Air Recon House Rule

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governato
Posts: 1311
Joined: Fri May 06, 2011 4:35 pm
Location: Seattle, WA

Air Recon House Rule

Post by governato »

The amount of info we can gain on the opponent is highly overestimated in WITE, leading to a loss of potential surprises at the operational level, that were instead quite common on the East Front. Examples of failures to detect large concentration of forces are easy to find:
Uranus, Bagration, Kursk, Blau, and Barbarossa itself where all glaring examples of intelligence failure. Even in In August 1941, Guderian's Pz Gruppe 2 had only a handful of unescorted recon aircraft to scout the area of his advance (the source is Stahel's 'Kiev
41'). This is in stark contrast to the 'recon spam' WITE allows the players.

I have been playing a GC41 campaign with comsolut and we have recently come up with a very simple House Rule meant to make Recon flights more realistic and allow for an element of operational surprise. So here it is:


AI recon should be turned off. Axis and the Red Army are then allowed a maximum
number of manual Recon flights *per turn*, as the following:

Year Axis Red Army
'41-- 10-- 2
'42-- 8-- 4
'43-- 6-- 6
'44-- 4-- 8
'45-- 2-- 10



The number of allowed flights reflects the shift in Air supremacy during the war. Additionally, during each turn only one recon mission can be carried over mud and snow zones respectively. No recon flights can be carried in blizzard weather zones.

Obviously adjust to taste, but so far we like the feel of an HR that limits recon. The Red Army had to start building even more reserves and having a more in depth disposition of its forces, rather than piling up at the frontlines, much closer to the historical deployment. It is also very easy to check if the HR is being enforced as recon flights from the other side are shown on the map.

Here is a good free reading on the topic that will provide some motivation.

http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/c ... sis_II.pdf
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