Failure of the Will - GR (allies), loki (axis)

[EddyBear81]

How about shoring up forces for a defense of the Rhine on steroids ? Do you think it would have been a better option ? Maybe it's still possible ?

Anyway, completely abandoning Italy looks like a brillant move that opens up many operational options for the big show up to the endgame !

[GloriousRuse]

AUGUST

As the game enters October in play, it's time to release August.

Strategic Overview

As the Germans withdraw from France, there are really only one decision set left in the game: how to get into Germany for the allies while the Germans weigh how to best spend their final hand. By '45 its all tactics base don the decisions of late '44. There simply isn't the time, or for the Germans, forces, to make any new major strategic decisions. Even operational decisions are pretty limited.

The path to Germany starts the day after Paris, so it's worth making one final set of plans...

The Enemy

A Loki was withdrawing, I knew that he had a solid core of fresh infantry falling back from the Seine, I also knew that by now the panzers were limping, but locally dangerous. I knew he had a serious problem to contend with as my lead elements approached Belfort and the Rhone valley covering forces were destroyed, and that the LW was in tatters. And as the final piece of that equation, I knew that the Miracle in September was going to provide him reprieve in the form of one final wave of reinforcements as the fall came on.

What I had no idea on was how he was going to employ the three major forces in play; the Seine infantry, the panzers, and the reinforcements. Something was going to have to be deployed to the Belfort area, or at least the Southern Rhine (almost certainly the freshly arriving units as dictated by rails and geography), but other than that the Moselle sector, Ardennes sector, and Antwerp sector could have a wide variety of defenses set up.

The Plan

I have a rule of thumb that the most difficult variable to accommodate in a plan is the enemy (obvious, right?), and that geography, logistics, and so forth are almost always easier to work through than getting the match up wrong. And with the final real decisions on the horizon, I just didn't know enough to commit. So I decided to spend August trying to read Loki's last play.

To that end, I arranged the force structure in three echelons (Soviet Deep Battle theorists, eat your heart out). The first would be cavalry units reinforced with two armored divisions, meant to advance into the unknown (cav), knock away screening unit (armor divisions) and generally apply pressure to the retreat. The second echelon would be the bulk of my armor trying to not get too far ahead of the logistics, but ready to trap any units left behind in the retreats and to open up the ground. Finally, the infantry divisions would march up behind the ground the other echelons had cleared, with the goal being they should finish encircled units and allow the mechanized forces to keep hurling forward. This should let me figure out how Loki was setting his defense without needing to pre-emptively commit forces.

The Outcome

At the start of the month, I saw three heavy units that looked like either a delaying force, the outlines of a new forward line, or cripples. Deciding the one in the north was a bit too close to infantry for a lunge to work, I decided to "isolate by air" on that one. The cav and aerial recon got sent forward to check the situation on the other two. It turned out they were alone, so the second echelon pounced and raced to connect with the Rhone valley forces. You can see 2nd panzer, which I didn't want to get too close to with the rest of the Heer twenty miles east, had to withdraw through a layer of "9" interdiction. I don't know what it's truck status was before that, but it certainly couldn't have been good after.




Meanwhile, South France was all about mopping up the last of the resisting forces.




As those pockets were being finished up, and 2nd panzer run down as its infantry withdrew, Loki decided to punish one of my 1st echelon armor divisions.




Which brought the 2nd echelon forward to do their job.



Meanwhile, in sectors and Antwerp and Ardennes, the shape of Loki's heavily reinforced northern line became apparent...



As August drew to a close, I knew where the enemy was weak, where he was strong, and how I would be going to Germany.

[Sammy5IsAlive]

I'd be interested to hear loki's side of that engagement. Just going off your screenshots it looks to me like he counterattacked the wrong side of the Moselle - I'd have been waiting a little longer and then hitting your bridgeheads as you crossed the river. That way he'd have been the 'right' side of the river for supply purposes, had better natural flank protection and also the potential to score higher casualties retreating a unit back across the river. Although it is a long time since I played WITW so maybe I'm missing something fundamental in terms of mechanics.

[Scona]

Looking like a potential main thrust strategy south of the Ardennes this time? The rail repair units usually stuck in Italy would be available to get the railways hooked up from from the south up to Alsace, but could this effort be supported without the quick capture of Antwerp?

