The Combined Arms Penalty

[Xerxes77]

I am unsure why you find this ahistorical. The Combined Arms Penalty is certainly is not a game balance mechanism. The rule reflects the vulnerability of armour attacking into non-open terrain without sufficient infantry support.

If the attacker has sufficient supporting infantry, then no penalty applies. It sounds to me that you are saying you believe it is the other way around and a penalty applies when you make a combined arms attack.

The rule is complex and I suspect often misunderstood. The way it works is that for each attacking hex, if that hex has both infantry and vehicles, the number of infantry and the number of vehicles times 10 are compared and the lower of these two figures represents the supporting infantry for that hex. So, if there are 10 men and 2 tanks in the hex, the number of supporting infantry would be 10. But if there where 100 men and 2 tanks, the number of supporting infantry would be 20. If an attacking hex has only infantry or only vehicles it has no supporting infantry.

The number of supporting infantry from each attacking hex are added to together to give the total supporting infantry. If this total exceeds the total defending infantry, then no Combined Arms Penalty applies. Otherwise, for every 10 defending infantry, or fraction of 10, in excess of the attacking infantry, the Combined Arms Penalty is applied to the excess number of vehicles by having them attack at half strength.


This seems quite reasonable to me.

Hi Green,
this is indeed a complex rule and every time I review it thinking that I've finally grasped it, I'm foiled by either the language or the examples.

I believe the following passage is taken straight from the manual? I've added in bold what I believe is a key word missing from the sentence. Would like to know your opinion.

"Otherwise, for every 10 defending infantry, or fraction of 10, in excess of the attacking supporting infantry, the Combined Arms Penalty is applied to the excess number of vehicles by having them attack at half strength."