Engineers in Assaults

[Ricky B]

Okay....not too long ago I made a statement on the WDS Boards which turned out to be wrong....and if you had asked me to bet any amount of money on it prior I would have taken the wager without hesitation.  My statement was that Engineers when added to an assault attack (the reference was for FWWC but I believed it would apply to PzC and/or MC as well) would have the effect of lowering casualties for the attacker and therefore increasing the chances of winning the assaults.  I believed this so strongly that it effected the way I played, I husbanded my engineers and saved them for critical assaults because of this belief.  Now, I don't mind being wrong and/or corrected, but this idea is so ingrained in me I'd love to understand why I thought it was so.  Did I dream this up out of thin air, or has anyone else played a game (WDS or other) where Engineers provided that sort of assistance I'm thinking of?  I'd blame advancing age and senility if I haven't believed this for years or decades.

Paul, being a bit older although not much, and suffering the same as you say, I wonder about some of the things I remember about the games, going back 20+ years for some things I swear I remember  .

But I did remember something similar to what you are thinking. And today I started tying it to Kursk. So I looked at its old initial changes log and Kursk introduced demolition units to the games. I believe that is what you are thinking of - it doesn't reduce losses for the attacker, but instead increases defensive losses by reducing the defensive benefit. From the demolition rule, which has more:

When Demolition Units participate in an assault attack, the defense value bonus that the defending units would receive from Bunkers and Pillboxes is cut in half for that assault.

So I would say your memory served you well, just missing a small nuance is all, but overall the impact on play is the same but with a focus on demolition units rather than general engineers. And maybe this is not what you are thinking of in the dim recesses, but I am fairly positive it is for me, just that I totally forgot the details.