France is nearly impossible to defend against a well planned and executed German attack. Germany had crushed Belgium with a large armored/mech force and built a fairly large stack in the Rhineland. The French and British players decided to have the French defend Burgundy and Paris with most of their army and the British would land in Normandy. A single French infantry unit was placed into Picardy. We had seen in previous games that if the French defend heavy up front in Picardy and Burgundy, the Germans will attack one or the other and then mech into Paris.
This time Germany attacked with everything into Burgandy. The French absorbed most of the attack with the fortresses and withdrew to Paris after one round. The Germans then followed up with a mech attack with 2 Panzergrenadiers and the Luftwaffe into Picardy.
The French responded by counter attacking Picardy with 2 infantry and 2 armor units from Paris as well as most of the French and British air forces. The Allies sent in 8 fighters and the Germans could have responded with 8 of their own, but chose not to. The French armor mech moved back to Paris after liberating Picardy. The British recalled some of the BEF to Cairo to counter the Italian build-up. At the end of the Allied turn, the die roll for French capitulation was above a 2 and the French remained in the fight.
I think the die roll for French capitulation is the most important single die roll in the game. Lets face it, this die roll not only removes all French units from the map, but sets up the pro-Axis Vichy units/territories and activates the Axis Minors (Rumania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Finland). I would like to see a moral type system like the one developed for Italian surrender to be developed for France. It would consist not only of territories that the Axis have captured in France, but also the amount of French versus Axis casualties, amount of BEF aid in France, whether Italy has declared war and any other factors that would affect the French moral. Then when a certain moral point threshold is crossed, France capitulates.
