Fischia il Vento - loki100 vs smokindave34 ... German marginal victory T94

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loki100
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RE: The end ...

Post by loki100 »

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

Keep in mind this game was started 6 months ago, long before the recent changes to the EF box. I think it will be much harder to withdraw German units from the EF box and not suffer large EF point losses (and an early end to the war). In fact, the system now assumes that units will be sent east as early as fall 43, or it should be falling behind.

thats a good point and worth stressing, we even opted to play out the last (game) six months under 1.44 rather than 1.48 just in case that undermined the usage made of the EF box in this game.
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Devonport
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RE: The end ...

Post by Devonport »

Thanks for the AAR loki100, always enjoyable to read and good to learn from others successes (and failures [:)]). Any chance you will do one from the 'other' side?
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loki100
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RE: The end ...

Post by loki100 »

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

Congrats on finishing your game and AAR, and thanks for the entertaining read.

thank you, always like to finish games off properly if possible - not least it provides good feedback when a game is still in the development cycle.

also in this case, I was interested to see if it was possible to come back to at least a draw after a botched opening. My suspicion is too many people bail out if the first stage of the game goes against them
ORIGINAL: jwolf

Thanks for the great AAR, really a pleasure to follow your game. As for the ending ... it's almost as though the Reds had some spies in the Western ranks to tell them when to put the pedal to the metal and win the race for Berlin. But we know the Soviets would never do such a dishonorable thing. [;)] Good luck as you switch to the dark side.

glad you enjoyed ir, as you know there is an old quote about comments making AARs work,so really appreciate comments and questions. I too am sure that Uncle Joe didn't just grab Berlin to spoil my fun with the tanks roaming free in central and southern Germany
ORIGINAL: smokindave34

Thanks for the great game Loki and on the excellent AAR (as all of your AAR's are - I don't know where you find all these photos?). A few observations from the Wolf's Lair....

1) As Loki stated my biggest advantage was the lack of a serious second front to defend in Italy. Once it was obvious there was to be no second landing I was able to strip most of my forces from Italy for the defense of France. This was a huge advantage as I was able to keep a fairly strong line while sending the bulk of my manpower to rebuild understrength units on the East Front.

2) Loki's systematic targeting of my airbases in Italy completely wrecked the Luftwaffe Italian command. I had no choice but to pull back what little air defenses I had to northern Italy.

3) I could sense that Loki was getting the hang of how the supply system worked as the Western Allies moved east across France. The pace never seemed to slow down and in fact was picking up even in winter/rainy weather. By the end my forces were at the breaking point. Loki would have had a clean breakthrough with little to stop him in southern Germany - this was going to happen literally on the next turn (until the Soviets spoiled it for you!).

4) I think the EF box is better but I'm not sure it's completely balanced (we will tell more in our next game). I was committed to try and keep the Soviets on their historical pace by either adding to or removing from the EF box. I felt like I was still a bit too strong in France even with the Soviets on their historical pace (this may have been due to the light action in Italy). I didn't put one unit on refit on the Western Front for the last 2-3 months of gameplay deciding to try and keep the east front up to strength. I was kind of surprised that the Soviets jumped so far west on the last turn since a turn earlier they were right on pace. As the axis player I guess I would like to play with EF box on since it gives you some options to toy with.

I think the learning curve is much steeper for the Western Allies in this game and if we played again I think at best I would get a draw. As I stated earlier by the end of summer I could tell Loki had mastered the supply situation and I was struggling to hold on.

Looking forward to round 2 of our War in the West! By the way, if I were you I would build significant defensive works in northern Denmark as I hear it is ripe for an invasion (sorry....I couldn't help it [;)])

I think the first bit is key, also it links to my comments about the grim attritional battles to the south of Paris. At some stage in this game I had to deal with all the spare units the Germans had as a result of Italy being so quiet. I think it was that 'surplus' I disposed of at that stage, and you can see from the VP chart the price I paid in terms of losses (and thus lost VP)

I can't currently look at a map of Denmark without a significant shudder [;)]. To this game that is the same as some dark and murky events on the Volga in a fiercely contested (at least in the emails) RuS PBEM
ORIGINAL: Rick

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

Congrats on finishing your game and AAR, and thanks for the entertaining read.

