Assistance Playing East Prussia `14

[jonnymacbrown]

Ok as an ex PzC player who has completely dropped that series for FWWC, I should be able to help you as I can understand your issues moving from one series to another.

However you have "jumped in" a little to fast as you obviously have not read Ed's extensive designer notes which would have answered all your questions, please do take the time to read them as the information within the PDF file will make your time playing these titles more enjoyable and less frustrating, the following text is from page 64........

"In First World War Campaigns, a design approach was taken which requires machine gun and field gun units to expend their full movement point to exit from Travel Mode. These units only require 1/3 of their movement allowance to enter Travel Mode though. This approach was taken because this requirement to exit from Travel Mode represents the actual setting up of these units into firing positions.
This setting up involved setting up the guns themselves, stockpiling and preparing ammunition, and communicating with their local HQ. All of these required a substantial amount of time to do when taken as a whole, and this process left the unit vulnerable the enemy until it was completed.

The primary reason for this approach is game play considerations on how these units were historically used. By requiring a full turn to exit from Travel Mode, it puts the advantage of these units squarely in the hands of the defense, which is where these units excelled. These units can enter Travel Mode quickly and move away to another position, but any attempt to use these units as a leading force in an attack will intentionally subject them to enemy fire before they have a change to deploy (since one turn must be spent in Travel Mode). This also means that these units are extremely vulnerable to counter assault by the enemy and especially vulnerable to enemy cavalry in general. In other words, if the attacker intends to move these gun units adjacent to the enemy as some sort of driving force, they can certainly choose to do so but it will come with a consequence. These units should always be accompanied by friendly infantry to protect them from assault, and the guns should expect retaliatory fire on the enemy’s turn. It also means that this vulnerability discourages these units from being able to race forward alone to a strategic location (such as a crossroads) in order to quickly plant themselves as an immovable force. This all contributes to “influencing” a more historical use for these units.

In the offensive, care must be taken with their employment so as to not subject them to too much enemy fire as they move forward. It also means that once these units are setup and rooted to the ground, you should avoid moving them unless they are completely out of range with the enemy. Ideally, the “safe” approach would be to move these units forward to a standoff range of two hexes from the enemy, in order to safely avoid the most harmful retaliatory fire, then deploy into this hex in order to lay down disrupting fire before your infantry moves forward for the assault. If you, as the attacker, intend to be bold and bring these units up as a killing force, then you must contend with the drawback that you will ultimately lose valuable guns and men to enemy fire, and this is especially true if you decide to mass multiple such units into the same hex. You will also inherently accumulate a large amount of fatigue in the process and possibly get them disrupted as well. The defender could then wisely choose to fall back once these units have deployed, thus requiring you to move forward and repeat the same bloody process again, trading the strength of these valuable units for ground.

On the defensive, when being pursued by an enemy, you would want to use these units to move rearward, picking out your key defensive points, and screened them by friendly infantry to keep the enemy away from the machine guns and field guns until they deploy. Once these machine gun and field gun units are deployed, the screening friendly infantry should retire onto them to form the main line of resistance. As the main line gives way to enemy assault, these field gun units and machine gun units should be the first to fall back to their next position where the process repeats if necessary."

I think you we agree that Ed covers all aspects of his titles in great detail !

On your second point I am guessing you are moving into your attacks against the Russian forces before you have softened them up sufficiently with MG/FG & arty fire? Remember the Russian brigade HQ's only have a command radius of 1 hex (yes 1 hex!) so they cannot hope to cover more than a fraction of the defensive line, this means that all the Russian battalions outside this radius will (unlike PzC) lose 1 level of morale (down to either D or E) and once disrupted will really struggle to undisrupt, this is the Russian army's massive Achilles heel that you must exploit, so you need to attack more methodically than in PzC and probe in more than one place for the areas of the defensive line that must be outside the brigade command range.

Another huge frustration will come from overstacking your units, as an PzC player you will be used to cramming your units into a hex with no penalty, but in FWWC your losses are linked to the hex stacking density and with 4200 men allowed per hex it can get very dense! LOL

Hope that helps.........

Very helpful. Excellent analysis Mr. Grumpy! jonny