FIFTY SHADES OF WiTE: SILLYFLOWER V BRIANG

[sillyflower]

I'm making a rare foray into playing the Hun, taking on Brian G whom Pelton rates as the best Russian player (though he has never played me[;)])

Brian's qualities must include a lot of patience with me as this is our 4th game. We are on his T3 which is the 2nd longest game we have had out of 4 efforts.The first we stated last year, but I then decided to retire and move to a castle in France. We got 7 turns done before I realised that this was quite a project and would put me out of gaming action for about 9 months.
By the time I could restart, 1.08.05 was only weeks ago so we decided to wait for that to come out before starting afresh. That we did, but then the game was set up wrongly ( alt CVs instead of VCs) so that game lasted 1 turn then we got caught up with the bugs/hotfixes. Bugs sorted, this should have been 3rd time luckily. However, we were playing random weather (Brian's choice) and every axis unit on the map became encased in mud on T3 resulting in a massive sense of humour failure in Berlin and a mass cull of German meteorologists.

Like a person on their 4th marriage, hope has triumphed over experience for me and I'm trusting that this game will have longevity. Some have prophesied that the latest changes doom the Germans hence the name of the AAR. Others, though fewer, are more concerned that the Russians have been nerfed. One game won't answer the question of which side benefits more but I hope this AAR produces something of interest.

We've stated on 1.08.07 with the following house rules:

Mild winter and no Russian 1:1 to 2:1 (Brian was happy with these as his games vs TDV and Pelton have the same)
No sea invasions before Dec '41 and not beyond Odessa or Sevastopol unless R holds those cities respectfully.
no paradrops before Jan '42 and never to break pockets.
Fixed weather -I was not going to have random again until it had been patched but Brian preferred to restart now which was fair enough given our history to date.

Of the big changes, those reducing the German's use of fuel drops by air does not bother me at all. I never realised that you got a full drop when using an airfield, so the new restriction has actually meant that I'm now airdropping more fuel than I used to! It's too early to say how much reducing supplies if over 20 MPs from rail-head (was 25) affects things, but it will work against the Russians in the 1st blizzard and later years. The other big change change that will impact mostly against the Russians is that units cost more capacity to rail. Russians always need their full rail capacity in '41 so now Brian will have to make harder choices between trains for units or factories.

[sillyflower]

I hope also to provide a bit of a guide to the less German experienced player as this game can be rather daunting. I started playing this game the day it came out and I still have a lot to learn.

My early approach is a bit different from Pelton's. I do not say this as a criticism of him (or of a criticism of anyone else with whom I may compare my play) but his standard opening makes a good reference point. In the early turns, the Russians are very short of units - though it may not appear so to those who never or rarely play that side. For me the start is about maxing out on unit kills - and if you kill the units you max the losses too. Without enough units, it's hard to defend effectively, especially if you like to defend forward as Brian does. I've become an expert on his early moves[:'(].

In preparation for this start, I did a lot of practising. Brian spots the smallest hole and I've learned to be paranoid about his ability to break pockets and to isolate German spearheads in the process. Whilst this can be both very annoying and very effective, the weakness of that strategy is, of course, that the russian can just be throwing away good units at for no real benefit if the German gets it right. As ever with WiTE, it's a fine balance and my aim is to to try to ensure the russian losses are high enough to shift the momentum in my favour. Kill enough Russians and you can take the ground. If you don't, you can't. Simples.

Against that background, my priority is to maximise pockets and that means focussing on movement to achieve that aim. That means not spending MPs on attacking units that don't need to be attacked. Once the pockets are achieved, then it's good to attack as many units not enclosed in them as you can. Attacks are very cheap in MP terms on T1 and you can inflict heavy losses for little costs. It's the most fun the German gets all game and helps to set up a good T2.

[sillyflower]

T1 in the nort. Not a single russian unit got out of the pocket from routing. 1 Sec unit usually does, but this time it decided to shatter instead. The annoying russian inf div just south of Daugavpils also shattered which was a bit of a result. The routed units on the right of the picture were in the path of the northern hook to Minsk



This will leave him short of units to hold me in the north without significant reinforcements from the south - and I have a cunning plan there..................

[sillyflower]

Fairly standard in the middle. German needs to cut a wide path on both flanks in case a routed unit on the edge recuperates and breaks the pocket. There is a German div under the hex box to stop such an eventuality.

