I just bought the Designer Series a couple of days ago and we're planning to play Dash to the Wire tomorrow. While setting it up I started wondering about the initiative. The German player starts the game with the initiative BUT because they are not on the board before turn 2 and thus are unable to gather any command, the initiative will automatically revert to the British at the end of turn 1! (Germans have zero command on initiative so the British don't have to spend any to get it from them.)

Do you think this is intentional or is it yet another error in the Designer Series? Has anyone actually played the scenario and if so, did it work out ok or should we make a change (e.g. enforce that the Germans have the initiative on Turn 2)?

(I had some technical trouble with the search function so if this has already been covered, please just point me to the correct thread.)

Unfortunately it seems like an error. I think I would switch it to the British having initiative so that at least from a game perspective they have to make a decision to spend at least 1 command on initiative or give it up to the Germans on round 2.

Thanks for the quick answer, will consider switching the initiative to the British for Turn 1. That would make sense in the real world, too... when the Brits are alone in the area, of course they have the initiative but when the advancing German force enters, the initiative shifts.

Any other thoughts or ideas? We're starting three hours from now...

I think switching the initiative is the most elegant solution as well as putting some decision making back into the game for the british, without having an opportunity to play it myself I don't have any other feedback to offer.

We moved the initiative to the British side and yes I think it helped a bit but still the Germans found it hard to gain initiative during the first 2-3 turns of the scenario. It might be just the way in this particular instance the British hung to the initiative but then again they do have a full turn (turn 1) to accumulate Command while the Germans can't get any... so it might still be unbalanced, and especially unhistoric so that the Germans have little hope for initiative in the beginning - when I think that's the time they should definitely have it. At least that's my feel after playing the scenario, though admittedly only once.

This may not matter now but when i play tested the scenario i presumed that the Germans got initiative once they started appearing

BJaffe01