Allied units in F'40

[Elxaime]

The best approach mentally is to realize that F40, like some other of the games out there, is modeling a historical result as opposed to simply laying the forces out there and letting the chips fall where they may. IMHO, the French army of 1940, per se, was nowhere near as bad at fighting as it is modeled in this game. Their problem was faulty Allied air doctrine which hindered close air support and an outmoded command system which prevented quick changes of plans. The former is easy to model, but the latter not so much. France 1940 was a disaster based on poor plans and leadership, like Cannae, the Little Bighorn and Balaclava - how as a game designer do you model that? You cannot force the player, with his benefit of hindsight, to put his head into the noose like his historical counterparts did. Players also hate "idiot" rules that keep them from moving their units. The compromise reached in HPS F40 was to give most of the Allied units the fighting capacity of wet tofu. I think they ended up doing OK - you have a decent approximation of the campaign of 1940.

And to be fair, there are pitfalls of another kind to the "just lay it out there and let them play" approach. The HPS Kursk 43' title stock campaign is a good example. The German forces are well-equipped and high morale, as they should be. But the victory conditions and setup give them a completely free hand as to where and how to attack. Unbound by the dictates of Hitler and the German General Staff, a cunning German player of Kursk 43' sidesteps the main Soviet defenses, uses his knowledge of where and for how long Soviet units are fixed, and wins easily by outflanking the Soviets and chopping them into mincemeat. The Soviets are set up and the victory conditions assume the Germans will attempt an advance along the historic axis, but there is nothing to constrain them to do so and many reasons for them to do elsewise. As a result, the stock Kursk 43 campaign is a cautionary tale of what happens when a game designer gives the players too much freedom.