Hints on assaults in First World War Campaigns (FWWC)

[Mr Grumpy]

One of the many ways in which FWWC differs from Panzer Campaigns titles is in the way you handle
assaults, in PzC the procedure is pretty standard throughout the titles i.e. disrupt the defenders
and then assault, here is the section of Ed's France ‘14 notes that handles that issue and just in
case you have not read to page 147 of the notes (shame on you ) here is what he says on the subject....

When to assault
The most important thing to know in First World War Campaigns, is when to press home an assault and
when not to assault. Generally speaking, you should of course get accustomed to the particular strengths
and weaknesses of the units in general. For example, an infantry unit can almost always assault a mounted
(Travel Mode) cavalry unit, bicycle unit or engineer unit with success, without having to disrupt them
before hand. "Success" in this case is defined as taking the ground. You should also always to have at
least a 2:1 advantage when making an assault, try to avoid 1:1 assaults as much as possible.

In the case of enemy cavalry, you can usually tell whether it is a pesky cavalry squadron or a full cavalry
regiment by seeing what the effect is of their return fire.

If the enemy is deemed to be nothing more than a cavalry squadron, then you can press home the assault to
great effect, again without waiting for the enemy to be disrupted. This is also true for engineer units which
might also be broken down into companies. Bridging engineers have a very low assault value and can also be
assaulted without being disrupted first.

If you have a pesky engineer unit barring the way somewhere, then simply overrun it with a massed infantry assault and you can probably rest assure that the enemy is throwing "the kitchen sink" in the line at this point if they are wasting engineer units in this manner.

And finally and most importantly, you should NEVER wait for field gun or machine gun units to be disrupted before
carrying out an assault if they are stacked without infantry support, if they are stacked with a infantry unit
then it would be best to disrupt that unit first before you assault, if you still don’t take the hex rest assured
the field gun or machine gun units will take the brunt of the casualties/fatigue.