Matrix Games Forums

Game wise in WarPlan Sealion is easy to pull off and may be unstoppable. I can't be certain of this since I haven't seen it pulled off in Player vs Player. Playing Axis vs AI it is the surest way to get major victories for all Axis countries. It results from a number of flaws in how they balanced out the first year of the war.

Most players have figured out that you don't hold off attacking the Belgiums, Netherlands, etc. Since there is no reaction for doing it you just pick off each one in turn and then wait for good weather to take out France. Axis just starts building landing craft as soon as he can and as many as he can. Britain has to much coast and to many ports to defend and the Germans only need one.

It looked like the last revisions tried to address the ability of Germany to take out France in 1939 by giving them more units. But they also gave them depleted so all the productions is used up trying to get them up to full strength. Also, England starts with mostly depleted units. They are lucky if by March 40 they can even field a full strength corps in France. Which makes France easy to overrun. This creates a secondary problem for England because they can't afford to send troops to Africa. For England to have any chance they have to hold on to their island until the US comes in and can stabilize things.

All this seem good for the German player. It weakens them against Russia but it brings so many other benefits.

Yes the game IMO has quite a few balance problems ATM. Most of them favor the Axis. Even throwing every available spare UK unit in to France (and all the risks that entails) does not stall the fall of France by any significant time. The low countries all go under the German boot in 39 and there is no consequence what-so-ever.

Yes, as I have commented elsewhere, the historical at start (i.e SEP 39) strengths of the European powers is NOWHERE represented at an even vaguely historical level for ANY country.

ALL countries are understrength ... ALL of them. Either severely or lethally.

Worse, you cannot build the historical TO&E from the At Start strengths for any of the Allied nations ... you WILL exceed the Logistic cap.

The reason the Germans can run rampant over the Western Allies in 1939, taking Denmark, Norway and even Holland ... and, I believe, in some cases, even taking Belgium and France ... and, as you hint, even the UK is because of this. The Germans, while understrength at start are LESS understrength than almost everyone else.

One key factor is that the French mobilised as a result of Poland and were, effectively, at FULL STRENGTH within any time frame within which the Germans could take Poland and redeploy their forces west.

So the French At Start ORBAT should represent this ... with mostly full strength Corps except for those which represent 1-2 (instead of 3) Armoured or Mech Divisions rather than a full Corps (Infantry Corps that are under strength can be represented by a single Division if they have less than two)

The BEF was much the same.

The Belgian Army consisted of two parts, the Professional Army, which were at full strength, and the Reserve Army which had to be called up and which, AIUI, didn't reach full strength as it wasn't called up until the Germans actually invaded.

The Dutch Army is overstrength. The Dutch *badly* miscalculated between the wars and was very poorly equipped.

The Danish Army is probably overstrength as well.

The Norwegian Army is understrength.

The Poles are understrength.

And they are just the ones that will likely be attacked in 1939 as it stands.

If all the non-Axis nations are at their actual historical strengths I suspect the Germans will have a much much harder time of it.

If you don't want to give the French and Brits their full historical ORBAT as of September 39 then, at the very least, you want to have all those additional units come onboard as reinforcements ALREADY PAID FOR and in the pipeline in the second week of September and in the two turns of October ... certainly by the first week of November at the latest.

And the logistical limits for the French and British need to be, from memory, probably doubled ... as that allows for their historical At Start ORBAT plus a cushion for the additional units they historically built (actually, the German logistical capacity also needs to be increased as it can't have the historical at start forces either).

Phil McGregor

Indeed. As far as I can tell the way things stand at present the Axis has too many possibilities that were, historically, if not entirely impossible then with such low probabilities of success that even if they distorted their entire historical resource availability constraints and allocations they couldn't increase them enough to be worthwhile.

* Sealion. Effectively impossible.

* Taking Gibraltar. Cost FAR outweighs any real world benefits ... and is a very low order chance of success, realistically speaking.

* Taking the Suez Canal. Sorry, the logistics just aren't there for the DAK. Each time they got close they were at their last gasp and ... couldn't ... and, short of diverting enough trucks to power the Panzer forces of an entire Army Group in Russia (choose - North, Centre, or South) logistically, this wasn't going to happen ... and good luck supplying all those extra trucks with POL with the completely inadequate Italian Merchant Marine!

* Invading the Middle East through Turkey (NOT 'invading Turkey', mind) ... again, the logistical resources needed IN REALITY made this a non event and, even if it was managed, the Germans would have gotten sandy wastes interspersed with destroyed oilfields they, in reality, had neither the capacity to repair for many many YEARS but also didn't have the merchant ships to ship it from Syria (assuming the pipeline isn't also a pile of twisted wreckage, which it would be) nor did they have the rolling stock to send it home via the inadequate Turkish rail net, which had to go through Syria anyway, where the connecting rail net was even LESS adequate ... and the Germans had a war-spanning shortage of POL tanker cars they couldn't resolve because they didn't have enough steel to make them, unless, of course, the steel was diverted from oh so unimportant fripperies such as Tanks, Artillery, Trucks and Aircraft in war losing amounts.

But don't let real world constraints stand in the way of fantasies.

Phil McGregor