Reply To: Continued Explorations of Normandy Wargaming

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You could of course alternate the block placement so that the gap between the first pair is 3 hexes and then 4 hexes with the next pair. That would deliver a rough 3.5 hex placement without slowing the game down. It would of course create more ideal landing hexes for the Allied player as there would be a golden hex where regardless of the drift, you would not hit any blocks, which may not be ideal.

Next option would be to introduce a saving throw. Current odds of being destroyed are 1 in 3, which as you point out is perhaps a little on the high side. A 3+ save gives odds of being destroyed as 1 in 9. A 4+ save gives the odds of being destroyed as 1 in 6. A 5+ save gives 2 in 9. And 6+ save gives 5 in 18. So the 6+ save is just slightly better than a quarter, which seems fair. You could also decide that any unit that makes its save starts dispersed.

I also imagine that Infantry is more likely to survive than tanks, which tend to sink when placed in water. So perhaps you could give Infantry a better saving throw than armoured units. You could take it further and perhaps start some units at half strength to represent the losses. So 1-2 destroyed, 3-4 half strength, 5+ survived but dispersed. But this starts to add increasing complexity to the game and will slow it down.

British units do seem to change their names, get merged and reorganised more than other countries. I was surprised at Dorsetshire for two reasons. Firstly, because I thought they were called ‘The Dorsets’, but this only really happened after the war. And secondly because while we like to stick ‘shire’ on the end of our county names (Yorkshire, Shropshire, Lancashire etc), Dorset is just Dorset. 🙂 And I’ll leave the digging into Russian unit names with those with the time on their hands!