Fall Grau 2.27 Ben (Axis) versus Jeremy

[golden delicious]

Turn 33:
The situation is largely unchanged in Mexico; Jeremy continues to pick at odd units with ZOC traps but Mexico City itself remains exposed; I'll hit it immediately with my available Italians while continuing to work around the flanks with the Germans to reduce the possibility of a back and forth here. Further north, my screen is approaching the western mountains. I have a scheme in mind to drop an airborne division on the western rail about the same moment I take Mexico City to prevent an evacuation and ideally trap the whole Mexican army out of supply (I captured Guatemala City last turn)- we'll see if this comes off.

It's a similar situation at Albuquerque: ZOCs positioned to put Hohenstaufen out of supply but this doesn't stop me putting a firm ring around Albuquerque, ready for an assault next turn.

Jeremy's even getting feisty in western Illinois, where he responded to my apparent weakness by throwing a loose ring around a few divisions. I happen to have quite a few troops behind the line here, so I'll cut off his lead regiment and hope to put him firmly back in the box, while redoubling my own offensive efforts over in Indiana as my fresh panzers hit the line this turn.

Beautiful. Mexico City falls on the first round and I'm able to cut the remaining rail link to the rest of Mexico. This makes the airdrop less critical but I'll still make it for the benefit of anything north of this point. I go over to the defensive on most of this front for now and will refocus on making the final cut west from next turn. Then, I proceed to make the twin drives to Lake Michigan that failed last turn, creating and largely liquidating a large pocket at Gary, IL. The eastern drive then expands outwards and by turn's end I've eliminated the entire Allied line between the the Lake and Fort Wayne, with much of the line to the south battered and out of supply. This is a full breakthrough and comes just as Jeremy has committed much of his eastern reserve to Toronto. I'm not sure how he can respond? Certainly there'll be no strong Allied pincer like there was after turn 31. I think Jeremy could probably rebuild a line in western Ohio, but holding Detroit as well would be out of the question. Certainly he needs to give up on this active defence of Toronto. I think this is game over for the Allies though really. Already Mexico City makes replacements 50%, so Jeremy needs to be building his strength, but from now on I'm just going to keep hitting him and hitting him. If he's as weak in the east as I think then I'll be dropping German infantry into Norfolk to open a new front there. I'll also release the two airborne divisions I have in Ontario as soon as possible

The Allied line in Indiana dissolves

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[Jeremy Mac Donald]

Turn 33
Pretty much disaster. My hopes that the Mexicans could put up a fight really don’t pan out. Ben just storms Mexico City without the usual elaborate surrounding. Given that it is a supply point and a key one for supplying my forces down here that makes a lot of sense. Now the whole Mexican army down here is going to try and flee west trying to beat the Axis to rail and supply link at Guadalajara. No matter what happens now I will lose a lot down here but the question becomes will it be everything. I rail down the Americans I had sent to Phoenix last turn to try and help cover this retreat. The Mexicans are really just incapable of dealing with the Germans in any real number is pretty much the take away here.

Albuquerque is also doomed. I can see Ben sending two more Panzer Divisions to the West. I just can’t see how I could have relieved it without a lot more in reinforcements. Some of my troops that where close by slip away and I start up on a defensive line back near Gallop where I can at least find some defensive terrain.

The Main Line is no longer the Main Line. There is now a Chicago Line and an Eastern Line as Ben decisively drives a wedge through my forces seizing much of the south bank of Lake Michigan. This is the strategic doom I am facing. The Eastern Line is just barely put back together this turn. Very soon that won’t be possible. Next turn or the turn after that probably. If it where not for this and Mexico it would have been another OK turn as I destroy another Panzer Division as Ben drives up to Chicago. He might really get me back as I had to attack right into the last round to pull this off and now I have two Armoured Divisions in some danger of being destroyed in an overstack attack.

I expect to just be going back and forth with Ben here but if I can I need to try to attack here to recover the link to the east. Though I doubt I get far and even if I do I suspect Ben advances east far faster then I advance West. This is also not really a great time for an offensive – except a very slow one with lots of artillery maybe. I have taken horrendous losses, have a rapidly falling replacement rate and started the turn with a mere 50 National Guard Riflemen in the kitty meaning that resource is now completely tapped out.

Near Toronto I get aggressive, maybe too aggressive but here to is a way to potentially link up the east and west. That story though is likely to be more from the area of Sault St. Marie as I rail most of the Canadian Guard here (with the balance being sent even further north to the northern Canadian road). This will be my main drive to relink but I don’t actually expect it to succeed. I think if it is ever getting close Ben still has reinforcement’s he could commit to block me.

