To invade or not?

[alexvand]

So, the allies have managed to take Copenhagen last turn. It's J/A 1944. Germany has been desperately plugging holes in France, Poland, Romania, and Italy. Germany is rather empty. See the pic below.

The western allies can put a couple of amphibs into the Baltic. Only enough to invade one hex with some Shore bombardment. Follow up forces will be limited to one HQ (Alexander) and maybe 2 more corp and a div. That's all they've got in range and in ports with lift at the moment.

Would you invade Germany proper? Why?

If you would invade, where and why?

[paulderynck]

Depends on who controls Oslo. You can't trace supply across water more than once and you can't trace supply through the Baltic and out to the North Sea if you can't move naval units between the two. See 11.4.4 Naval Movement Restrictions.

[alexvand]

Oslo is neutral.

[davidachamberlain]

ORIGINAL: alexvand

So, the allies have managed to take Copenhagen last turn. It's J/A 1944. Germany has been desperately plugging holes in France, Poland, Romania, and Italy. Germany is rather empty. See the pic below.

The western allies can put a couple of amphibs into the Baltic. Only enough to invade one hex with some Shore bombardment. Follow up forces will be limited to one HQ (Alexander) and maybe 2 more corp and a div. That's all they've got in range and in ports with lift at the moment.

Would you invade Germany proper? Why?

If you would invade, where and why?

When Germany has limited units and many fronts, it is in the Allied interest to continue to add fronts and to spread out that defence as much as possible.

However, it does not make sense to set those units up for quick destruction unless causing that destruction is in your interest as well.

If the Germans can not reach your invasion locations, why not? Though you can expect that at the next reinforcement phase, those holes will get plugged, but that still prevents reinforcements from making it to the active fronts.

Priority for invasions are those that are most likely to success. Avoiding ZOC, cities, non-clear hexes helps a lot. Preferably out of reason by the Germans. Preferably with more than one location fairly close together. You will want to get control of port hexes and release those locations while expanding your front on those locations.

You might want to hold off until you can do more than 1 hex. Send a couple more Amphibs or Marines. Then send a HQ, use an ATR with a MTN or Para followed by some aircraft to augment those invasions.

Dave

[Orm]

I would not invade Germany at this point. Because, to me, it looks like that would give Germany a hefty production bonus. I would probably invade Northern Netherlands instead.

[davidachamberlain]

ORIGINAL: Orm

I would not invade Germany at this point. Because, to me, it looks like that would give Germany a hefty production bonus. I would probably invade Northern Netherlands instead.

I still believe (however, with a more appropriately sized force) that it is worth invading under the circumstances I see on that map.

I agree that product production multiple would increase, but at the same time, with really no face up units anywhere nearby, it would be fairly easy to capture several factories and eliminate any benefit from the production multiple. At the same time, it would force a pretty sudden collapse in the defensive lines on both major fronts to try to save the fatherland.

Doing it with 1 stack would not do it, but getting prepared with the proper invasion forces that should be available at this point in the game, it should be possible to get set for multiple invasions, Paradrops or even ATR flights to invasion areas and within a turn do some very serious (probably crippling damage). I think it was a serious mistake to allow what has happened in Denmark without at least a reaction force to the Northern coast.

I see very little value to a Netherlands invasion. Certainly it would be easier, but it would also be pretty easy to contain where doing it in Germany at this point could not be contained.

Dave

[paulderynck]

Just putting even a Marine Div on the island SW of Copenhagen will force Germany to take some troops from elsewhere to cover the two ports.

[Dabrion]

The home-country bonus should be avoided for operations of that scale. You can go to Holland or Poland though, creating bridgeheads behind the front lines. Your choice basically.

[brian brian]

In a multi-player game, you could invade and draw a really big player reaction by landing and then racing the Russians to ... Warsaw

[AlbertN]

Invade Lubeck, no question asked.
Corp sized unit ZoC will prevent Germans to rail in Hamburg, and that will turn into a supply source once the Allied unit moves into it - as it should be vacant. That will also put in a bad situation the troops of Germany north of Kiel.

I cannot see if they've hidden panzers, or have other means to bring troops there (Via ship, or via ATP) - but the fact Copenhagen has fallen it's a bad sign of poor defence planning since it opens a whole can of worms.
So I believe it turns imperative for the Germans to eventually rely on ships to move in and counterattack if possible. But I expect the North Sea to be heavily Allied controlled / patrolled; and the Baltic Sea forces on ports are minimal already.

Edit: As I realize that's the same game of the screenshot - I'd invade Holland though. That will jeopardize even further the western front and leave the Germans with little to go there once Rotterdam and Amsterdam falls at once pratically.
A landing in Rotterdam combined with the seizure of the hex where the Bf109K-4 is will "lock" an amount of German units that will struggle to withdraw back to Germany as well.

[AllenK]

It looks like you are playing without Limited Overseas Supply.

I think the key in whether or not to invade is the potential unhinging of other areas of the front as they are stripped to plug this latest leak. By land, it looks like you would have 2-3 impulses before anything arrives on the scene to start contesting and they would be the reserves from each front.

If you can get good enough odds to make it unlikely to be disorganised, I'd be tempted to go for Lubeck (assuming Kiel only has naval units).

The ZOC from the next impulse takes the factories in Hamburg out, which helps offset the production bonus. More crucially, it blocks reinforcements being railed to Kiel or Hamburg (unless a land unit gets there). What does Germany do?

