We Will Fight and Die Here

Post reports of your great victories and disastrous defeats here to share with other gamers.

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Yakstock
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RE: We Will Fight and Die Here

Post by Yakstock »

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budd
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RE: We Will Fight and Die Here

Post by budd »

great read, the AI should of pushed more from the north,kept the pressure on you, maybe they will on day 5. Is your left in danger of getting their supply cut off? I guess its so close to the end that your on hand supply should carry you through. Good stuff, thx for doing the AAR, Looking forward to the finish. Hoping to dip into the demo this weekend, went through all the youtube vids and read the manual....there 's alot more cool sh$t in the game since HTTR[:D]. The video's are really well done. I hope they get the patch done and COTA out the door so i can scoop up the whole bundle at once.
Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Be Yourself; Everyone else is already taken" ~Oscar Wilde

*I'm in the Wargamer middle ground*
I don't buy all the wargames I want, I just buy more than I need.
Yakstock
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Joined: Sun Aug 25, 2002 4:08 am

RE: We Will Fight and Die Here

Post by Yakstock »

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Remmes
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RE: We Will Fight and Die Here

Post by Remmes »

Thanks for posting Yakstock, I enjoy your AAR's very much; they're also very helpful.
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budd
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RE: We Will Fight and Die Here

Post by budd »

great AAR thx for sharing. I was hoping the AI would come down from the north and contest on the left more, couldn't really tell what kind of units the AI had up north. Did they just stay put all scenario? Thx again, great presentation.
Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Be Yourself; Everyone else is already taken" ~Oscar Wilde

*I'm in the Wargamer middle ground*
I don't buy all the wargames I want, I just buy more than I need.
Yakstock
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Joined: Sun Aug 25, 2002 4:08 am

RE: We Will Fight and Die Here

Post by Yakstock »

budd - they were not there until late (at least not that I saw), but I did not see them move once they appeared. Had the units that cut Oberweywertz off and the units in the north pushed in and attacked the objective I probably would have lost it. I partially decided I needed to attack Butgenbach just in case I lost this objective. But in the end they did not attack.



Thanks for the feedback Ramses
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budd
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RE: We Will Fight and Die Here

Post by budd »

I believe you had some weak intel that they were there day 3 and i believe better intel on day 4 about the large mass of units up north. They sure could of made your life interesting and put to you several interesting command choices. Wonder what would of happened if the scenario was a wee bit longer. I know how long it takes too put an AAR together especially one as well done as yours, thx.
Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Be Yourself; Everyone else is already taken" ~Oscar Wilde

*I'm in the Wargamer middle ground*
I don't buy all the wargames I want, I just buy more than I need.
Phoenix100
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RE: We Will Fight and Die Here

Post by Phoenix100 »

Fantastic AAR Yakstock. Thanks so much for putting all the effort into it. And a great fight, I thought. I thought you did a first rate job. It all seemed much more organised and deliberate than all my efforts. I just played through and also got a marginal victory - screenshot below. It looks very different to yours, interestingly. Mine looks much messier. Hard not to think that that's because you really did control things and plan carefully and deliberately. I was more slapdash. You get out what you put in.....

My basic plan was to sieze the Faymonville and Oberweywertz intersections with ALL my starting forces (plus the first para reinforcements). I did this during the first night. Then, as reinforcements came in I went for Butgenbach and the Dom. For maybe a day and half I had full control of Butgenbach, the Dom and Oberweywertz, but, as you see, I still got less vic points and still only scored a marginal vic. One factor was that for all of the last 30 hours or so I could hardly do anything because my troops were all totally exhausted. Hardly any of my orders were actioned - they just couldn't move! I think you shepherded your resources much better than this and still had some fighting potential to draw on in the last stages. Note my casualty rates are significantly higher than yours - this is probably because of that.

I think I'll play it through again and try to be as deliberate and careful as you were. I think I could probably hold onto the three objectives with more care and more judicious use of arty, and I'm sure this would be enough to score a full victory.

Brilliant AAR. I really appreciated it. Look forward to your next fight!

PS: Do you have some program you use to speed up all the cutting and pasting?

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Yakstock
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RE: We Will Fight and Die Here

Post by Yakstock »

Phoenix - thanks for the comments - appreciate it. I use MWSnap3 software to take the screen shots and then just use PowerPoint to modify the pictures. What I love about this game it the re-playability - there are so many ways to approach a battle. I always like the first match the best, before you know anything about the enemy plans.