Mexicans flee Mexico en mass

Fall Grau JB 33.jpg (2.07 MiB) Viewed 1008 times

[golden delicious]

Turn 34:
Some fight in the old dog yet, then... Jeremy launches counterattacks in Ontario and Illinois, cutting off and destroying units here and there. I guess he has realised that he needs an active defence in the west to keep me from focusing too intently on the east. There, a new line has drawn up in front of last turn's breach, with a mix of fresh and rebuilt units. I set up some counterattacks of my own in Ontario; I'm actually under some pressure here and reinforcement isn't out of the question, but for the time being I hold off- I can direct a couple more divisions released by the arrival of 2nd Axis Army.

As planned, I drop the Spezia airborne division on the Mexican Pacific railway, just south of Culiacan. I destroy the bridge here and may be able to cut supply to the Allies entirely as early as next turn. I also attempt to drop the two airborne divisions in Ontario behind the Allied line in southern Michigan, but only one gets through. Mexico looks good in general: some more shenanigans from odd Mexican regiments but generally Jeremy is just trying to get out- and now the door is shut. I make some local offensives but in general I'm content for this force to sit in position until the SS divisions are resupplied and can head north again and the Mexicans are out of supply and can be squashed.

In Ohio, I find Jeremy's line manned by pitiful dregs of units. One division is a 2-2, another a 4-4. I throw fresh rested panzers against this line, getting a series of RBCs. I hope to blast this sector wide open and push into central Ohio, making Cincinnati untenable while threatening Cleveland and Detroit.

As planned, I add more German troops to Virginia: I can only lift a fairly small number of units at a time, and I'm keeping up a flow of fresh infantry to the centre as far as rail lift will allow, so this turn this is only five divisions plus two HQs (to break the fortress line). I'll try to hit two hexes this turn with what I have locally to get an early start; I get one right outside Norfolk which could lead to a minor breakthrough if Jeremy is still here next turn.

Another wrecked Allied line. I tear three or four gaping holes in the new positions in Ohio and Michigan, eliminating multiple divisions in-turn, and trapping the whole centre of the front (another three divisions). I'm only two hexes from Lake Erie, which would cut this front in half again (albeit troops can transfer via Niagara). Now would be a great time for Jeremy to pull back and defend in the Pennsylvania mountains behind the upper Ohio, reducing his frontage by 10-15 hexes (even assuming he protects Detroit and Cleveland) in good terrain, losing only Cincinnati in the process and also buying a couple of turns of relative quiet while my infantry follows up. I don't think this will be his move, though.

FG34.png (1.2 MiB) Viewed 999 times

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

Turn 34
Sigh. Ben smashes my eastern line this turn. In the east it is a general retreat across the whole line. I abandon Cincinnati as untenable, which is really too bad. Ben used his airdrop this turn in the north, but not to cut off Toronto. At this point I just can’t afford reserves anymore and maybe he won’t use them again. This turn at least it might be tough but really you can airdrop from anywhere so Ben could airdrop using a southern based airbourne unit – but it has to fly a long way through airspace with Allied Fighters. As it stands, he tried make two airdrops and one was turned back.

My new line(s) will be in front of Detroit and Cleveland-Pittsburgh-Baltimore. Detroit is getting all the best stuff I can find and reach it with as I have realized that when we made the New York City Supply Point something the Allies can deploy it apparently can only be deployed if Axis player is near New York.

[EDIT: Actually it can’t be triggered at all due to a bug]

So now Detroit is the only supply point I have in the whole east. Basically, I absolutely have to keep Detroit. Seems unlikely but if I deploy what is left of my good Armour here maybe Ben puts it on the backburner in favour of easier pickings?

I also have to hold Toronto now as my supply line will go up and pass-through Buffalo by next turn. This is a problem as the defences around Toronto are beginning to get very thin. That said I started up on attacks out of Sault St. Marie so maybe Ben is delayed in front of Toronto at least enough to make a full force push less likely.

Ben is not as aggressive at cutting me off in Mexico as expected but he blows a bridge on my one rail link down here which puts everything in the area down to trace supply.

[EDIT: I see from his AAR that it was actually an airdrop – never caught this on the playback and thought he had hit a bridge with bombers]

I continue to try and slip the army out of the area and essentially am looking to abandon Mexico for the time being.

