Points for Assault battle ?

[Narwan]

Yeah I can see how you took that post that way. I've always thought of ME's and delay missions of the games mobile warfare options and assault/defend missions as the games static missions. In fact it took me quite a while to realise that some (perhaps even most) players think of those last types of missions of another variant of mobile operations. It's also why I advocate the 3:1 force ratio. For most maps it's hard to loose a game even at those odds if you do your set-up properly with the right type of forces (for a static defense). And for those of you who take that to mean you have to buy unrealistic forces, think again. The basic infantry battallion set-up is usually the best mix anyway with only little tweaking needed. There's a reason historical TO&E's are as they are. They work.

I had one game as a defender where on the face of it everything went as bad as it could for the defender (me). There was a natural 'corridor' next to northern map edge which I couldn't cover from my main positions. I defended it with light forces in a forward position only in the hope to use those to deter the attacker from using it. No luck, he had spotted it too and went for it. In fact he pushed 90% of his non-arty forces through it. Heavy fighting ensued but in the end he broke through and had bypassed my defensives and was into my rear. I figured I was in for a world of hurt as I assumed that when such a force breaks through you're bound to lose (it was still in my earlier days of gaming and that was/is the popular conception).
The result? He never came close to winning. Sure he went for my arty positions, he started rolling up my defenses from north to south, he went on hunting down my few mobile units, he had loads of arty and ammo units and kept pounding me. He did it by the book. Didn't make serious mistakes, played rather well in fact.
But he needed flags to win and my troops were dug in all around those in defense zones with goods fields of fire and ambush positions. By the time he got to half the flags he had lost nearly double the amount of points I had had to start with (game was at 3:1 odds). Which has little to do with my tactical ability but everything with how hard it is to dig out infantry with mobile forces that are short on infantry. You need grunts to spot defending infantry in time. A T34 or HT full of infantry is about double the cost of an infantry squad defending. Running into panzerfausts or AT mines again and again will cost you. Its just math.

And then I counterattacked with the forces he had bypassed. Taking a flag isn't enough; you also have to clear the woods/houses/gullies close to it. I almost took enough flags back to win, even under the old scoring rules (under the current scoring sheet it would have been a win, possibly a medium for the defender).
Now, this isn't about showing how good I am, it's about the realisation I had at that point that even if things go wrong to the point that nearly the entire enemy force is concentrated to break into your rear and working down your defenses north to south, doing things by the book you can still win as the defender at 3:1 odds if your set-up is right. In fact, you are unlikely to lose if your set-up is right. That's why this game stuck to me so much I still recall it vividly. When he broke through I fully expected it to be my first defeat and I started to fight for a draw but as the game progressed I realised I couldn't lose. He simply didn't have enough troops. So I do consider 3:1 odds a minimum for assault games.

Narwan