I only sent 1 Pz xx from PzG 3 up north to help out PzG 4 which is pretty weak. I transferred it it to Manstein's corps which is why it doesn't stand out.This meant I had the capacity to give some units near Minsk a good smacking. Hopefully some of the armour will disband themelves and other units stay routed to aid T2



Note the 2 dark blue inf xx just north of BL which have spare MPs to attack the weak tx divs next to them. It is a mistake ti attack them as at least 1 will rout out of the pocket and may be in a position to open a pocket in the soviet turn if it rallies.

Some suggest not taking BL as you then trap 3 more units . I disagree because it causes too much of a bottleneck and slows down 2PzG in particular. The trick is to move the 2 pz xx next to BL out of the way before assaulting the fortress.I always send those divs south anyway so it isn't wasting any of their MPs, but it gives the 2 inf xx in BL a retreat path so I still pocket them. Best of both worlds. The tk div always seems to rout out but that's a price worth paying.

The assiduous may have spotted a 0 strength russian tk div at Novogrudosomething 6 hexes WSW of Minsk. I had hit it for about 10k losses leaving it with about 500 men and 12 tanks. Full marks to the divisional commander for preventing a rout or shatter. As a depleted unit it won't be able to enter an unfriendly hex and will disappear in a puff of smoke the moment a german unit goes next to it. Anyway, it's the first unit I have ever seen go down to 0 strength.

[sillyflower]

In the South, the 'norm' seems to be to create a secure Lvov pocket and to try to pocket a few other units.

However, given the ability of my opponent, I thought something else was needed. I got the idea from ayoung OKH planning officer who called himself Major TDV -surely not his real name but his work showed great promise (see Brian G's AAR versus TDV).

It took me 3 days but the picture below is self explanatory. It took me 3 days to work up this opening. (to follow - suppertime)

[loki100]

great set of opening posts ... should be essential reading for anyone working out T1 - not to copy as such but to work out their own responses to the questions you pose

edit: one question - how are organising the air attack, max damage on the ground or hoping to get the Soviets to fight in the air first?

[sillyflower]

Thank you Loki. I will answer your question tomorrow.

Here's the south trimmed of some of Major TDV's youthful excess. Off picture is the creation of the Lvov pocket by a Pz div reaching the Rumanian border. The one disadvantage of this being a server game is that I have no saved games to check which div it was. It was 1 of the 2 that can reach; the other being part of the 'lockdown' of Soviet reserves in the south.



The Kovel/Lutsk pocket at the top.is designed to hold. Nothing should escape the lockdown of the reserves to become a pocket on T2. This may mean shepherding a unit or 2 back where they came from. Russian can prevent it bcoming a secure pocket on T2 but that will almost certainly result in adding more units to the pocket on T3.

The Lvov pocket cannot be made secure with this approach, but there's nothing to worry about there.After all, none of the units will escape, Rumania becomes active (essential to get the FBS from BL area ready to do the job done by the sadly-missed FBS 5. It can't enter Rumania util it has joined in. Securing Lvov pocket on T2 will be easy absent an aggressive Soviet defence. The latter can be expected from Brian, but it gives opportunities of bagging more Soviets,so I don't mind. Like Pelton, i believe in only using minimal forces to reduce pockets which aren't in the way. The troops inside will die anyway, and the later they die, the later they come back as new units. Perhaps I should just use my gallant allies to pin them down until the snow so they never come back as freebies. Unfortunately, I no longer practise as a lawyer so I must ignore such gamey thoughts.

NB with all the screenshots, sometimes things go better in 1 place and worse in another. There is some redundancy built into the moves of all 3 army groups. In the north, I usually occupy 1 more hesx on the RR that needs to be converted (a silly unforced error meant that I had to to divert the div from 1 Korps that normally goes there. That will slow down rail conversion next turn by 1 hex as Brian will flip that hex back.If the south does not go so well, the 2 pz divs doing the lockdown (and the army airbase in the same hex as one of them) may be slightly more out on a limb but that's not a major issue for me.

The lockdown contains most of the high quality units in the south that are not caught in the usual opening. The rest are down by Rumania and are out of reach by now. My hope is that this move will force Brian to keep more of his other units in the South and to fight to rescue his units. I hope it will make it impossible for him to do the usual migration North without making the South too weak and vulnerable to heavy factory losses.

I also like to have my early fights as Germans close to my borders rather than in the depths of Russia. The armour will have more petrol and, more importantly, my infantry will be able to get stuck in as early is possible. The first summer is not just about swanning around with sexy panzers. The infantry are the real hammer of the Red Army. The armour is 'just' the anvil to hold the commies and their factories in place until the infantry comes up to do the real work.

