Strategies for Rhin et Danube

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Eqqman
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Joined: Thu Apr 30, 2020 12:18 pm

Strategies for Rhin et Danube

Unread postby Eqqman » Sun May 03, 2020 2:22 am

Hello-

Just curious what other players' thoughts are on this scenario. The dialogue box for the Conference recommends giving the 1st Free French amphibious capabilities, presumably for this situation. However, it hardly seems necessary. The forces arrayed against them on the east side of the river never move, even when you cut them out of supply or leave the west side of the river abandoned. It is much simpler to move the French north on turn 1 so they can pour through any openings made in the center of the map and join the race to Nurnburg or stay as a rear guard to pin down the forces that seem to prefer congregating at Ulm rather than the VP city at Tuttlingen. Many times this city can even be taken with no fighting as it gets left undefended for quite a while. At this point only a couple of units need remain to clean out the German troops when they collapse from lack of supply.

I had also been worried I wouldn't be able to finish this scenario as I couldn't get the British HQ upgraded to do amphibious assaults, but they could at least do river crossings. Given that the defenders in the north pull out during German turn 1 this is move than enough time to still win the scenario handily when you land unopposed on turn 2 and throw up pontoon bridges.

The whole way these river crossings are handled in this game is a puzzlement. I keep thinking back to the line from the movie 'A Bridge too Far' where Major Cook asks 'If 30 Corps were American, you'd have boats. Do you have boats'? I'm not an expert on WWII divisional TO & E but it surprises me that not only do amphibious operations come so late in the tech tree but they are expensive as well. Generally speaking the combat penalties already serve as a discouragement to doing these kinds of operations but here you have to jump through some extra hoops and will even fail some scenarios with no fault of your own if you don't have foreknowledge of what HQs need this capability and when.