[GloriousRuse]

Sammy: While he may chip in, my read is that this wasn’t a planned counterattack in the sense that there was a baited trap. His panzers were pretty run down from August, and there’s no guarantee he could throw back a deliberate bridgehead over the Moselle with further refit - where I suspect he wanted to seat his next line. Allowing me across the Moselle would be a 50/50 gamble at best (you can see the other attack that failed), that if it went wrong would mean losing a line that might hold for a month or more.

Rather, he likely saw some exposed armor running near the end of its supply line (low fuel affects combat value) and went for a quick punish. It’s worth remembering that in good weather, it’s a struggle to see, let alone ID, units 2-3 hexes away. In worse weather, a lot of times your first clue there’s a unit somewhere is running into it. The allies have a lot more aerial recon to help offset this...but still, there is the very real chance he simply didn’t see most of the units that came out of the 2nd echelon, or didn’t see the 3rd echelon and assumed those units would be pinned holding their pockets. The screenshots do him a bit of injustice because they happen after the fact, and you can see all my units.

@Spona: Well, I wouldn’t want to engage in serious combat without Antwerp, the point of August was to find a way in that would avoid serious combat...and a tank with two cans of gas and a box of machine gun ammo can be a holy terror in the rear.

[HermanGraf]

Without sounding like an ass, and trying not to offend. Loki did seem a little salty in his tone on previous posts. He is usually so good at posting, is the game still friendly?

[GloriousRuse]

We’re discussing value theory in the e-mails around the turns, so it’s friendly enough. After that pocket, the game itself has less to lend from the German perspective (though I secretly suspect he is reforming the panzerwaffe just out of sight for a final battle)

[GloriousRuse]

SEPTEMBER

With that last pocket of panzers, all plans and bets were off. There was now just one goal - get across the Rhine before Loki could reform. Nothing else mattered. Germans west of the Rhine would die or withdraw if I could get over in force, whereas Germans east of the Rhine I would have to fight for the rest of the war. Get there, and everything else would either be given up for free or represent the death of the Heer in a doomed final stand.



While that gap couldn't possibly be that big (again, in the mobile phases, you might be able to see 2-4 hexes, but move a dozen) it was clear that this was where the enemy was weak. The allied armies turned toward the Cologne-Mainz stretch of the River, thinning out Antwerp and Ardennes sectors to enable the uppercut. In the south, they would attempt to grab a few crossings - less to actually expand out of, more to fix Loki's forces into defending against them.



And no, the gap wasn't that big. But enough pressure was applied that Loki felt compelled to withdraw his southern forces to the Rhine, due east as allied armor lapped around. He launched a series of spoiling attacks, but by now the Allies have nearly 4M men in the field. The potential for a few thousand losses in a battle means little compared to the simple attrition chewing on an army at the end of an increasingly frail supply line. The only thing for it was to bull through and keep eyes on the prize. In the north, he began to refuse his line, which triggered a general offensive in the Ardennes and Namur-Liege axis to side-step his Antwerp line.



Ignoring the retreating antagonists, allied armor hurled NE. Imagine my joy at finding I had won the race to the Mainz Wiesdabden crossing, and then my horror at realizing the one division that could get there had no support and would need to fall back or risk encirclement. The only upside was that in this mobile war, Loki would have no idea what I actually had up there and his few remaining panzers could only move slowly - or fast, once.

My luck held - or the German truck supply didn't - and the rest of the force joined up next week, with lead elements taking Frankfurt. This drew a counter-attack, of course. Once the Germans lose a National Supply Source, they can no longer rebuild units. Production still happens, replacements still flow, reinforcement divisions still arrive on schedule, but a unit lost entire can never rise again. And Frankfurt is an NSS. With 12th SS panzer rebuffed, the war entered a new lethal phase for the Heer.



All across the front, the Germans were starting to dissolve. Local German attacks could punish, but not change the situation. Even the alpen-krieg saw American regiments and British brigades nearly arriving in South Germany. The center was ruptured. Only the low countries defenses held intact, and it became clear that they were receiving cases of Iron Crosses in their supply runs as they prepared to die in place near Antwerp, perhaps buying Germany the last needed gasp to rebuild the forces lost in August...

[HermanGraf]

Oh wow! Now that's a different outcome than the normal WiTW games! You can push all the way to Berlin!!!! Man those panzers must be down crazy on TOE, the whole german army must after that gamble.

[EwaldvonKleist]

That is a very good offensive. It doesn't look like the Germans will ever be able to reform a line. If WitE experience can be transferred at all to WitW, I think the problem was the constant loss of a unit here and there. IMO it is rarely worth to lose a unit to encirclement/surrender. Throwing away a unit to hold a location a little longer gives a one-time benefit while keeping it for the rest of the game gives constant benefit. There surely are cases when it is worth it but they are rare. The "fortified places" strategy by Hitler was opposed by the German military for good reason.

