Killing enemy forces without taking territory

[leobarron2000]

Got a quick question -let’s say you’re more focused on killing enemy forces. After the first round of rolled dice between both opponents, can the attacker retreat - EVEN if all defending forces are destroyed? I ask this because sometimes the defender has a much larger counterrattack force waiting to wipe out the attacker from another space, and obviously, the attacker doesn’t want to wait around for the counterattack to happen on the next turn. Is that legal?

[wheatbeer]

If you eliminate all defending forces within a land territory, then all of your surviving land units automatically capture the territory and can no longer be retreated.

This applies on any round of combat, including the first.

[leobarron2000]

Good to know.

[wheatbeer]

If you ever need to settle an argument, check out page 20 in the 2nd edition rulebook (Step 6. Press Attack or Retreat).

[Narvik]

If it was legal to retreat from a newly captured territory because you want to save your units, there would be no fun in playing, then we might as well play Low Luck too.

[aequitas-et-veritas]

Actually it would make sense but it is just not the game style of any triple a game.

The only options you have is:
Take the Territory with enough forces to stand the upcoming counter attack.
Or strafe:
Attack one round or maybe two to chip away from your opponent unit stack and retreat then.
Or attack with equal inf units and fighters to mach the stack you attack, that you might be able to conquer the territory and still have your mass forces in your territory to counter the counter.

[knp7765]

I understand the concept of strafing but I don’t care to do it. I don’t like the chance that the defender gets too many good dice and I end up losing more than I had planned to.

Also, one time that I did try a strafe, it was one of those flukes where the dice were very kind to me and almost every one of my units scored a hit. I ended up wiping him out, but the defensive roll was nearly as devastating. He managed to reduce my attacking force in half, which left the remaining units ripe for a nasty counter attack.

[JDOW]

The most “famous” strafe is to attack Yugo G1 and retreat to Romania. Strong move which I almost always play.
And if you score 5 hits - so be it, you do not suffer any extra defending hits or so and Yugo is cleaned up.