West of Albuquerque Ben has moved up and encountered my line. We will see if he attacks it but probably, he does because the southern flank is pretty much hanging on air. I can’t really afford much to reinforce and may have to retreat again.

Dribs and drabs of mine arrive near Tuscan – this area must be defended at least until I get my army out of Mexico. In fact, here is more or less where the Mexican Army ends up trying to defend as it retreats out of Mexico.

Ben’s rear area is not well defended by fighters so I bring down 7 bridges cutting his supplies to the front. If he goes all out on Cincinnati, he maybe only has to deal with this for one turn but even that would be a bit helpful, and I am hoping it takes him two turns to storm Cincinnati.

I launch a fairly good offensive out of the Chicago area but Ben has significant reserves. I’m in reasonable danger of having the more exposed units cut off and destroyed. Still, I don’t want to be too conservative here despite my skyrocketing loss rate because, ideally I want to relink my front with Detroit and much more realistically, I want to take pressure of Ben’s offensive to the east.

Across the eastern front the Allies flee, blowing bridges behind them. If one looks near the top here the very best take up defencive positions protecting critical Detroit.

Fall Grau JB 34.jpg (2.55 MiB) Viewed 972 times

[golden delicious]

Turn 35:
There we go- Jeremy obviously saw the same problem as I did and bugged out in the east, falling back even further than expected: in Virginia, I follow up as hard as I can given all the blown bridges but there's just no sign of the Allies here: it looks like he's behind the Potomac. To the north, I find a double line around Detroit- the first composed of armoured divisions in good condition. I'll aim to hit this immediately. I also put SSLAH adjacent to Cleveland- looks like this city isn't protected at all. I'm also destroying four divisions which were trapped on the old line, and have a division and a half out of supply with my forward elements. I'm assuming Jeremy's new line will be over the state line in Pennsylvania where he has outstanding defensive positions, and to be honest I don't expect to crack them. Once I've established that he's holding a continuous line here I think I'll mark it, storm the industrial cities, then shift my weight west again.

At the same time, Jeremy launched a reasonably dangerous offensive from the Chicago front, putting a stack of four divisions out of supply and roughing up a few others. Obviously the idea is that I'll divert my mechanised divisions here and take pressure off the east but I don't think it's necessary: I have a number of infantry divisions resting on the rail which can plug gaps, and I'm strong enough here to make a counterattack of my own with a view to cutting off the lead division.

Another counterattack is developing from the direction of Sault Ste. Marie. This started last turn but I muffed my response and now a division is wrecked and fully cut off, and the 1st Canadian Guard Army is here, so I estimate Allied strength here at 9 divisions or more, whereas I have about two, with an Alpini division rushed up this turn. I have five or six other divisions which are headed this way which should be enough to prevent this turning into a rout and allowing an Allied linkup in Ontario. I am however acutely aware that I have nothing whatsoever on the northern flank, and Jeremy may well be infiltrating something east toward Malartic. I decide to send a Swedish corps up here this turn to move onto this flank and either attack or defend, depending on the situation when they arrive

Down in Mexico, starting to push west I find a real line with no fewer than three US divisions blocking the road to Guadalajara, no doubt with the expectation that the Mexican army will be evacuated this way. Well... I did just cut the rail last turn, and if I judge right I've actually severed supply entirely this turn. There are at least eight and probably more Mexican divisions in addition to the US forces down here, so this feels like a pretty solid success if I'm right. Question is will it hold? I need to push my screen over the western mountains otherwise the Spezia airborne division is going to get hammered shortly. I'm not feeling too threatened by the two guerrilla brigades which showed up and hit my screen near Chihuahua, as I actually have quite a few troops spare in this sector: three Italian divisions and one Bulgarian concentrate here, and I release more Colombians by thinning my screen further north. Altogether this is about six divisions versus two brigades.

Further north still, I find that the two National Guard divisions blocking the Arizona state line are actually five or maybe more. This means there won't be a cheap victory here. I'll concentrate this turn on storming Albuquerque, which will allow some resupply, then I'll swing my main force around the (apparent) open south flank here.

It's at this point that I realise Jeremy cut no fewer than six rail bridges, three each for my two supply routes to the midwest. This is an impressive effort and must have cost a fair number of bombers, as I do have air cover over most of these bridges. What's annoying isn't so much the attack as that I noticed it rather late in the turn, after moving almost all my engineers off to various subsidiary and irrelevant tasks, most of them precisely the opposite direction from the critical bridges. This will take some time to fix so in the meantime I'll prioritise storming Cincinnati and connecting up the supply point to my rail net. As a consequence of this I stop landing troops for this front and instead concentrate on the coastal areas and the west (which is still happily rail supplied).

