Wired Bridges

[Dog Soldier]

Glenn,

I think we are talking VST rules here. What my experience has been is with the rivers and not the streams. Having a bypassed wired bridge across a stream that becomes demolished when your unsuspecting reinforcements try to cross it later in the game using Immediate A/I Orders for Divisional column movement is more annoying than dangerous. This same movement can trigger a bridge destruction across a river bringing the division to a halt.

I have seen this happen in France 40 on the Meuse river branch between hex coordinates (275,113) and (301,143). More commonly this occurs in the south along the many crossings of the Semois River. The area east of the Semois River is a great place to hide a bypassed Belgian unit. Later in the campaign one brings this unit to sit on an unguarded wired bridge river crossing. If the German is dependent on this crossing and has not built alternative crossings he could face reduced supply under VST as the route has to be traced many km to the east around the end of the river assuming all other bridges were destroyed. Attacking the pesky Belgian becomes a problem, since the Belgian will need to be assaulted to destroy the last remnants of the unit under the default optional rules. That assault could trigger a bridge demolition when the assaulting German unit takes the hex.

The German counter measure to this is simple.
In France 40, the German player has the option to be sure all wired bridges are approached and trigger a demolition resolution. This way the German player knows which bridges will need to be rebuilt for supply purposes. This is a great use for recon elements. Just mount up one of the numerous German bridge capable engineer units to follow a recon unit to check these bypassed wired bridges. The recon unit could use recon spotting to see if there is any hidden bypassed Allied units near the bridge. The recon unit then attempts to cross the bridge. If the bridge is destroyed the engineers step up and build a new one while the recon troops stand guard.

MG44 has a more acute issue since the playing area is so narrow. In the short term it could be possible for the Allies to destroy some of the small flak and garrison units by direct fire alone, thus never touching the wired bridge hex side. This is a transient advantage at best since eventually the Allied XXX Corps units have to cross the rivers somewhere, and risk demolition. A crafty Allied play could use his limited bridge building engineers to create crossings where there is no bridge, but this would seem to me to waste too much time just to not chance a bridge demolition. It can be done, but I think it would be very rare to help the Allied cause this way.

Dog Soldier