French Gen. Piroux and his
boys got whacked in the process. 

My forces coming out of the Ardennes chopped up the dispersed defense
facing them with a series of armor-led blasts that drove to Chalons by
turn four. I opted to not attack any of the Maginot forts, reckoning
that picking up three or four additional Political Points wasn’t really
worth running the risk of facing the defender advantage (hit on 5 or 6)
of the forts. 

On turn 5 the BEF evacuated via Dynamo and the French were down to a
hand full of units defending in front of Paris. The PP index stood at
-23 with little prospect of improvement for the French, so my opponent
resigned. 

For my go at playing the French, I opted for a slightly different
defense approach. Where possible I stacked defending units in groups of
four or five steps. This left a few hexes uncovered except by ZOC, but
it also forced the Germans to attack into stacks that would be rolling
9-12 dice against their panzer spearheads. 

It worked for a little bit, I think. The Germans decided to take out the
northern-most of the Maginot fortifications, which I had stacked with 6
steps of defenders (two French fortress units and the BEF 51st
Division). Both sides rolled a bunch of hits. One German infantry corps
was wiped out and two more reduced – but the Germans rolled seven hits
with some like 24 dice and wiped out all three units in one go. That was
something like an 8 PP swing right there. Argh. 

My opponent was loathe to commit panzer/motorized units to attacks
against my bigger stacks without his infantry support, and the jockeying
around left him open to a couple of counter-attacks. I managed to set up
one good counter-attack in Belgium, which fizzled when I rolled 14 dice
and got only 1 hit. 

The turning point, I think, was a large French counterattack just west
of Sedan. The Germans had driven Guderian and two panzer corps forward
without infantry support, and I managed to put them out of supply. But
that attack failed even more miserably. I rolled no hits on 18 friggin’
dice, while the defending Germans rolled two hits with 6 dice. Had that
attack succeeded, I think I would have had a chance at winning the game.
But, c’est la guerre. My counter-attacking British in Belgium then got
chopped to bits and we called the game after turn 5 with the PP index
standing at -26 and set to plunge even lower. 

Got a few digisnaps of the second game, but it will be this evening
before I get a chance to post them.