Those blown bridges put a bit of a dampner on what should have been a pretty happy turn. It'll take three or four turns to sort out, though I can get at least some supply from Cincinnati hopefully on turn 37 (I started to wear it down this turn and have my Romanians in place for a full assault next turn), and maybe even connect it to the rail net for turn 38. Detroit and Cleveland are fundamentally indefensible from this direction so those should fall too, giving me further supply boosts ideally in sequence. This would also really hammer Jeremy's replacements: he's at 45% next turn as I took Albuquerque and the above losses give him a measly 44% for turns 40-50- assuming I don't get anything else.

The giant bag in Mexico. Inset image shows the gap between Para Spezia and 62nd Infantry blocked by major escarpment. Tragically, I discover on the following turn that there's a limited supply point in Yucatan so Mexico is still in supply

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[Jeremy Mac Donald]

Turn 35
Well reality begins to assert itself. My offensive out of Chicago heading east is halted by Ben. This turns attack is just a frontal one that takes two hexs. I’m actually quite concerned about an Axis counter attack that takes Chicago because I’m not really that strong here and there is little prospect of reinforcements for a significant period of time. What reinforcements I do have are needed on other fronts. I’m refusing the southern flank west of Albuquerque, but it hardly seems adequate. I have mere delaying forces near Tucson.

Ben’s attacks toward Toronto cease so it does look like my offensive near Sault St. Marie might have drawn off some of his forces. Ben lands the Swedes in Quebec City this turn so now there are real Axis forces in the area. This will soon put paid to my attack out of Sault St. Marie – I’ll be surprised if I am not soon on the defensive.

In the East my line has been split between a Detroit Line and the rest of the general eastern line between Cleveland and Baltimore. I have enough brigades to defend this line but no real excess. Still, I am not sure what the point of the line is if Detroit falls. I’m considering thinking it just to get a few more Divisions for Detroit. It would make holding anything really impossible once Ben discovered the gaps but I just don’t see many options.

Detroit is one of the few places I am counter attacking at just to clear Ben out of a hex near Detroit and also to make use of the large quantity of Artillery I have gathered here. That said there is no sign at all of Ben going for easier pickings – he sends the lion’s share of his best mechanized forces this way.

Even my defense against the Japanese has been stripped pretty much completely bare. I know they are coming but I just don’t have anything left and Ben airdropped an Italian Parachute Division behind the lines cutting the last rail route out of Mexico – I have to get that guy out of the way before Ben can completely cut me off in Mexico. As it stands the Mexican Army continues to make a break for this rail line and I think some forces finally start arriving next turn but they are woefully weak due to being on trace supply.

My bridge bombing campaign has worked well. Ben attacks but fails to take Cincinnati so, for at least one more turn, his armies are not getting supplies.

Allied overview on turn 35.

Fall Grau Turn 35 Overview.jpg (6.22 MiB) Viewed 948 times

[golden delicious]

Turn 36:
Blast- I neglected that the Allies have a limited supply point at Campeche (in Yucatan), so Mexico still has trace supply. I'll need to see if I can follow up and close this down before I lose an opportunity here; an Italian motorised division pushes down from Veracruz whilst the local forces I have in Guatemala continue to drive down the main axis here. Fortunately I don't think Jeremy realises this point is critical just yet. I should be able to block the bottleneck southeast of Acayucan in the next couple of turns, so it's just a matter of whether I can keep the door shut on the Pacific coast- so far, there's only one Mexican engineer brigade marking my airborne division, which digs in.

A fair amount of activity this turn relates to the rail links to the centre of the map. First, I run through all my engineers and work out which ones get pointed where. I think I have enough in place to fix the western route next turn provided Jeremy blows no more bridges. Then, I drop all of my long ranged fighters off to the south; a stack based in Mobile covers every bridge on both routes, but is out of range of the front so should be able to focus on LOC protection. I drop a second stack at a nearby airfield in Mississippi which has similar coverage. If Jeremy tries this again he should get hit with roughly a thousand of these long ranged fighters, which previously would be in a bad condition and often reorganising on his turn. These only represent a fraction of my fighter strength, and the short ranged planes stay concentrated in the centre. I determine that Cincinnati is too far from my rail net to quickly link up so I drop that idea and keep building the rail toward Detroit, which I hope to storm in the next couple of turns.

