The game begins with Germany, fresh from its victories against Poland. The Phoney War is over and it's time to get down to business.
Here's the situation at the start of the game. The units at the top are the ones I have in West Germany. The units at the bottom represent the units in the Netherlands (including my invading units):
The first order of business is to take out France. I send 4 infantry units into Netherlands, where they mop up the 3 allied infantry. Now it's time to deliver the killing blow. I send 5 tanks, one tactical bomber and one heavy bomber to Western France. The battle is close, but my forces are victorious and the Allies are forced to retreat. When the Germans capture Paris, the Vichy rule is triggered: all French nationality territories immediately convert to German-occupied Vichy territories. These territories are frozen; I cannot move forces in or out of these territories until the allies attack them. The French navy is destroyed as a result of Vichy.
Next, I send an infantry unit to take poor, undefended Denmark. Denmark controls a narrows that is the only entrance into the Baltic, so I send an artillery unit there, where it will fire on any allied unit seeking to enter or escape the Baltic.
Yugoslavia is the next target, since I don't want to putz about with them later. Until you attack Yugoslavia, your forces in Bulgaria, Rumania and Hungary are frozen. So, I send a tac bomber from Italy to bomb Yugoslavia. This unfreezes the little three. I send the militia units from each of the newly unfrozen territories to invade Yugoslavia, and also have the Italian fleet come out to bombard. Because militia are such poor fighters, my casualties are high, but I take the territory.
On to North Africa. I'm planning on driving hard to Cairo to put the UK into a little quandry: will they defend Cairo heavily or cede it to me? If they defend heavily, England may be open to invasion. I mass a group of 6 units in Tobruk for attacks in coming turns. Also, since the Allies may cut my shipping lines, I move 15 supplies from the continent to the desert.
With this done, all that's left to do in this movement phase is to repair damaged structures in the territories I've seized, and to move units around to prepare for future offensives.
Fixing things costs supplies, and while I've got a lot of supplies at the moment, repairing a rail line, factory or resource completely costs 10 supplies per item. I've conquered a lot of territory, so I've got a lot to repair. Some very hard choices there, because I don't have the industrial might to replace supplies easily. I bite the bullet and repair all the factories and resources, but only repair about half of the rails. This cuts my supplies from about 150 down to 50 or so. Ouch.
That finishes off the movement phase; on to production. I'll cover production in a later post. Suffice it to say that I have decided that air power will be a heavy component of my strategy, so I order up some tac & heavy bombers (I need to order them now so that they will be ready for the Russian Campaign). I spend a lot on replacing supplies and investing in research. Remaining points go to queue up 4 armor units that will roll off the line in Winter 41.