The pockets South of Paris and the September offensive show the downsides of losing too many units, unit density simply isn't high enough anymore for the Germans. Each lost ID may only be 9kish men or so but it can still hold the line against a weak attack or construct fortifications or provide ZOC.

[GloriousRuse]

Ewald has the right of it. The ports cost the Germans about 7 infantry divisions. The Rhone cost them an FJ division, a Panzer division, and a PzG division plus Schmalz and an infantry corps. Then the initial August pursuit bagged two more panzer divisions and a PzG. The last pocket in August took three panzer divisions and two PzGs out of the fight.

The inland battle losses weren't Heer breaking, aside from the truck burn after Italy. The August pursuit losses are what got us to today.

[Scona]

Are you playing with historic East front reinforcements? If so then any roadblocks that could be erected have to be taken from out of the flanking fronts in Belgium and Austria, which is possible only if the rail net is largely intact.

[GloriousRuse]

On 25 November, German high command made overtures for peace. On 3 December, 1944, twelve allied divisions, supported by nearly 4000 aircraft, launched one final assault on Berlin after bypassing Potsdam and Brandenburg. The last defenders caved. Hitler was found dead in a bunker.

(On T74, Loki told me he would give me his PW given the state of the game, and I said that I would run the siege of Berlin on his current defenses.)

[Zombly]

well, having been lerking since the start of the first of these two AARs, i have to say its been a fun read
i hope to see more games by you two in the near future, its very nice to have a game that actually completes within my life time [:D]

[GloriousRuse]

Thank you. Always good to hear more people who appreciated the effort - particularly on Loki's part; I found that even running a month together at once is a time consuming event, so to do a turn by turn posting while maintaining one turn a day is a truly massive investment of personal effort from him. His steady turn rate (helped by us being on opposite sides of the pond, so essentially each of us would send a turn sometime after work in our time zone, which would be received in the morning for the other guy) really let us keep the pace. He was a great opponent both in and out of game.

Also, WitW itself lends itself to a sweet spot for rapid completion for anyone considering a GC. Italy starts off small enough to prevent early game fizzles because the opening 28 turns are short(er, minus the t1 air reforms) and the game never gets too unmanageable in size. The steady 97 turns with significant changes in the nature of play every 20 or so helps keep the scope manageable and different as well.

As a final recommendation, it's a great game to get into the series in. I own WitE, WitP, and WitW (there was sale...how could I pass?), but honestly opening both WitE and WitP made me go "holy &^%$, there's how many things I need to do right now to set the conditions for a 200 turn game, with how many different ^&(%$! mechanics I need to learn up front or risk Moltke's wrath later?". With WitW you have some space and time to grow into the game and into the mechanics. It also benefits from having several exceptional AARs (many of which are Loki's) that are as much about how to work the mechanics as they are who went right instead of left.

All of this made for a great first MP experience in the WitX series, as did Loki's constant willingness to teach, dsicuss, and advise on the system.

I, at least, am going to take a breather for a few weeks before kicking off any mega-click hungry games (and, honestly, I don't like to go against humans in such games until I've run the mechanics vs the AI enough to know I won't sacrifice 3 months because of something everyone competent takes for granted but I never figured on). If there's an appetite, I might post a truncated OCT-DEC version of events, but the real meat of the game is already present. I will also post some final high level lessons, and a short post on some house rules you might consider if you decide to play a game.

[Laits]

Thank you for this awesome AAR and congratulation for the victory!
I'm eager to read tour lessons from this campaign.

[GloriousRuse]

A few big picture lessons. Hopefully not too much "buy low, sell high", but a certain amount of that is in there:

It’s All About the Force Ratios.

In both games played, despite our focus on operational and tactical level decisions in the moment, the outcomes in a theater stemmed from the strategic level – which meant force ratios here. Not to re-hash Boyd et al, but higher levels of war trumped lower ones.

Basically, in whatever sub-theater the allies have enough forces for overmatch, they will win. Either through blunt force or by moving into space and just going places no moderate amount of force would consider, or can cover. Once they start winning big enough, they start killing units and not just men. Once units start dying, the ratios get more lopsided, and more and more holes open in a cascading failure. The only re-dress the Germans have if this starts is abandoning terrain -locally, operationally, or even strategically - and hoping to patch together a line somewhere where the allies can’t just overwhelm them with power and mobility. In contrast, where the Germans can keep the ratios only marginally disadvantageous, they can bleed the allied VP score pretty badly.