As I advance, the shape of the new Allied position becomes clear. There's still a good line in front of Detroit though I have an awful lot of power in front of the city despite my dire supply situation. The line extends across the thumb of the Michigan mitten but my focus is in the south where I think I can break into the rear of the city and get the critical flank bonus for an assault. To the south, Jeremy had belatedly made a move to screen Cleveland but I don't think he can stop me cutting it off. A Commonwealth division is trapped to the west against Lake Erie and will be destroyed. My Romanians are told to hold off at Cincinnati as I have a huge park of German artillery here and so this will be a German only operation. My mechanised units that are resting (a minority) move adjacent to the city to make the most of the boost next turn.

In Canada, I change my mind on the Swedes and rail three divisions to Toronto, where they can help resume the back-and-forth that Jeremy is so determined on here, leaving the Germans to concentrate on the west, where the Allied offensive still looks dangerous. This leaves three divisions for Northern Ontario, but these will be reinforced with more this turn, including two motorised divisions better suited to this huge front.

I also decide to land another corps of German troops in Canada. These guys will hit the Allied line which has run across the US-Canada border almost since the first turn as I aim to further ramp up the pressure on the Allies in the east. I'll target Portland, with a view to opening up another anchorage and supply point here, and see where this goes. This leaves one more corps of German infantry in reserve, as well as 4 SS divisions.

Better than expected. I get Cincinnati of course- but I also storm into Detroit on the final round after a blistering series of assaults (losing quite a lot of tanks in the process, but hey there are loads in the pool). I think Jeremy will get it back on his turn, but the writing is on the wall here. If I have the city before turn 40 then Allied replacements fall to 32%. I'm also pretty close to getting Cleveland- and I'm only two hexes from Pittsburgh [as Jeremy noted already Detroit is also his last supply point in the east so this is game over for the Allies].

Panzergrenadier Division Grossdeutschland enters Detroit

FG36.png (1.58 MiB) Viewed 937 times

[golden delicious]

Allied overview on turn 35.

This screenshot really emphasises how small the northeastern sector is in terms of the map as a whole, but as of turn 35 this area contains no less than eleven industrial cities, three of which are doubles. This is almost a third of the total for the entire map.

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

Turn 36
I open the turn and am confronted with this.

No supplies!

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I don't even bother to do my turn - with the entire east out of supply and no way to activate the supply point at New York the game is over. Ben will soon simply walk into everything in the east.

Now to be clear this bug is not why I lost - I have already lost even without this bug - the bug just makes it pointless to see how it develops.
With the match over it is decided to make a few changes to the scenario (making 2.28 the most up to date version).

The changes are:

* Fixing the New York Supply Point bug.
* Making it possible for the Allies to cross the Straits of Mackinac with the hep of an Engineer.
* It is also decided that the Allied Infantry Squad replacements rate will be substantially reduced but that there will be a huge number of squads in the on hand pool from turn one of the game. This is to shake up an Axis strategy of attrition where the Axis player pretty much trades their army with the Allies in the early part of the game and the Allies collapse before we even get into the (hopefully) more interesting second and third act of the scenario.

[Curtis Lemay]

Very interesting game. And I think Jeremy should be commended for hanging around long after the game looked hopeless (at least to me).

I still wonder about the lack of garrisoning. The Axis rear-areas look so bare of anything. And it might be interesting to separate armament centers from manpower centers (as I've done elsewhere). Could armament centers have been moved, as the Soviets did?

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

Very interesting game. And I think Jeremy should be commended for hanging around long after the game looked hopeless (at least to me).

I still wonder about the lack of garrisoning. The Axis rear-areas look so bare of anything. And it might be interesting to separate armament centers from manpower centers (as I've done elsewhere).

The problem with separating the armaments and the manpower is you can only do that by disbanding off map units which futzes with the VPs. We actually do that a bit in this scenario but doing so on a grand scale would do something like double the size of the Allied Army but cause half of it to disband itself sending the VPs completely out of wack.

Personally I'd love it if the system had a disband command that had no effect on VPs but one has to work with the TOAW we have.

Could armament centers have been moved, as the Soviets did?

The Scenario essentially assumes this sort of thing is taking place as the replacement pool increases by 50% every 10 turns and the only way the Axis player can avoid being completely overwhelmed is by constantly ripping out chunks of America. Preferably the more important chunks.

