Okay I’m going to offer a simple AAR of this game which hopefully will give you a flavour of the game, and I will try and show how it works. I really enjoy it, but although it is from the maker of Advanced Tactics, be warned this does not have that much in common with that game, not so open-ended, only a handful of scenarios, and no option to produce units etc.
Opening screen presents you with the options:
Campaign Game (which entails playing Case White, Case Yellow and Sealion as three linked scenarios as the Germans, where you carry casualties into the next scenario, and what you do in the previous scenario has some impact on the following scenario; you also carry over the experience gained in the previous scenario, which is evenly distributed between all of your troops, rather than being individually retained by the unit that earned the XP)
Case White – German invasion of Poland, playable as either side
Case Yellow – German invasion of France and Low Countries, playable as Allies or Germans
Sealion – Hypothetical invasion of Britain, playable as either side
Bzura – Smaller scenario based in Polish campaign
Netherlands – Smaller scenario based on invasion of the Netherlands
I decide to go for the Netherlands scenario as the Germans to give a small taste of what the game has to offer:
Next up is the options page, in this case there are two variants available for the Dutch to be more prepared, which gives them better morale and cohesion, or for the Germans to take it easy, which make the Germans less prepared. You can also choose to give the AI more help, in other words make the game more difficult, and slow down the AI, which I assume slows down how quickly the AI processes its turns. I will choose to leave this as it is, although when beginning you might want to slow it down to see more clearly what the AI is up to. In the bigger scenarios, the AI turn can take quite a while.
One thing that might bug some people is that scenarios, and game saves can take a while to load. I think this is being addressed in an upcoming patch to some extent, and that is one thing about the developer, Vic, he is very helpful and active at the Matrix forums and is taking on board a lot of the advice for future patches and other games in this series.
Okay I’ll leave everything as default, and move onto the game.
Below are the victory conditions for this scenario, the most likely reason for a German victory will be that Dutch morale will drop too low due to losses and they surrender. On other scenarios, you’ll need to acquire the Victory Points (VPs) by capturing strategic towns.
Here is a look at the German OOB before the panzers roll over the Dutch border:
As you can see the 18th Army under Georg Von Kulcher is the German force tasked with taking the Netherlands. If you look closely at the information for Von Kulcher you can see he has some cards at his disposal. This is one of the more interesting features of the game, commanders have a chance of being awarded a card each turn which they can then keep to play at a decisive moment in the scenario to tip the balance. As an Army commander Von Kulcher has a Ready Unit card which he can play, which boosts a battle-weary unit back to battle-readiness. As it is the beginning of the game, no unit requires this. Also Von Kulcher has a % under his portrait, this shows the benefit he gives to units directly under his command in combat. The four divisions 56th to 256th and the air units and Engineers are all under his direct command, and benefit from his bonus. There are also three Corps within the 18th Army who have their own commanders and support units:
XXVI Corps is commanded by Albert Wodrig who has two infantry divisions, a panzer division, an artillery, an engineering unit and a security train under his command. The small ‘r’ in the centre of the infantry icon means that they are reserve infantry units, and so their morale is not as good as standard infantry units. Engineers are used to repair bridges and are better at blowing them, artillery is used to soften up units, and each division has its own artillery as well as there being Corps and Army level arty. Security trains are used to keep rear areas secure, and are of little combat value. As you will have seen there are also some air units attached to 18th Army, these can be used to bomb troops, bridges, or hard targets. Level bombers are better at destroying soft targets, Stukas are better at targeting tanks, and so on. You can also use planes for recon purposes.
There is also the main cards tab which allows you to play some general scenario cards which are available if you have enough PPs or Political Points to spend. In this case, the Germans have enough to spend to access any one of the three options open to them. I will choose to terror bomb the Dutch for 30pps straight away, as this reduces the morale of the Dutch troops from the outset, which is pretty shakey to begin with!