If it wants to get it's ships out, it's forced to do a combined, which only gives 1 rail move (probably Berlin as Lubeck is only 3 hexes a way). If it wants to take a land so as to rail 3 units, probably to Berlin, Magdeburg and Bremen, it will also need to bring at least one of the units down from the Danish border. I think these will be OOS due to your invasion and supporting units in the Baltic and the ZOC into Kiel, so would be disorganised by the move.

Next impulse you take Hamburg, bring follow-up forces ashore and attack across the Danish-German border if one unit was left to cover. Rather than just a couple of corps, you now have the army in Denmark to join the invasion. Capturing Kiel should be straight forwards with one disorganised defender and German land reinforcements are only just arriving. If both units have moved, Kiel will be slightly harder but you'll have achieved the goal of breaking out from Denmark and linking with the invasion forces. If both units stay on the border, you get Kiel for free and can attack them from both directions in the subsequent impulse.

A tweak to the strategy would be to ground strike the 2 units on the Danish border on your invasion impulse. If they succeed, you get Kiel for free and the 2 units would be disorganised and OOS unless Germany puts naval air into the Baltic (their SCS will have been disorganised by the enforced rebase from Kiel). This uses an air move for Germany and takes a bomber away from the Russian front but may delay the attack from Denmark while you shoot it down (Do you have CV's available? Otherwise Soviet and Western Allied long-range FTR's brought to Denmark). You could decide the odds are good enough with the DRM's, air support and shore bombardment to go for it anyway.

Either way works quite well. I'd probably go for the first option as most predictable and less reliant on the vagaries of the dice. You may need to delay an impulse to rearrange the forces in Denmark and rebase fighters in preparation.

[Centuur]

It depends on how things are on front lines which are not in this picture. How are things at the Balkans and in Italy?

If Uncle Joe or the Wallies will enter Germany/Austria this turn anyway (since they are already knocking at the borders in more places than just East Prussia and France), than I would invade Germany either in Lübeck or at Stettin. The first I would choose if there isn't a German land unit in Kiel, the second if there is a land unit in Kiel.

However, if you don't expect to enter Germany this turn on other front lines, I would not invade to avoid the production boost.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Invade the hex east of Stettin.

The Allies can walk into Kolberg to hold a port next impulse.
3 hexes to Berlin.
2 hexes to Stettin. (or 1 hex if a Marine is available).
4 hexes to Danzig.

The Axis would have to rail units to Stettin, Berlin, and Poznan to put ZOC around the invading forces. But all those units would be disorganized. Weakening the front line against the Russians would probably be essential to keep the bridgehead from expanding.

There do not appear to be any Axis reserves! There should be at least 3 corps in central Germany to deal with such emergencies.[:-]

[Dabrion]

It is the first Allied impulse in this picture in JA44. Germany will have a long summer turn to react to whatever you are going to do. And you will a hard time reinforcing your guys, while they will outdo you in terms of reinforcements and air they can converge on you over the run of a JA turn. Single stacks usually don't survive..
Therefore, if you are set on going into Germany proper, do it at the end of the turn, hope for a flip/flop and use the remainder of the turn to stage air in Denmark.

Why are you playing without supply though?

[Centuur]

You mean without LOS I presume. Well I believe some people are of the opinion that that rule is too arbitrary.

A convoy point to keep a division on an island in supply? Too farfetched and totally a-historical....
Only one convoy point to keep a force consisting of 20 or more corps, air units, HQ's (the whole works) in supply? Totally a-historical...

Consider this: to keep a infantry division consisting of say 10.000 men in supply, about 5.000 tons of shipping in two months is enough...
To keep the Allied units in Europe in supply during 1944-1945 a tremendous amount of shipping was needed, far more than that lone convoy point. Also: consider this: that convoy point can be used to transport a resource too. Impossible, since it is already full with supplies for the fighting men and their support troops...

Now, one might say that a rule is better than no rule, but for me that rule is going way out of line. It should be rewritten to take into account a more reasonable approach.

We had a house rule once, in which we said the following:

Every non motorized infantry type division and ship (including their CVP) counts as 1;
Every motorized corps/army/HQ and aircraft unit count as 4;
All other land units counts as 2.

After that we used the following table:
0-10 no convoy point needed;
11-20 1 convoy point needed;
21-30 2 convoy points needed
etc.etc.

And we imposed on the use of the convoy point the condition that if at start of the turn, the convoy point is designated to transport resouces, it can't be used to put units in supply if it is already at sea at the start of the turn. It was an all of nothing thing. If there weren't enough convoy points in a sea area to provide supply, all units where considered to be OOS.

The conquences were pretty good in the games we used to play. It meant that in the Pacific, the US had to build more convoy points to keep their huge fleet moving and keep the invasions going. When D-Day did happen, the Allies found themselves in need of shipping which became more in line with what happened historically too. During the game we did some calculations on the number of TRS/AMPH and convoy points to compare this with the historical stats and it became clear that we came pretty close to the tonnage the Wallies were using in 1944-1945. Numbers which are usually not present in the end game of World In Flames...

[AlbertN]

I like the proposed system by Centuur - but in the tabletop version it would be very mathy to keep track of, I feel. It would add too much burden.
Sure in a PC-Game like Matrix WiF it would work marvels.

[Dabrion]

LOS is a convoy tax on oversea operations in the end. Not optimal but it changes the game in a good way (more naval operations, more concerns to keep remote places in supply) and therefore achieves its objective.

I like the idea of a more fine grained supply. I don't think you can address it on the level of oversea supply though. Why should a shipping lane be quantified, but a rail line not?

[brian brian]

A binary system is playable. That is why we play the game so much.

But yeah, we could use a 21st Century computerized WiF for sure.

I think the Japanese "Supply Subs" in the CoiF kit should keep their notional units in supply....