Forcing Bridges against ZOC

[Ricky B]

I have used it a few times in PzC battles - but only after thorough prep. As Dog Soldier said, trying it against prepared defenders is extremely risky, but using artillery and direct fire to beat up any defenders in the area will reduce the risk, if not the chance of significant losses due to enemy fire in their turn.

[Dog Soldier]

The difference in PzC (compared to FWW F14) is the defenders can bring up a counter attack force of armor and keep it out of LOS of the enemy crossing the river. Holding back precious air strikes by the defender will help, if they become available at just the right time.

The critical thing for the defender to do is to disrupt all attacking units crossing the river in that first turn when they are vulnerable in travel mode, The defender must weigh whether his counter assault on the enemy stack will be effective enough to disrupt any remaining good order enemy units. The key to this assault on non-disrupted enemy units is a judgement how strong those crossing units are defending at 1/4 of their assault value.

The same principle described above in this thread for the attacking side to soften the defenders first applies to the defenders to repel those units crossing the river. As much artillery, air strikes, and direct fire as possible needs to be directed on the crossing units so the final assault will at least leave all of them disrupted and unable to mount assaults in their own turn to widen the bridgehead.

As in real war, it just depends on the situation, what you have at hand, and how much of a wager you want to make on that final assault. You will only get one shot against a good attacking player.

Dog Soldier

[jonnymacbrown]

"I cannot speak for PzC games, but i have used this rule a few times in F14 games, of course i plastered the defenders with ranged field gun and MG fire for several moves to try to leave the defending battalions disrupted and unable to assault the units that had crossed, it may be the case that the large number of FG/MG units in F14 that can fire 2+ hex's may make this new rule more effective than in PzC games where units with a SA range of 2+ hex's are quite rare?"

Yes, those MG & arty units in F 14 pack a lot of punch because most of the defending units have a defense of 5 or 6 as opposed to 16 in Panzer games. Load them up where you want to cross and even if your bridgehead is reduced you can still chew up the attackers real bad. jonny

[Mr Grumpy]

Yes, i think the important point to be made here is this was a rule change introduced to solve a particular issue in the First World War Campaigns series, the feature was then rolled out into the PzC titles and as DS points out for various reasons discussed in this thread will not be nearly as effective to use in PC games as in F14 games.