Any consensus on F 14?

[Nitram Draw]

"Yes I agree as the French you can't start a general withdraw along the entire front immediately."

That's what I am wondering about. If you stand and fight for any length of time it becomes increasingly difficult to withdraw. An immediate pullout from the Ardennes is undoubtedly best as the roads facilitate it. The line from Givet/Dinant/Namur can also be immediately given up with the crossings held by redoubts.

"I find the best way to withdraw is to leapfrog backwards."

This is great in theory but does it work against a ruthless German attacker? It's actually about a 150 mile retreat to the final stand before Paris. How many wargamers have ever actually done anything like this, moving 700,000 men and 4000 guns to reassemble at some place far to the rear, that wasn't laid out for them, like the aforementioned retreat to Moscow?

[i]"The French have enough units to do this almost everywhere, the only problem is the left flank."

Yes well the left flank's the problem.

"They need to get something more there than the single division that can rail up at the start."[/i]

That's another problem we talked about here. Volcano Man made some changes to slow the German thrust through Tournai down a bit (blown bridges and the like) but there is nothing there except the next to useless 88th Territorials and the British 4th Division won't arrive there until the 25th. A movement in force in that direction might be unstoppable especially with the BEF fixed for 2 days. Jonny

The whole key is that the Germans can't chase you any faster than you can run. So you only need a few fresh units to form the second or third lines. plus you can move at night because they are going to rest behind the next line, not assault it.
The whole Northern salient can be given up, there are not a lot of VP's you can expect to hold there but you can extract a lot of troops while delaying the Germans for a few days. You can run in the Ardennes area too. There are good river lines to defend behind. River crossings are HARD in this game.
On the left you can use the British division that come in entrained. You can also rail units from the south up, it takes some time and they may be out of command for a while but all you want to do is slow them down. It takes a long time for the Germans to build up a large enough force to control the left. It can look bad but it's like a big area of vacuum out there. The key is not to panic on the left. Everywhere esle you can hold or perform and organized withdraw.
It's not easy but overall I think it's easier to make a defense than to assault one in this game.