The Europa community has expressed a good deal of confusion over the rules for amphibious landings and naval transport to beaches. GR/D apologizes for this inconvenience; the following errata and clarifications should set things straight.

Rules Errata and Clarifications

Rule 27B6 is rephrased for better clarity:

"6. Amphibious Ability. Any unit with the amphibious or marine symbol as part of its unit type is intrinsically amphibious. The following units are also amphibious:

• Any unit carried by an LVT per Rule 14J2, so long as it is using the LVT.
• Any non-motorized unit without heavy equipment that is embarking, disembarking, or being transported by an LC."

Rule 31B claims "Non -amphibious units with heavy equipment may not embark/disembark at beaches." This is WRONG: such units can land at beaches if they use landing craft (LCs), as explained in the rewrite of Rule 31B below:

"B. Beaches

Any amphibious unit (as defmed in Rule 27136) may land at a beach. A non-amphibious unit may also land at a beach, if it is solely on board LCs at the time of its landing. (Note: A nonamphibious unit on board NTs or NTs in combination with LCs may not land at a beach.)

A naval unit may not embark or disembark cargo at a beach during stormy sea conditions."

Delete the following sentence from Rule 30B:

"However, cargo that has heavy equipment may not embark/disembark at a beach unless it is amphibious (per Rule 27B6)."

The last bullet point in the first paragraph of Rule 32 is incorrect and must be deleted:

"Only LCs may disembark the cargo making an amphibious landing."

The first two bullet points in Rule 32B are correct as written, but some players have complained they are difficult to understand. Another way to put them is:

• An intrinsically amphibious unit has its attack strength halved.
• Any other unit making an amphibious landing has its attack strength quartered.

An Amphibious Recap

For 'beach operations," the rules distinguish between regular naval transport (Rule 30B), which is transport to/from a friendly-owned beach, and amphibious landings (Rule 32), which is transport to an enemy-owned beach.

As corrected above, Rules 14J2, 27B6, 30B, and 31B completely define beach operations for naval transport, while Rules 14J2, 27B6, 30B, 32 intro, and 32A completely define beach operations for amphibious landings.

Intrinsically amphibious units such as marine commandos or amphibious armor can land without using LCs, they can "go ashore" directly from NTs. (These intrinsically amphibious units either are amphibious by their very natures, such as DD tanks, or have factored into them the small landing craft capable of taking them from ship to shore, such as for marine commandos.) The game was designed this way: if the intrinsically amphibious units that landed on D-Day required LCs in the game, then the amphibious armor alone would soak up so many LCs that not all the forces which historically landed could land in the game.

LVT counters are also intrinsically amphibious. They are not, however, landing craft, and must be transported to their landing sites by naval transport. (LVTs were not capable of long distance sea voyages and historically were not classified or used the same as real landing craft, despite the similarity of names and abbreviations between LVTs and landing craft.) Note that any unit carried by an LVT is also amphibious; per Rule 14J2.

LCs bestow amphibious capability to non-motorized units without heavy equipment (Rule 27B6), allowing them to make amphibious landings (see the second bullet of 32B for more detail on how this works).

If you like, you can also allow special c/m units (the British Ix 3-2- 10 Aslt Gun X RMAS, and the lx 5-3-6 Aslt Eng Tank X 1 RE) to make amphibious landings using LCs. This was only excluded from the game for simplicity (to avoid a special rule for a few units). However, these units didn't fare very well when making amphibious landings, so if you adopt this rule, halve the combat strengths of these units when they make an amphibious landing, in addition to any other modifications. (Actually, only two of the three AVRE battalions of lx 5-3-6 Aslt Eng Tank X 1 RE landed in the assault forces, but a battalion of Crabs from 30th Armoured Brigade also landed. Since we don't have battalion breakdowns, using the '1 RE' for these forces is convenient.)

LCs in the game include LSTs, LSMs, LCIs, etc., and can carry any type of equipment. Assuming that the Allied player makes amphibious landings at enemy-owned beach hexes and gains control of some of these hexes during his movement and combat phases, he can use naval transport to land other units at those now-friendly beach hexes during the exploitation phase. Generally, any units (including those with heavy equipment, such as HQs, armor and artillery units, and even full divisions) can land at a friendly beach, however, unless they are intrinsically amphibious, they must use only LCs to do so (per Rule 31B).

Note that the vast majority of divisions cannot directly make amphibious landings, since they run afoul of Rule 27B6. By breaking a non-motorized division down into a divisional headquarters and unsupported components that do not have heavy equipment (such as infantry regiments), the unsupported components can make amphibious landings using LCs, and the division HQ can use LCs to land in the exploitation phase in a beach hex captured by its side.

