F 40 Gold question

[Sir John Cope]

What is the purpose for the withdrawal of French 9th and 7th Army command on May 15th? 9th just got unfixed at dawn on May 15th. Now in 6 more hours they are gone and all their Army artillery will soon be low on fuel. What's the idea here? Thanks jonny

GQG does the same thing at a later date. I believe the hey-presto disappearance and reappearance is meant to simulate the withdrawal of those armies in reaction to the Sedan breakthrough. Unfortunately, in any given game that breakthrough may or may not happen, and so the relocations mostly serve as just another "idiot rule" handicap for the French: artificial constraints, like the release dates of various units, which are intended to simulate the failure of the high command (a wargame design approach I frankly despise as contrary to the nature of a wargame simulation).

Among his many treasonous acts “General” Gamelin’s send off of 7th Army to completely and literally disappear into the Dutch swamps was the most egregious.  How do you simulate that? Why not make the whole 7th Army hey-presto disappear? As for the staggered release dates that adds to the unpredictability and is well thought out in my opinion. Still, I think the F 40 Gold designers are intent to make Germany win, or better said, make it impossible for them to lose when two equally skillful players play a campaign. When you can stack two German infantry battalions with 25% more firepower than any French defender and suffer no adverse effects from stacking 1200 men in a 1000 yard hex then the game is rigged.  jonny

I agree with your later points: a competent Germany can't really lose. I'm playing the second of two games now, first GER now FRA, and both played with Alt-Fire: many hate the idea of that optional, and I don't contend it is ideal, but it does limit the absurdity you mention: you pay a price for massive concentrations in a few key hexes. 

Regarding your former points, I consider this a fundamental question of wargame design: do you the designer attempt to force a player to make historical mistakes, or should the player as C-in-C be left free to make his own?  If I am in the role of Gamelin, must I be constrained to act as Gamelin did, or can I revise history?  Personally, it seems to me that the point of a wargame is to allow the player to revise history and make his own mistakes.  And in this particular case, being handcuffed to Gamelin, when added to all the vast advantages the German enjoys, and assuming competent play, effectively guarantees German victory. 

Of course, someone might contend that German victory was a certainty anyway - except that that's not the consensus of historians of the campaign, many of whom point out that if Gamelin and his commanders had not made the mistakes they did, it could easily have gone differently.  And if so, why should a player be shackled to Gamelin's corpse?  

BTW, my term "idiot rules" derives from the first wargame I ever encountered on this campaign, the great Jim Dunnigan's France 1940, originally one of SPI's first games and later republished by AH. To quote the Wiki article: "The historical scenario, which inevitably leads to an overwhelming German victory, is titled "The Idiot's Game." I think the designers of our F40 have given us another "Idiot's Game" in this sense, but in my opinion Dunnigan was right to make his "Idiot's Game" an optional curiosity rather than standard rules.