Retreat Mechanic?

[Chris_Henry]

Hey all.

A house rule I’ve always been interested in (but never actually implemented) is a retreat mechanic and/or a limited number of combat sequences per turn mechanic. I get the game as is and why it has to happen, but part of me always hates that a defender can’t decide to pull back if they wanted and regroup/salvage forces. Relatedly, it bugs me sometimes that an entire front is wiped out in a single turn of combat. Again, I get how this has to happen in a game, but that’s why these are house rules, right?  :-)

So here’s my thought:

Each turn of combat lasts three rounds. The attacker gets first impulse and attacks as normal, then defender defends as normal. Next round of combat each player roles a die for initiative, the higher dice role gets to attack for the second round of combat. In this way the attacking force isn’t necessarily always on the offensive. Alternatively, if the defender wins the dice role, he/she may choose whether to stay on the defensive or launch a counter attack (I haven’t decided which I like better). I’ve also debated having air superiority adding one to your dice for initiative as well in some way, but this is an unfinished thought. This process would be repeated for the third round of combat as well. After that, fighting ends for the turn. If units still survive from both sides, the territory is contested, and no one receives the IPC’s.

The first round of combat has to happen regardless. Starting on the second round though, the side with initiative can choose to retreat from the battle, and again in the third round, if they so choose.

One of the biggest detractors from this, and is a theme I’ve seen on these boards as well, is having a static war, where mechanized units would lose their edge in the game by being able to blitz by having contested territories, etc. My thought is this:

After the above combat is complete, there are different possibilities.

1. If the battle ends and the original attacking force is victorious, any mechanized units they have remaining can move one more space, assuming they hadn’t already move their two spaces previously to enter the battle. So if German tanks and/or mechanized infantry started the turn in Poland and attacked Eastern Poland and the battle ends in a German victory, those mechanized units could then move one more space to Belarus, for example.

2. If one side retreats from the battle, and the side that keeps the field has any mechanized units (mechanized infantry or tanks) remaining, they can attempt to trap some retreating forces in a kessel. The retreating forces would have to role one die. On a role of 3 or less, that many one movement units (so three maximum of infantry or artillery) got trapped by the advancing mechanized forces and cannot retreat, and must battle the next round, if the retreating side is retreating before the third round of combat, or keep the territory contested if the third round has happened already. I’ve thought about adding a mechanic where if the retreating side also has any mechanized units left they can negate -1 from the role of how many units got trapped in the kessel.

Any thoughts on any of this? I felt like this might add a different element to the game, and add a little more strategy. As the attacker, you have to think about the possibility that you lose initiative after the first round of combat and may have to go on the defensive. It makes mechanized units potentially a bit more fun too by giving them some different special abilities.

[Narvik]

Nice thinking, and rational ideas too.

Being more obsessed with historical correctness than game playability, my take is like this. Some territories were in fact blitzed through in one turn, and this could be large battles with millions of men, like the battle of Poland and France in 1940, and the attack on Russia in 1941. So to limit all combat to 3 rounds just to make contested territories, are a bad idea IMHO. Almost as bad as the 1914 game that only have one round of combat, making sure every territory will be contested. There are many reasons a territory got contested in the real war, and a magic Rulebook is none of them. A real war territory would usually get contested when both sides were out of supply or not strong enough to continue the attacks and break through the enemy line.

If the A&A map had terrain features like mountains, marshes, swamps, forest, winter and snow, I would give this territories one round of combat only, since its difficult to track supply here. And no supply, no dice rolling. The A&A game don’t have a supply rule, so we cant use that idea neither.

I think, that since the attacker got the initiative, the attacker should be able to choose between 3 options in Land combat.
After each round of combat, the Attacker choose to press
1. Continue attack
2. Stay and contest the territory. Of course no more dice rolling, lets assume both sides are out of ammo. Or if the Defender want to roll dice, let the Attacker roll his defense values.
3. Retreat.
4. A possible partial retreat, but this could be abused, you could retreat your tanks and let one inf stay, ruining the game mechanic and balance

In the A&A game, the Defender don’t get any choice of what to do. He is just a sitting duck. In a real battle, the Defender would get a lot of choices, and he should in this game too. First, he can retreat, and a successful retreat is counted as half a victory, since he deprive the Attacker a possible great victory, and force the Attacker to try again in a different place, at the cost of much time and resources. On the other hand, when a Defender retreat, he can not shot back, and this is why most of defenders retreats are very dangerous and end in slaughter and massacres. Another tactic is to delay the attacker with roadblocks and ambushes. This only works in forests and mountains, and not in the plain terrain that we must assume every territory on the A&A map is. For the counter attacks, I assume that is done in that players turn. You need time to build up a supply stack before you attack someone.

In A&A house rules, I suggest.
After each round of combat, the Defender choose to press
1. Continue defending
2. Accept a contested territory in case the Attacker pressed stay.
3. Commit his forces to a Defenders retreat in the next round. In this case, only the Attacker can roll dice in that round, and the surviving defending units retreat to an adjacent friendly territory. It will be like a sub submerging, it cant fire when submerging. You cant have a cake and eat it too. In this case, the Attacker is committed to attack since he pressed continue attack before the Defender choose to retreat. But this is fine since this is how it works in the real wars too. When a Defender retreats, he steal the initiative from the attacker, and this is why the successful retreat is half a victory. But it can ruin the A&A mechanic since the Defender now get a free move, when its not even his turn.

No matter what, this will take the game one step up the complexity ladder, and add pages to the FAQ. No more KISS

[Narvik]

Talking about naval combat, I figure the A&A mechanic is too rigid. Naval combat is far different from land combat. Naval combat is very mobile and move waste distances in no time, and both sides use ships on a flat surface, and the battle is finished in one or two hour. What takes time is to search for and find the other fleet, and some times a huge fleet can suddenly come out of the horizon. In a naval battle, there is no defined attacker or defender. Both sides are equal. Naval combat is a fair duel.

In land combat, on the other hand, we have a defined defender that has dug in a trench near a village or forest or behind a river, and a defined attacker that comes rolling with tanks and charging infantry. The attacker know where the defender is, since he is in that village over the top, and he know how many they are and how strong they are. The Panzer division don’t come out of the blue, like ships or aircrafts, you hear them coming and that gives you time to do something. Also the land battle can go on for weeks and months if both sides dug in for a trench war.

So IMHO naval battles should play by different rules than land combat. Aircrafts should have their own phase too.

[Chris_Henry]

I totally agree with you on terrain. Played a huge role obviously, and just can’t be shown on this map. Weather as well at times, but again, only so much you can do.

You make a fair point on limiting rounds of combat because of how far and fast some fronts moved compared to others. Again, not 100% how to quantify that in a game though. Unless I’m misunderstanding you, you’re talking about a similar idea without limiting the number of rounds of combat to three. But what’s stopping the defender from retreating after one round of battle each time then? I guess I feel it still doesn’t fix the problem of fast moving fronts, but I don’t know.

You’re right, naval combat is another thing all together as well. I’ve thought on that one too, and my initial thought process is that combat shouldn’t necessarily happen every turn. If we assume ships can share a territory in the same manner that land units can finish a turn contesting a territory, we could role a die before each naval combat, a role of 1-4 battle commences, but at a 5-6 nothing happens during combat, as the two navies couldn’t locate each other. Having planes out scouting could add one to your dice role though, to better help search for the enemy fleet.

I haven’t come up with any decent idea about air combat either, but again, I agree, it would be nice to have some sort of aerial combat that would dictate local air superiority in each battle.