Above you can see the 56th Infantry Division is ready to move out with the ultimate aim of securing Eindhoven, but there is at least one unidentified enemy unit in the way. In the second screen shot the 3rd Regiment of the division is selected and you can see how far it can move and the two red arrows indicate it can move and still has enough APs (Actions Points) to participate in an attack against the enemy unit. The more APs you have left to attack with, the longer you can sustain the attack, and so the more likely you can win, if the odds are favourable. I decide to move the 56th into attacking positions on the enemy unit.
The unit is a MaasLine defense unit, which I have reasonable recon about. The more units you move in proximity to enemy units, the more recon you exercise over them, and thus the more accurate your info is on the enemy unit. My info bar at the top tells me that I have 189 recon on this unit, 40 is enough to identify it, but I would need 400 to have full and exact info about it, so my info is reasonable, but it may be inaccurate. The red bar appears to tell me that the unit is not at full strength, but I have not attacked anyone yet, so I would expect this to be false. The unit is in open fields as terrain, so it will not get many defensive bonuses from terrain, and it does not appear to be dug in. It is not well organised and lacks XP. So despite attacking over a river, I should have an easy victory with this attack. Also notice that the unit which moved over the river has converted several hexes around it. Unit exercise a zone of control. My recon is very low in these hexes though, and there may be enemy units there, but I do not have enough units to uncover them through recon as yet. So when moving, you should move a couple of hexes at a time, as you could run into the enemy!
An artillery barrage from the 56th softened up the defenders and then two regiments attacked the Maasline defenders across the river. The Dutch defenders routing quickly and the defenders were able to cross the river. No matter how few APs you have left at the end of combat, you can always move into the hex vacated by the defeated enemy unit. The Dutch took heavy losses, and the Germans lost a bit of readiness and unit integrity, but gained morale and XP. Morale makes units less likely to break in combat, and XP improves their combat effectiveness.
Further north elements of Wodrig’s XXVI Corps, including the 9th Panzer Division, have crossed the Maas successfully as well, but have run into fortified defenders at Peel Raam. Here the defenders will benefit from Light Fortifications, being dug-in. To the north more of XXVI Corps have captured Nijmegen before the Dutch could react. I am going to conduct an airstrike and an artillery barrage on the defenders at Peel Raam, before attacking with tanks and infantry. The airstrikes and artillery barrage have completely obliterated the fortifications and reduced the Peel Division’s entrenchment to zero, as well as taking a heavy toll on the unit itself. The attack can now go ahead with minimum risk, and less APs should be expended in the attack now, and the Germans will take significantly fewer losses.
The screen above shows that two elements of the 9th Panzer Division are going to attack. You can see that they benefit from a 30% attack bonus due to the fact that two units from the same division are attacking together, and a 20% bonus for the attack being from different angles. The more units attacking from different directions, the better generally. And the same goes for the units from the same division attacking together. However, if you mix in units from another division, then the divisional bonus is reduced. Also there are overstacking penalties to attackers and defenders. The 86/70 means that my two attacking units are slighty overstacked in terms of the volume of attackers trying to attack across the frontage of the two hexes. The defender has no overstacking penalty. You need at least two units in a hex to trigger this, and they have to have sufficient stacking points. I’ll go with the slight penalty here, as the attack is very low risk and so will incur very few casualties in any case. The attack broke the Dutch unit, which simply disappears from the game. If it had retreated, it would still be in play, but when a unit breaks, it is destroyed. This normally happens when the unit has lost most of its men and machines.
The X and IXL Corps are poised to move on Arnhem, but I think I will use another card to deploy the 7th Flieger Division in an audacious airborne operation. Well as can be seen below, no Dutch defenders were there to welcome us, and so Arnhem falls without a shot fired...
And so the turn is about over, contact made, some key cities taken, and some crossings secured, but the enemy will now have a chance to make his moves. Below is a mistake I made south of Arnhem. I sent in some heavy bombers to soften up a target for the next turn’s attack, but I have also blown two bridges in the process, the red circles you can see. So now supply could be an issue at these points, particularly as they are rail bridges. It is on the rail network that Corps and Army HQs should always be, so they can distribute supply more effectively. Also if Corps HQs are 10 hexes or less from their subordinate units, they give them full combat bonuses, associated with the abilities of the Commander and his staff.
And so that it is the first turn.