+1

Thanks!
Rick

glad it was useful
ORIGINAL: smokindave34

Thanks Joel. Roger has elected to play as axis with the EF box on for our next game so we will see how the new changes effect the Soviet progress. Not sure if Roger is planning on another AAR?

aye just my luck to agree to use it when it becomes a liability [;)]
ORIGINAL: Devonport

Thanks for the AAR loki100, always enjoyable to read and good to learn from others successes (and failures [:)]). Any chance you will do one from the 'other' side?

glad it was useful. I agree that an AAR with less than perfect play can be incredibly informative. There is a Wars in America AAR I did with Narwhal (Wars in America: A How too AAR) which was based on both the first time I played WiA and played PBEM in the AGEOD system. The result was a lot of fun, but the AAR works as Narwhal puts everything beautifully into context and I blundered around like a drunk upsetting everything.

So yes, I'll do an AAR for the rematch. Not least I find I pay more attention and learn a lot more if I force myself to write stuff down and review events/outcomes.
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RE: The end ...

Post by jwolf »

I can't currently look at a map of Denmark without a significant shudder

Heh, you have a permanent legacy from this game! Good luck as you move on.
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Chuske
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RE: The end ...

Post by Chuske »

Still think this is one of the best WitW AARs even though it was played over a year ago.

About to return to the game after a few months away and wondered if you can remember a couple of things:-

- What was your Support Unit strategy? In particular what sort of SUs did you attach to you spearhead units for amphib attacks, breakouts and for the armoured mouse? What was your strategy in general with regard to SUs in corps and Army HQs?

- When you used the amphib TF "Death Star" on Cherbourg how did you keep the Normandy beach temp ports open as I thought a TF needs to be kept next to them at all times?
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loki100
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RE: The end ...

Post by loki100 »

ORIGINAL: jonboym

Still think this is one of the best WitW AARs even though it was played over a year ago.

About to return to the game after a few months away and wondered if you can remember a couple of things:-

- What was your Support Unit strategy? In particular what sort of SUs did you attach to you spearhead units for amphib attacks, breakouts and for the armoured mouse? What was your strategy in general with regard to SUs in corps and Army HQs?

- When you used the amphib TF "Death Star" on Cherbourg how did you keep the Normandy beach temp ports open as I thought a TF needs to be kept next to them at all times?

thanks.

You only need to have the TFs in position at the end of the turn so they can scuttle around shelling strong points in your turn - just remember to move them back.

The game doesn't reward balanced units so the armoured mouse was the Gds Armoured division + the 3 Gds armoured brigades. In reality that is over-tank heavy but in game gives you an awesome punch (or defensive rock) as long as you can keep it well supplied.

Other than that, I attached the armoured brigades/regiments to armoured units but mostly left the rest of the convertible formations at the corps level - handy if you suddenly needed a brigade on map to cover a flank.

With a bit of juggling you can even out the allocation of artillery and sappers. The exception was I set up one US corps with the very heavy artillery and a lot of sappers and that then worked with the fleet to storm well defended cities. It even took a well defended Antwerp when the opening odds were poor but I clearly inflicted a lot of disruption in the opening barrages.
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Chuske
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RE: The end ...

Post by Chuske »

Thanks loki! How about infantry divs, did you bother with direct attachments? I often just have engineers attached directly + maybe anti-tank if defending in sector facing Panzer divisions.
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loki100
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RE: The end ...

Post by loki100 »

yes, I think in the end every US, Canadian and British division had the full set of attachments - either an infantry brigade/regiment (ie the either on or off map units) or engineers.

You don't really need to keep the leg on/off map units on the map so may as well build them into your divisions and by mid-44 you have so many engineer units in any case.
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