Old Dog v Young Pup Sillyflower(G) v Fiva(R) GC41 (no Fiva)

[sillyflower]

I have given Fiva permission to read this 1st post (only).

My 1st attempt at AAR. As I have to wait until this afternoon for my son to teach me how to post pictures, I thought I would start with some background. I can spell etc but can only type with 1 1/2 fingers so can't be bothered to correct all typos so please bear with me.

I've been wargaming for 45 years, Fiva for only 5, hence the title. I have the edge on exerience but at my age I play like Grampa Simpson: a tendency to fall asleep mid turn.

Clearly the most important decision will be a new Avatar. There seem to be 5 main types

1 The predictable phallic symbol. Fiva himself, Redmarkus ( the pillar of erotic AARs) etc
2 Picture of role model/hero -Carnage, tarhunnas, Flavius
3 The witty - PDH, the one with heavily armed ponies whose name I can't recall
4 Cute (or not) pets - Pompac
5 Real picture of themselves -Larry Fulkerson ( the king of AAR graphics), Helpless

Update - new avatar now found

To date I have won about 10 -12 GCs, my other current game v Baelfin's russians is evenly balanced and I got cremated by Michael T's Germans. That wasn't much fun but I learnt a lot. Few are the days now where I learn more than I forget.

Back to the game, Full FOW non-random weather.house rules are

1 latest beta. We started just before .39 came out so I won't get my Hungarian hetzers it seems[:(]. Still, It's always good to have a cast-iron excuse to resign without loss of face so I will keep this up my sleeve.
2 no riga gambit
3 only 1 air attack per airbase or city ofter T1
4 no soviet amphib landings before dec '41 and not west of Sevastopol unless R holds this city and same re Odessa.
5 victory conditions. G auto victory if have 270VP otherwise based on G surrender date - R win if beore May 45, draw if May, G minor win if later.

My strategy - to crush and destroy the russians in an amusing and witty way. Actually, the 2nd half of the last sentence is a lie.

I will try to post end of G turn 2 report this afternoon.

[sillyflower]

Testing

[Ketza]

There is another kind of Avatar.

The hottie Avatar.

[sillyflower]

Here goes
This should be AGN at end of my T2.
I'm not a fan of the 'Germans must cross the river in force in T1' strategy. I cross only to take Riga. Route I go is designed to trap max. no. of commie units - and only 1 escaped in the north. The more direct appproach others prefer means several can escape and come back to slow me down later.

Now only the odd brigade of frontier guards and paras armed only with rifles stand between Leningrad and liberation and they obviously cannot slow me down by more than a few minutes, let alone hours or days. No Riga Gambit but I bombed Kuressare to open supply route from Riga. Spearheads only 10 hexes from Riga where possible for supply but won't delay my infantry. It the infantry that destroy the Russian army not the tanks. Mobile forces' job is to be the anvil not the hammer.



Also note little armoured finger pointing at Smolensk. Again I don't like to go too far because of supplies and need the inf to catch up to do the killing. I took Minsk with a mot div + pioneers T2 to clear the path even though it meant a division of bad guys escaping -or part of one anyway.

[Tarhunnas]

What category are you in Ketza? 2 or 5 or...? [;)]

[Tarhunnas]

ORIGINAL: sillyflower

I've been wargaming for 45 years, Fiva for only 5, hence the title. I have the edge on exerience but at my age I play like Grampa Simpson: a tendency to fall asleep mid turn.

I was just wondering who was the old dog and who was the puppy. As you mentioned homework in a post a couple of days ago, I though you were the young one...

[sillyflower]

end German T2 in south



Tried to balance moving forward with pocket clearing and quite a few mobile divs needed to be reformed after breaking them down to create Kovel and Kremenets pockets. For the 1st time ever all my pockets held.

Armour positioned to go northwest or southwest on T3, and again almost all within 10 hexes of a railhead. PzG reserves railed up as far as I could so loaded with fuel and little fatigue.

Russian front looks impressive but a lot were pocketed on T1 so lots of worse than useless HQs in there

[Ketza]

ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas

What category are you in Ketza? 2 or 5 or...? [;)]

Actually that has been my Avatar for a long time since I started playing online games like Asherons call or World Of Warcraft. I have always been the "player killer" or "evil player" type in those games and the Avatar I picked fit the bill. I think I got it from a tatoo site...

[sillyflower]

ORIGINAL: Ketza



The hottie Avatar.

Sillyflower is really my wife. This avatar has her full approval, though I have to say her real life legs are better. She used to be the legs of the Pretty Polly adverts.

[sillyflower]

losses end german T2.

airlosses 166G 4828R

116 Russian units destroyed, so this is my best start yet. Checkerboarding takes a lot of units, so he won't be able to do it if I keep up the pressure. I don't think he has enough units to do this across every approach I can take in the South, and I have a little amuse bouche ready if he guesses wrong.

