Boromir/Faramir Sealion 2.1

[Mantis]

German supply sources are located in hexes 26, 30; 31, 30; and 38, 27.

More to follow, watch this thread!

[Mantis]

Ok. Attached is the Brits 1st turn file. They haven't moved a thing; this is what they see immediately after receiving the German player's turn. I'll start with a bit of honesty - I've never played or even loaded this scenario before, and it took me two runs through this to produce the results I'm describing/attaching. Consider the first turn through a dry run, to get the feel for it.

This is the composition of the Royal Navy at the start of the game:

Battleships - 1

Heavy Cruisers - 5

Light Cruisers - 3

Destroyers - 60

At the end of the German turn, the entire RN consisted of 6 destroyers. Not a single German naval unit was lost. The German 'screening force' naval unit was trapped at sea 2 hexes due east of Southend (35, 25) due to the turn ending early with a sticky combat. But as I suspected this might be the case, the main German fleet is safely tucked away in port at hex 41, 35. So you can see, there is room for improvement here as well.

[Mantis]

The initial invasion went well. Paras were split into 3s, and covered the areas north of the invasion zones, allowing for no retreats. We don't want any of those Brits to survive our inital assault! My first two drops were directed at the two empty airfields in hexes 27, 30 & 36, 27. This was done so that I could move my 6 strongest fighter units directly into southern England and give the rest of the paras a better chance to avoid RAF interdiction during their drops.

There are enough paras to completely encircle the entire 'beachhead' from hex 23, 31 in the west right up to the eastern tip of the island. Overruns allowed the UK defenders to be pushed into a few pockets. 3 of them were large, and 1 quite tiny, consisting of 4 coastal guard units. The amphibious panzers were used to make a few supply drain attacks with considerable support from adjacent HQs while the air and navy ate the first 3 rounds blowing away the Royal Navy.

The final round (really was hoping to squeeze one more out of it) saw assaults to clear the Brits out of the pockets. All attacks were successful, and losses were minimal. Had I managed a phase or so left after combat, units would have been able to dig in, with the odd unit able to advance a hex north to further increase the difficulty of a meaningful Brit response.

Here's a shot of the beaches at the end of combat:

[Mantis]

Here's the Brit turn 1 file, for any that are interested in having a peek at what the UK player would have to deal with.

[Mantis]

Now I know that you can't expect this exact turn every time that you play the game. But once in a while, you could expect even better results... I still had 2 paras left that could have been used to block key advance routes, the luftwaffe could have ended the turn in better position, with a dozen fighters in southern UK, all units could have ended the turn a little more 'north' of their current positions, and dug in.

I didn't go to the micromanagement hell I would have had this been a serious game - I just wanted to address concerns that the scenario is unbalanced from the German perspective. Perhaps it is. (I haven't played it enough to find out!) But a good start can certainly mean the difference between a defeat and victory, and I wanted to quickly illustrate the German player's potential.