The response.
Still a few bits and pieces to fiddle with before I send back the turn but here out west is pretty much done. After a bit of a think we decided that any forces west of the beachhead will only be slowing him down marginally more than he will march unimpeded and there is not enough space to fit everybody in the Brest alamo so that corps will be best placed slowing him marginally in the south and at least a few troops will likely get out, or at least have more of a stalling effect. We'll see. That leaves 2 static regiments each to man the Festungs Brest, Lorient and St Nazaire. They will fall of course but at least they start with 6CV and fortification 4 so will take a little resources from him.
LXXVI Pz Korps deploys a brief holding position to the east of the beachhead, mostly to cover Pz Lehr leaving Rennes. We launch the only counterattack of the week with Pz Lehr and 3 PzGn against the 6th Airborne. No hope of success obviously as they have landed in light woods and turns out they have a US Regiment attached. But we felt thats its the correct and in character German thing to do. They hold with very light casualties as predicted, though I did hope we might extract a little more damage. Neither German division had to go far so interdiction wasn't an issue, and no ground attack flew. There is not much else we could do but glad we tried something. But anyway in fact along with the Poles attached to 101 Airborne there are actually nearly 5 airborne divisions along with the 10 infantry divisions in the first wave. I mentioned to Qball and I'll repeat the thoughts here I do still feel its a bit of a missed opportunity that the game mechanics don't do anything to restrict the Allies to always doubling up their first wave divisions, other than a little more time taken to prepare. But did that every really stop anybody? Its the same in some ways as the lack of restrictions on shifting all of 21 AG to the Med for a while. Why not? its free and the rational thing to do. Likewise why take 1 division when you can take 2? Trouble is it really means unless the allies really do something stupid there is no chance of an Omaha moment, and likewise with 2 intact divisions on each beach why would any rational German player even attempt a counter-attack? I would have liked to at least try a little to make a fight of it but tickling this airborne division is about all I can justify trying really, just to do something offensive rather than just be setting up a line 100 miles back. If the prepping of an invasion cost APs or even better VPs to set up, per airborne division dropped and per division landed per TF then the Allies would have to at least think for a minute about whether everything was necessary. And would go a little way to countering invasion spam. Interesting choices make for interesting games, but right now feels like the only thing for the allies is to go as big as they can possible stretch the system and the knock on effect is a lack of counter-attacks on day 1. Anyway, thats my 2p on that one. The follow up forces will arrive on his phase and the moment will have passed obviously.
Elsewhere 1st Army starts to occupy the bocage line to the north, 5 Pz Army starts to occupy the east river line, though this will be temporary I think, and the rump of 7th Army with a few units from the SW start to occupy the Loire line. All temporary but thats all we can do right now I think. Then in reserve 15th Army deploys along the Seine while keeping a static defense on the coast against fresh invasions. Likewise 1 Fallshirm army in the low countries draws down a little but keeps the beaches manned.
All the rest left to do is air stuff, reordering depots states etc...