Finally T1 losses were 8600 German and 174K soviets.

[sillyflower]

Other T1 stuff

The airbase bombing on T1 I leave almost totally to the AI, after flying recce missions to all enemy airbases to achieve max detection rating of 5. I do this simply because it gets better results than I do for some reason. NB you keep having to tell it to do more until no more missions can be flown because it stops periodically.Air losses were 19 to 3748, though about 250 russian a/c were destroyed during the ground fighting or when air bases were overrun. NB this job is best left to the armour as captured fuel goes to the relevant corps HQ and you don't want to waste that on inf corps HQs.

My plan is to have a plan.Taking L'grad, Moscow and Rostov along with lots of industry in '41 is the ideal but 2/3 ain't bad especially if Rostov is no.3. Obviously, extrapolating from my success on T1 but making due allowance for Brian's skill, I expect to take L'grad by T6, Moscow T10 and Rostov about T14. However, it is always better to over-achieve against an acceptable target than to fall slightly short of a more challenging one.

However, T1 is not all fun. Even worse than having to give away 20% of German arms points ( see T2 report) is the complete shambles of the German set-up. I do not question the accuracy of the scenario design, but it shows the criminal negligence of OKH planners.. It is well known by all that Axis corps and army HQs can only control 4 and 12 divisons/equivalents without suffering penalties that greatly reduce combat performance. Despite this knowledge, OKH have overloaded many HQs and left others with spare capacity.They even persisted in doing this throughout the whole campaign, which is clearly the real reason why the Russians won so decisively. Sorting out this nonsense is my no.1 priority but it takes time and precious APs.

Almost as hopeless is the distribution of SUs. Again, the devs has long said that about 6 SUs per German xxx or Russian army is optimal. So why do German corps have between 0 and 15 or so SUs? Why in God's name are almost all the construction battalions whose job it is to repair/convert rail lines in corps HQs? Everyone knows that they need to be in OKH or Army Group HQs that are on the functioning rail network and not in front of it as all the corps and all/almost all the army HQs will be from the very start. OKH is clearly full of 5th columnists, but they are being dealt with as I type. Redistributing SUs to where they can be of some use is the 2nd priority for my APs.

Last of all is to adjust the TOEs of almost all units. I don't do this as drastically as Pelton does, but it does need doing and that might as well be at the start. This is particularly important with the very heavy artillery (210mm+) as these units cost a fortune in arms points to build and are therefore a complete waste.

[Northern Star]

I think that Leningrad in t6, Moscow in t10 and Rostov in t14 is a bit too ambitious... There are lots of excellent terrains to defend in the north and center... In the south lack of supply is painful...

About airfield bombing, don't leave it to the ai again in the future... You can destroy 5k planes if you do this job manually [:)]

Please go on writing your aar, I'm very curious... I never write aar, I don't have enough time and I don't want to disclose important info [:)]

[sillyflower]

ORIGINAL: Northern Star

I think that Leningrad in t6, Moscow in t10 and Rostov in t14 is a bit too ambitious

I like your avatar.

I try to live up to my name. If you ever read Hitman's AAR called HITMAN vs THEPROS I think, you will learn of my love of trash talk and will not take my predictions of glory seriously.The serious bit came just before the sentence you refer to. It's much harder to do good trash talk though when my opponent is not allowed onto the thread because insulting him as a joke is not funny if he cannot reply. Hitman let me into his AAR which is why it is 90% trash talk which was much more fun to do than to play the game.

I will just have to wait for Hitman to find this AAR and perhaps we can then carry on where we left off when our game ended.........

[speedy.gh]

How do you achieve 5000 planes T1? I have got close to 4k, but not over in .08 at least.

[Northern Star]

Use the power of all your planes... There are many different planes, you should give maximum power to all of them.
Try again, the dark side will help you [:)]

[Northern Star]

Thank you Sillyflower for your comment about my avatar... It's the most suitable thing I found to represent who I am [:)]
I wanted to put a Sith lady but I didn't find anything nice...

[sillyflower]

Being Silly, I forgot to set out the house rules for bombing:

Only 1 attack on any one airbase after T1 (though this is less important now as enemy bombers can only bomb airbases as a 1st mission)
max 3 on a hex with ground units
only 1 on an HQ not stacked with combat ubit

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: sillyflower

Other T1 stuff

The airbase bombing on T1 I leave almost totally to the AI, after flying recce missions to all enemy airbases to achieve max detection rating of 5. I do this simply because it gets better results than I do for some reason.