Note that Rule 15 allows you to assemble divisions in the exploitation phase, even nonmotorized divisions. Of course, everything has to work right to do this (all unsupported components land in the same beach hex, they capture the hex without taking losses, the division HQ lands there in the exploitation phase, and you remember to assemble the division), but if all goes well you've increased your beachhead's ability to resist Axis counterattacks.

Note: The only division that can make an amphibious landing without breaking down is the USMC 1 Exp Marine Division, since it is intrinsically amphibious.

As mentioned earlier, NTs may carry intrinsically amphibious units to beaches. NTs can also transfer cargo (such as armor units) to LCs for transport to a beach per Rule 31D. NTs may carry resource points or supplies to a friendly beach, but not to an enemy-owned beach.

Other Pertinent Questions and Answers:

If LCs can transport units with heavy equipment to friendly beaches, for purposes of invasions this implies that the heavy equipment is being landed in the second wave. However, a lot of heavy equipment did land as part of the first wave. Why doesn't Second Front allow units with heavy equipment to make amphibious landings?

The fact that various landing craft could unload heavy equipment on beaches does not mean that units with heavy equipment can make assault landings on enemy held shores. There are several reasons for this. One is time versus capacity. Time is a critical factor: infantry and the like takes a very few minutes or even just seconds to disembark on a beach and go into combat. Heavy equipment is more difficult to unload. Small landing craft designed for heavy equipment (such as an LCM, Landing Craft Mechanized) could land and unload fairly quickly, but they couldn't carry that much-you needed huge numbers of them (iinpractical) or many round trips (takes time) to land a large volume of heavy equipment. Larger landing craft (such as an LST, Landing Ship Tank) solved the capacity problem but took a longer time to disembark its cargo, which rendered its landing operations more vulnerable when the enemy was capable of direct fire on the beaches.

Another reason is that it is difficult to unload heavy equipment in bulk without assistance. Sure, the landing craft can get it to the beaches, but help is needed in getting the equipment out of the landing craft. Beach obstacles and mines must be removed, exit routes must be delineated and in some cases built up so that you don't get stuck in the sand. Having labor on hand to unload the landing craft is extremely helpful, having people in place simply to direct traffic and make sure everything doesn't grind to a confused, milling halt is important. All this means that if you are going to unload lots of heavy equipment, you had better have some control over the beach before the equipment lands.

A third reason is that the landing craft with high capacities for heavy equipment are restricted in their operations. An LST, for example, could land in 3.5 feet of water-you could not unload it directly on very flat beaches unless you were willing to beach it (which opens up another can of worms). Similarly, the LCT (Landing Craft Tank) Mark 3 could carry significantly more than the earlier marks, but its deep draft precluded it from being used in Normandy.

Sure, some heavy equipment landed early on in amphibious operations. At Europa scale, however, the net effect of all this is that the critical, early stages of the battle for the beach would be decided before enough heavy equipment could land and effectively join the action. The game builds these overall considerations into the amphibious landing system.

If you can land/unload units during the naval part of exploitation, and units must spend MPs to disembark, how do non-c/m units do this? No exploitation is allowed for them?

Rule 31A states "During the exploitation phase, a non-c/m unit may disembark... during this phase."

Can intrinsically amphibious units transport themselves from port to a beach, or must they use NTs?

They must use naval transport, either NTs or LCs (although in most cases you probably would want to use LCs to carry nonintrinsically amphibious units instead).

Can an LVT carry a marine commando?

Sure, but this seems a very inefficient use of assets. Since an LVT automatically makes the unit it carries amphibious, you seem to gain little by carrying a unit that is already amphibious.

Can LCs carry LVTs (and their passengers)?

Sure, but using NTs instead frees up LCs to carry other cargo.

You say any units can be landed at a friendly-owned beach hex using LCs. What about rail-only units?

Although this isn't likely to come up in actual play we should exclude them. Add the following sentence to Rule 27B1 "Exception: LCs cannot carry rail-only units."

(Rule 32C) If intrinsically amphibious units don't need LCs to make an amphibious landing, then are they exempt from the LC limit on planning invasions?

Yes, and let's rewrite 32C as follows:

"C. Planning and Preparation

An amphibious landing must be planned in advance, similar to an airborne landing (Rule 24C). Use Rule 24C for planning an amphibious landing with these modifications:

• A player may plan an amphibious landing for each of his intrinsically amphibious units (that is, any unit with the amphibious or marine symbol as part of its unit type).
• For all other units, a player has a maximum RE planning limit equal to the cargo capacity of LCs currently in play (not sunk). For example, if a player has in play LCs with a total cargo capacity of 20, he may plan amphibious landings for an additional 20 REs of units in that initial phase.

The player may not plan amphibious landings for any other units."