He can run but he can't hide. Woof woof goes the old dog!

Strategy: to paraphrase Bill Clinton: It's killing the russian army, stupid. That's as far as I can get with the Clinton thing. I can't see myself being allowed one of the interns from Redmarkus' AAR.



Territorial objectives in order of decreasing priority
1 Leningrad
2 Donbas + stretch target of Rostov
3 Moscow
4 crimea

but all subordinate to killing the army and damaging the economy. If you kill enough commies, you can take the ground easily. If you don't, you can't. Simples.

From the games I've played and seen via AARs, there is a tipping point in '41 and the main factor is russian casualty rate. I think everything flows from that; how far the jerries get and how many factories are lost. My game against Baelfin is a rare one that I don't thikn will have an early ending. He lost 3.2M by end of clear weather. Perhaps 3.4M + by then is likely to be game over for Russians. Less than 3M and Germans are frozen toast, as it were.

Obviously this is a generalisation. Major Robinski can save the troop losses but cripple the economy and the Russians could afford to lose 4M if they didn't lose more than 1 of the 4 objectives above.

We shall see.

[kfmiller41]

Now there is the best reason yet I have seen to beat an opponent[:D]

[sillyflower]

ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas

ORIGINAL: sillyflower

I've been wargaming for 45 years, Fiva for only 5, hence the title. I have the edge on exerience but at my age I play like Grampa Simpson: a tendency to fall asleep mid turn.

I was just wondering who was the old dog and who was the puppy. As you mentioned homework in a post a couple of days ago, I though you were the young one...

I'm only 55 so I think there are a few WiTE players who could call me a young puppy.

[sveint]

Very good start. Looking forward to reading this.

PS My avatar doesn't fit any of the categories.

[sillyflower]

Turn 3

The sight facing AGS recce aircraft. It looks like Fiva was working from the top down and ran out of troops somewhere north of Odessa. Several recce flights have failed to reveal any Commie units in Odessa or Nikolaev, but can Goering be believed? No sign of any factories having been moved last turn anywhere on the map. Here's to Fiva's economy.

Eagle eyed and experienced readers will spot some red counters near Kishnev and will know what they are............

[sillyflower]

And here is the north. I was clearly wrong about Fiva starting from the top as there are no troops north of this screenie either: if my recce is to be trusted. Talinn either empty or garrison all hiding in cellars.

Only the 16th army inf div near Reketne ( the pink div furthest East) has moved so far. So few troops, so many choices. My playing style is quite random. I move rail 1st to make sure I don't forget them ( and check several times in-turn). I potter about from army to army doing the easy stuff until I suddenly 'know' what to do. There is a logic to it though I'm not sure what it is.



It will probably be tomorrow ot Tuesday before I can post results of this turn as I have to finish my other game's turn first and still have quite a bit of homework to do, and the cricket is on later!

In the meantime, keep the hottie avatars coming.

[sillyflower]

AGN after G turn 3. Axes of advance drawn inexpertly with black lines but at least I've drawn something for the first time ever on a computer. I was always bottom of the class in art at school partly because I would only draw tanks and bombers, and partly because my drawings were cr#p.

3rd mot. was supposed to go with rest of its Corps but rubbish map reading resulted in the liberation of Tallinn instead so they are forgiven.

I've interpreted no Riga T1 gambit house rule in the spirit of the rule so no amphib transport into any newly captured port. Hex NE of Pskov liberated but no MPs to move in. Fiva's defence seems to be all in the shop window. Given no. units in the front line there are probably few if any digging in at L which is fine.

G inf catching up and will make their presence felt next turn unless he gets out of my way.

[sillyflower]

Getting adventurous now with the paint programme. AGS 2 black cicles -western = last of pocket clearing,eastern an ants' nest that will be stomped on next turn ( 3 Abn 1 sec x)

Apart from that, mainly pushing the inf up as per north. Again a shop- window defence but perfectly sensible given only had modest amounts of armour there.

[heliodorus04]

Surprisingly forward Soviet defense.  Will be interesting to see how you handle that.  

[sillyflower]

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Fast Reply

This should be Fiva's OMG moment as 14Pz wins iron crosses all round for capturing odessa and nikolaev with all their factories. So popular am I that the cities changed sides as soon as my men got close to them without my men having to fire a shot. An important lesson learned. I shall only use tanks to take cities now. The whole of Russia will obviously be mine in a few weeks.

2 small pockets ringed. Larger one easy to break this turn, though. Few remnants of Lvov pocket to mop up.

No casualty stats - I pinged off the turn before even looking at them in my rush to get to work this morning.

Economy: So far Russians have lost 10 HI + 10 arms and 3 of each in Mogilev are not going anywhere

He can keep running or else I'm more than happy with a stand-up fight.

[Tarhunnas]

Rather odd that a player of Fivas experience should leave both Odessa and Nikolaev completely open [X(]!

Edit: BTW nice AAR, I like your style!