After playing once I think I would try to; 1) place a screening force to the south-east of the Dom Butgenbach objective and move all your forces, including the airborne to the Oberweywertz objective and then 2) attack Butgenbach from the rear in a way that would cut off all the enemy units to the east of Butgenbach and finally 3) eliminate the units cut off if time remains. Would be interesting to try this. I think it is pretty close to your approach as I see it above.

I do find that if I take the time to develop an AAR I am more thoughtful about the battle playing out.
Phoenix100
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RE: We Will Fight and Die Here

Post by Phoenix100 »

I think the thing I most like about this game (aside from it being the ONLY game to have a proper AI opponent and proper friendly AI, and apart from all the other great things...) is the way it takes you to the actual history. Can't wait to take a little trip down the road (I'm in Brussels) and look at Butgenbach and surrounds, now that I've struggled with the map. The maps are astoundingly good in this game. Each battle I play has me reading up the history, looking at as much info as I can about the RL battle, scrutinising google earth, and if possible visiting the site. Luckily all the sites for BFTB and HTTR are close enough for a day trip. I can see some holidays to Greece once I get back into the COTA conversion....
Yakstock
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RE: We Will Fight and Die Here

Post by Yakstock »

I agree - and I am jealous how close you are to the battlefield - it will be a great visit. I too love the way this game draws you into the history behind the battle. Makes you want to know all you can about the battle.

I spent some time this year visiting Antietam and Gettysburg (only a few hours from me in America) and it is always moving to tour old battlefields and get a feel for the history behind the battle. Antietam is noted as the bloodiest one day of battle in American history. 23,000 soldiers were killed, wounded or missing after twelve hours of fighting on September 17, 1862. Hard to imagine even after walking the battlefield.
Phoenix100
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RE: We Will Fight and Die Here

Post by Phoenix100 »

Ditto - jealous you can take a two hour trip to Antietam and Gettysburg. Would love to visit both places. Have read a lot about Antietam (after playing the SOW game, bought here on Matrix). It's true it's very hard to imagine what it was like, even after having seen photos and read accounts. The Ardennes is odd. It's very easy to find old foxhole indentations and such like, in the woods around Bastogne, for example. But very hard to imagine it, still. Only 70 years ago, right here in Europe. Hard to believe at all. The WW1 battlefields are even more puzzling. When I was little you could very easily talk to people who had served in the trenches in WW1. They're all dead now. Funny to think that those people, when they were little, could easily - if American - have spoken to veterans of Antietam. Someone 20, say, in 1862, would only have been 63 in 1905, when a man who later served in WW1 could have been 10 and chatted to him, and who himself would have thus been in his eighties to speak to me when I was 10, roughly, in the early 70s. So a man who I spoke to about serving in WW1 could have spoken to a man who took part in Antietam. Makes Antietam seem not very far away. But soon there won't even be any WW2 vets left to talk to....
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Arjuna
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RE: We Will Fight and Die Here

Post by Arjuna »

Back in 1979 I and my wife were travelling in Europe. We were driving around Loch Nes in Scotland and I stopped to hvae a look at a ruined castle on the waters edge. There was an older couple also looking out from the ruins acros the Lock. I struck up a conversation with the man and I mentioned how we had just come from touring around the Market Garden battlefields in Holland. He then informed me that he fought with the 101st at Eindhoven. I spent about half an hour there talking with him as he recounted some of his experiences. It was such a fortunate encounter. It was only the other day that I reflected back on this experience and came to the realisation that in all probability he would be dead now and I cannot even recall his name. Yet a little bit of his experience lives on with me, albeit a bit hazy.
Dave "Arjuna" O'Connor
www.panthergames.com
Yakstock
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RE: We Will Fight and Die Here

Post by Yakstock »

We are losing a lot of that generation these days - they will be missed. Priceless to have had the chance to talk to a veteran of the war let alone of that battle.
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Remmes
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RE: We Will Fight and Die Here

Post by Remmes »

ORIGINAL: phoenix

I Can't wait to take a little trip down the road (I'm in Brussels)

Flemish of french speaking?

Edit: is doesn't matter anymore, because I found it in English and French as well. If you actually go there, the following brochure might come in handy......

Dutch
French
English
Phoenix100
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RE: We Will Fight and Die Here

Post by Phoenix100 »

Hey Ramses. Just saw your last post there. I'm English, in fact. Thanks for that brochure!!

Can't recall whether you sent Dave your save of the crash that I also tried before he finished with build 258 or not. At any rate, I loaded that save and ran it with 258 and it still crashed when I followed your instructions. Might be that the crash was caused by something that was saved under 257, of course. Not sure. Just thought I'd try though.
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