The Aug II turn began with some trepidation. Nobody wanted to roll the influenza dice. After some minutres of inaction two of us picked up a dice each and threw them simultaneously. The reaction was electric and simultaneous for all of us as the boxcars stared up at us forlornly. This sent both Germany and the Austro-Hungarians into collapse, with morale levels now well below zero.
The Entente forces proceeded with their attacks. Oddly enough we achieved enough hits in the turn, had we not rolled influenza to reduce German Morale from 17 to 3. This would have been reduced by another 2 had we decided to use the Italians in an attack, so we would have failed by just 1 point to crack the Germans. This may well have made a difference.
In the Central Powers turn the Austro-Hungarian forces rolled an immediate recovery, receiving a bounce of 100. They are now hovering at about 41 points to the Italian 37. The race to induce Italian surrender before the Germans now ultimately collapse is on again!
The Germans failed their recovery roll and are now faced with an awkward decision – They must knock out Italy and France as fast as possible and ignoring all losses, as they will surrender very soon now , being most unlikely to last until winter with a morale level currently at -47.
After a lot of deliberation the Germans decided to attempt to knock Italy out of the war while on the west front they want to minimize the front line and reduce all their fortifications to field works – thus removing the possibility of us inflicting losses by use of BX’s and AX’s.
As things turned out the war on the Italian front went badly for the Central Powers. This was not aided by the fact that the Germans are still in collapse and the AH airforce is almost non-existant. At the end of the turn, the Italians had lost only 4 morale points, reducing them to low 30’s. The Entente then failed with all their reaction rolls except one – the Belgian HQ. The Belgians proceeded to advance – amongst great fanfare – and seized the town of Oostende!
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