The Entente tank offensive continued in its merciless fashion, smiting the northern flank and opening up the plains of central Belgium. By turn end Belgian cavalry and French armed forces had exploited adjacent to Antwerp and Brussels, while the British stormed into Mons after a brutal frontal assault. German national will was reduced to -121 points (only 4 short of what was needed to ensure that even the maximum bounce would still leave them in total surrender.
It was now make or break for the Central Powers. They would have to knock Italy out of the war! Rolling only 1 successful reaction they were only able to entertain 1 positional assault against an Italian corps. The odds were good – 4:1 (-1) however the engineers all failed them – very badly, the resultant combat roll of AX toook the AH morale down to 8 points (With the Italians on 13).
After the debacle of the AX the CP players realised that with the smattering of Entente minor forces and some strong American divisions scattered amongst the Italians, that they would be unable to inflict enough casualties on the Italians to enduce surrender without collapsing themselves so the Central Powers high command negotiated surrender terms.
Oddly enough the rules indicate that surrender does not happen until recovery has occured. We thus decided to see how long it would take the Germans to recover… They did not recover until Feb II 1919!!!, so technically they would have stayed in the game for another 5 months – who knows, even with winter, what damage would have been done and how much territory captured in that interval by the Entente?
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