I'm so glad to read that I am not the only one who has given up on anything clever with the air force on T1 [;)]. My feeling is what really matters is to hit the morale of the Soviet airforce and the AI does that pretty well. Whether you knock out 2500 or 4000 I and SB series planes makes no difference going forward. Ensuring a sizeable chunk of the VVS is stuck <40 morale does.

as an aside, I had a short (and very early ending) PBEM where my German opponent did very little with the air at all apart from T1. By T3, the bulk of my squadrons were over 55 morale compared to the usual guddle of most being <40 and beyond any use.

as before, great set of posts

[SuluSea]

Enjoying reading your start and presentation. Looking forward to reading more during morning coffee. Best of Luck Sillyflower.

[sillyflower]

I've just sent my T4 on (sorry - no spoilers) so here are the T2 reports.

The northern and middle pockets held as did the Kovel-Lutsk one. The Lvov one inevitably was and Brian hugged what I dubbed the
lockdown in the South.Generally in the middle and South he stayed forward. In the North he did not, but he almost certainly. didn't have enough units to do anything useful. In my other new GC where I have done only 2 turns so far, turns, I've really noticed that my rail points don't go nearly as far as they used to now transport costs have increased. I've also noticed it as the German, but I can't say that it has made any real difference yet.

Here's the North



Plan is to push the infantry to Pskov as quickly as possible, which meant pushing out the armour screen to clear the path for T3. I also wanted to keep a broad front to allowed flexiblty especially as some inf xx would be crossing near Daugavpils wich needed to be cleared to secure that flank. Eliminating the 2 pockets was the secondary objective but I didn't want to hold the inf up beyond a minimum. it is more difficult to reduce pockets now, but it is vital not to lose sight of pushing forward as much as possible with the landsers in the early turns. In fact I managed to clear them. Recce flights confirmed the presence of a lone HQ in the minor pocket once the other units had surrendered (bottom of picture left of centre, so I decided to leave it as it couldn't move and a security regt could put it out if its misery on T3.

THe armour went far enough to take ground without having to waste petrol in combats that would be pretty pointless ie a waste of precious petrol. If he hugged be in his turn, the inf would swat his screen away, and/or there would be pocketing opportunities. If he didn't I should get enough fuel to get to or very close to Pskov on T3 with the hope of taking it or making it untenable on T4. When playing Brian it is essential to ensure that I minimise opportunities for him to isolate my spearheads hence the shape of the panzer screen.

[sillyflower]

A similar approach in the middle, where his fight forward policy enabled me to nab a few more units. I always move units from the back first so it really didn't really slow anyone down to surround these units. Not too much emphasis on reducing the pocket, but I swatted anything on the edges - with units just passing by if possible, as the infantry is needed at the front.



Some of the armour pushed forward more boldly.A good foothold over the Berezina is important to enable a good advance by the infantry next turn. Not all ended up where I wanted them, so there is some exposure to the bear hug. Quite a lot of Soviet units in that area get released on T2, and most will have max MPs.

[sillyflower]

Last, but not least, for tonight the South



I did try to eliminate the Kovel Lutsk pocket entirely as it took a lot of units to secure and it was in the way of my efforts to turn the lockdown into a secure pocket. 1 unit remains thanks to the new patch: though the change is a good one IMHO. I think I succeeded on the northern and eastern sides (no 1:1 to 2:1 rule here) but fell short in the south as the pocket looks breakable. Still, the chevauchee by a pz div in the area NE of the pocket got a couple of routs and overran a couple of airfields with damaged aircraft on the, as well as ensuring no attack from that quarter in the Russian turn.His forward defence enabled me to add 2 inf xx and 1 para to the pocket which is nice. Paras can be a real pain in the right place as they can retreat many times without breaking. The raid Lvov pocket looks secure.

No screenie of Romania but a commonplace advance against a screen of ants to secure the route that FBS3 (?) from B-Litovsk can start clearing next turn.

[chaos45]

My guess would be he expands the group trapped in the south to zoc up your supply lines pretty good and limit your T3 MPs some in the south....his units are dead now anyway so its just a matter of make u lose as much MP as possible as they die. He might even be able to get a line to them depending on MP and unit morale levels.

You opening is pretty rough for the Soviets though in south. North and center were pretty standard Soviets lose everything west of minsk unless you get some lucky routs out of the pockets lol.