It is not really possible to do it the other way because you can't predict how the scenario will play out. If the scenario assumed that factories would be moved to South Dakota the Axis player could prioritize South Dakota. If there where some kind of factory units that could be moved around depending on the current situation maybe this could be done but not under the current system.

[Curtis Lemay]

Well, you disband them and there is an initial hit to the VPs. But then they move from the pools to the on-map units and those VPs disappear. Putting 10,000 squads in the pools at the start is going to muck with the VPs too.

[golden delicious]

Well, you disband them and there is an initial hit to the VPs. But then they move from the pools to the on-map units and those VPs disappear. Putting 10,000 squads in the pools at the start is going to muck with the VPs too.

Not really. Yes, loss VP will be lower in the early part of the game because more of the authorised equipment will be on the board. However, the effect is not that massive, as these squads only make a relatively minor contribution to the overall AP strength of the Allied armies- which is what determines the loss penalty.

Anyway, this is a bit of a red herring. Several points;
1) The game is very much a fictional scenario, not a simulation. I haven't spent too long trying to work out what was where, and instead industrial cities are pretty uniformly distributed based on the population of the various states.
2) It's actually pretty simple to play as there are very few complex player mechanics or house rules to follow
3) As it stands, the Allied war economy is pretty robust, with boosts continuing to be received throughout the scenario such that the Allies can lose half their cities and still have tanks and planes coming out of their ears by the end of the match. One could have a very complex system of disbands and theatre options and so on- but I don't think it would materially influence the feel of the scenario, other than to make it fiddly and annoying to play

Again, if you're interested in a more realistic approach to an Axis invasion of North America let me know and I'll post something about another scenario I have in draft.

[golden delicious]

Very interesting game. And I think Jeremy should be commended for hanging around long after the game looked hopeless (at least to me).

Fortunately Jeremy and I have been down this road several times so;
1) we've returned the favour of keeping the game going quite a few times and
2) we're both able to enjoy small victories while going down to a big defeat.

[golden delicious]

End:
Quite apart from the obviously uneven battlefield situation, it transpires that the event to activate an Allied supply point at New York City is bugged and so Jeremy can't go on from this point even if he wants to- everything in the east is out of supply already.

I'm pretty pleased with the way this played out according to the strategy laid out at the start of the AAR. While I seriously overextended myself around turns 10-15, Jeremy's ability to capitalise on this was quite limited.

For the Allies, the first part of the scenario always involves a difficult fighting retreat and its impossible to play a perfect game. Jeremy certainly took advantage of my too frequent tendency to send unsupported divisions forward where he could easily devour them in a single turn, but on a larger scale he was perhaps too passive in his defence initially, allowing me to expand over a frankly enormous area of the map by turn 13, and then too stubborn in fighting in fixed positions south of the major river lines up until turn 18, allowing me to inflict heavy defeats on him simultaneously east and west of the Mississippi. This left him badly weakened for the critical period when I was breaking into Illinois. By the time his strength was somewhat recovered, this lodgement was too large to be contained. He then managed, I think, too active and too forward a defence, allowing me to accelerate the attrition of his remaining forces.

FG End.png (47.48 KiB) Viewed 872 times

[golden delicious]

I still wonder about the lack of garrisoning. The Axis rear-areas look so bare of anything.

See the strat map I just posted. I count 23 divisions broken down by regiments to cover the LOC- and I could actually do with several more as the railheads are outrunning these forces at this point. Besides this I have six or seven divisions in Mexico actively engaged in or having just finished hunting down irregular units in my rear areas.

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

Well, you disband them and there is an initial hit to the VPs. But then they move from the pools to the on-map units and those VPs disappear. Putting 10,000 squads in the pools at the start is going to muck with the VPs too.

But the original VP calculation is based on the existence of these huge units in the OOB which can really scew things especially for a Grand Strategic scenario like Fall Grau.

I actually think it can be a feature is a scenario like Vietnam or the Israeli's in one of the Arab Israeli wars where what we are interesting in knowing in terms of VPs is how many men are dead but in Fall Grau the Loss VP is about the relative strengths of the armies.

The Israeli's can 'lose' even when they win and the same was true for the USA in Vietnam but at scenario's end in Fall Grau what we really want to know is "who is going to control North America considering the present situation?"

Having the initial VP calculated including very large numbers of "Manpower" or "Equipment" units disbanding scews these figures like crazy and makes America's strengths. Its massive size, production potential and huge population) into weaknesses as it is being punished in terms of VPs for having those strengths.