The Good The Bad & The Indifferent

[crsutton]

Well, "African Kaiser" is certainly high on my list or recommendations...[8|]

[crsutton]

Dan, if you want a great summer book, I just read "Empire of the Summer Moon" while down at our beach place and found it to be superb. Those Comanches were some seriously rough dudes....

https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Mo ... 1416591060

[Smoky Stoker]

I cannot too strongly recommend Quartered Safe Out Here by George MacDonald Fraser, a memoir of his service as a grunt in Burma. Still in print.

Just as good, but harder to find are Bugles and a Tiger and The Road Past Mandalay by John Masters, the first covering his service as a junior officer in a pre-war Gurkha regiment, the second taking him through to the end of the war.

[cwemyss]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

Dan, if you want a great summer book, I just read "Empire of the Summer Moon" while down at our beach place and found it to be superb. Those Comanches were some seriously rough dudes....

https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Mo ... 1416591060

I read that last winter..... Awesome. And really cool to put the story with a lot of the local place names around here (north Texas).

[CaptBeefheart]

I just read "Quartered Safe Out Here" on Kindle, which is a great read from the 100-foot level. Nothing strategic about it other than a few comments on what he learned about the campaign post war.

Cheers,
CC

[Canoerebel]

8/31/44

Peep Show II: Death Star & The Herd are in place.

D-Day at Taichu, Formosa, tomorrow. Originally this was to be relatively minor landing to freeze John's ability to transfer troops by rail, with the main landing taking place at Taihoku.

Taichu is so weakly defended (I wonder if John wasn't aware that it's a coastal hex?) that it's going to fall unless he rails in reinforcements pronto. He probably will.

The day after tomorrow, the larger, main landing will take place at Taikhoku. That base is more strongly defended, but I have two very strong divisions. And I'm counting on air and sea power.

I don't know if John will contest or not. You'd think so, but he's got backwards notions fixated on Victory Points rather than military considerations. If he doesn't fight hard, Formosa may not be the bear it ought to be. If he does fight hard, or if he pulls a rabbit out of his hat, then all bets are off.

What will the morrow be like? I wonder. I can't wait to see. I'm a bit worried.

But KB is in the Java and South China seas. So I don't have to worry about it. I don't have to worry much about big enemy airfields on Formosa and coastal China. And there's no sign (yet) of enemy subs or mines. Weird way to wage war.

Except from a Victory Point, gaming standpoint.

That is NOT (NOT!) a criticism. This a game. John is working the game. To this point, I've mainly been working the military angles. But if and when Formosa falls, the gaming aspect (harvesting VPs) will become a much larger part of my strategy.

1941-1942: Defensive fighting to stymie and attrition the Japanese.
1943-8/44: Offensive fighting to push from CenPac to DEI to Philippines to Formosa and China
9/44-1945: Offensive fighting to punish the Japanese militarily and to harvest VPs to win the game.

[Canoerebel]

8/31/44

Peep Show II Deployment at Sea: Here's the rather simple plan for tomorrow's opening invasion.

P.S. What an amazingly unappealing graphic! If I had time and patience, I'd re-do it...and the second generation would be a big improvement.

[BBfanboy]

Very much doubt he will rail troops into Taichu in time. They would need to be in Strat mode already, waiting to move wherever. I doubt John spent enough time on his armies to arrange that kind of detail. It just isn't interesting enough to him.

[Encircled]

Bit harsh of you to use the real Death Star to cover Northern Formosa! [:)]

[jwolf]

If Japanese troops on Formosa were already waiting aboard trains, then wouldn't they be extremely vulnerable to air attack?

[MakeeLearn]

The Allies plan to construct and explode a mine underneath the salient in an attempt to surprise and overwhelm the Japanese and seize the heights above Peterformosaburg and thereby shorten the siege.

[Canoerebel]

ORIGINAL: MakeeLearn
The Allies plan to construct and explode a mine underneath the salient in an attempt to surprise and overwhelm the Japanese and seize the heights above Peterformosaburg and thereby shorten the siege.

Yikes! I hope this doesn't turn into the Battle of the Crater!

[Canoerebel]

ORIGINAL: jwolf
If Japanese troops on Formosa were already waiting aboard trains, then wouldn't they be extremely vulnerable to air attack?

Yes. I have some expectation that John doesn't have a good grasp on what's going on: there's a small chance he thinks Taichu is inland, since he has few defenders there, and he may not have thought of railing reinforcements to the beachhead or have decided that the bombing of those troops would be too damaging.

If I had seen evidence of rail movement pending, especially movement dots, I would've strongly considered using paratroop drops on his main garrisons to freeze his units in place.

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

Very much doubt he will rail troops into Taichu in time. They would need to be in Strat mode already, waiting to move wherever. I doubt John spent enough time on his armies to arrange that kind of detail. It just isn't interesting enough to him.

A key Japanese tactic to master in the late game.

Formosa though is tough as spoiling invasions can stop traffic.

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Yes. I have some expectation that John doesn't have a good grasp on what's going on: there's a small chance he thinks Taichu is inland, since he has few defenders there,

This has happened to lots of Japanese players...Pegu springs to mind, as does a base on Kyushu.

[Andav]

ORIGINAL: Lowpe


This has happened to lots of Japanese players...Pegu springs to mind, as does a base on Kyushu.

Twitch ...

Wa

[Canoerebel]

You can probably discern from my comments and "body language" that I'm fairly confident that things are going well and will go well with regard to Formosa. But there's always the understanding that the wheels can come off, sometimes spectacularly so, with little warning - and sometimes when least expected. That's certainly the case with a major invasion heading into the enemy heartland. When I sent the turn to John last night, I felt some unease about the unknowns: full moon, would John unleash night attacks that prove far more damaging than expected, might he send in his combat vessels, doing damage to DS or causing it to react into the shore guns at Pescadores, would he have out-thought me as to the defenses of Formosa; etc.

Just all part of the game - the tension and excitement.

I figured the first indication I'd get of things going awry would be with John's posts to his AAR. If he posted under the heading "Banzai!" I'd be in trouble. If he posted under the heading "September 1944" I'd probably be doing okay or well.

He's posting under "September 1944."

[Lowpe]

With respect to your sub operations....

Have you ever coordinated sub commerce raids with the weather and moonlight? Withdrawing them during periods of good weather and sending them in during periods of low moonlight and bad weather?

[Canoerebel]

No, I've never done that. Why? 'Cause I've never thought of it before. It's good information. Thanks for sharing it.

That adds yet another layer of micromanagement to the game. I bet the community is divided between loving it and hating it. I guess I need to learn to love it. I used to absolutely hate pilot training. I can't say I "love it" now, but I do it with a certain degree of satisfaction.

I can kinda wrap my head around the satisfaction of moving subs to allow for moon phases, since that's a fairly lengthy and cyclical commitment. But adjusting for weather! Yikes!

[witpqs]

But there's always the understanding that the wheels can come off, sometimes spectacularly so, with little warning - and sometimes when least expected.

Keeps us coming back to AE for more, right! [:D]