Bluntly, Loki is a superior mechanical/tactical player than me. His experience, his talent for assembling powerful custom formations, his eye for detail – all things I can’t match without sitting down and pouring a lot of thought into it, whereas he does naturally.

I didn’t get through the mountains of N. Italy faster than Loki because I was better, or because my narrow thrust operations were all that more clever than his shifting broad front. I got through because I had another army’s worth of divisions and thousands of aircraft down there.

As an earlier example, I was barely able to contain Loki’s Rome landings with tattered regiments, whereas he handily destroyed multiple US divisions. In part due to his superior tactical skill and my choice of landing sites, but also because he had several powerful panzer formations in theater whereas I had pissed away some of mine in the south and had not been able to get many more into Italy.

In the Rhone, I didn’t win through being any better at the game. Far from it. I won because I could throw two full armies against a couple reinforced corps.

And so on. Assuming two players within a reasonable range of mechanical capability, the guy who brings a disproportionately large force (beyond the basic “allies have more stuff”) to the party wins.

For the allies, this is mostly a matter of math with some redeployment scheduling (Med to England – 7 week planning factor after accounting for refit, England to Med is 5 because you’re bringing fresh troops who don’t need to march before getting on boats and rails.)

For the Germans, there is the added complication that merely employing your best units – where you really make up your ratios - runs both them and the supporting national stockpiles down. I’m now thinking of the game for the Germans as 5 boxes – S. Italy, N. Italy, S. France, N. France, Low Countries – where you have to get the right units to the right box, knowing that while you might be able to use them later, once used they’ll be much reduced in value.

So…if that’s true…

Then the two most important decision cycles in the game are early ’43 and early ’44. Not because of how you decide to invade/defend Italy or France, but because those are the periods you really decide what is going where, and when/where you’ll be strong. For the Germans in particular, what you send down to Italy in those first few desperate turns has a massive impact on the rest of the game.

For the WA Jan-April ’44 period essentially locks in your force ratios and determines how easy or hard each sub theater is going to be. By extension, it determines the tempo and opportunities in each theater as well. Basically, you’re each making calls on a mix between what you want to achieve/deny for the next 30-40 turns, and balancing that with where you actually think you can create the sort of force mismatch that will allow you to do that. Kind of chicken-egg, though I’m leaning towards the idea that if the allies can create a big win anywhere, it unhinges the Germans everywhere.

I would be interested to hear people's means and methods for handling this decision, given it appears to be so utterly vital.

The Allied Secret Weapon is Mobility

So – I got the first hints of this in an embarrassing turn set last game where Loki tore me apart near Paris. He was merciful. Yes, the WA have scads of airpower. And sea power. And firepower. And stuff. But everyone knows that.

What is overlooked is just how good the WA are at mobile operations.

1. They have plenty of good cavalry. Both in terms of the actual cav groups, and separate regiments and brigades. The Germans have a handful of motorized brigades and press-ganged security regiments. They can’t afford to spend their panzers as cav. Meanwhile the allies can freely recon virtually any apparent opening – by July of my run as the WA, I was literally preceding every major move by sending a cav group to poke around and see what was out there, and if the lines were in contact, by seeing if I could float around the flank or at least see if there was nasty surprise being held in reserve. Between this and air recon, where information is scarce the WA are much more capable of developing the situation. And if a ground recon element gets knocked back…well, 1,000 troops sounds like a lot, but is nothing at all compared to a full multi-week assault.

2. Any allied unit can be a mobile unit. Another Loki trick - temporary motorization means that for little more than a week’s AP, an entire corps can be attacking a weak point, surrounding a unit, going through a gap or holding open a breakthrough. You can use this as a hammer by shifting power to a weak spot, but I found its greatest value came in meaning the WA really have a reserve anywhere. If you hold off on moving a handful of infantry divisions until you’ve seen what some recon and initial attacks bear out, all of a sudden you can have the forces you want where you want them – in essence, you can almost always support a breakthrough, finish a pocket, or go to an open flank. It costs someone else in trucks and supplies, but chances are that’s a lot less relevant than wherever you just committed. Or you can save up and motorize an entire army to go where no German player could reasonably predict it should be. And you won’t have Monty crumping about it either…

3. More prosaically, they just have more mobile formations that move faster (not technically any different in max speed, but by the time you’re out of Italy, the German truck pools and tracks are losing some steam) and can move longer than the Germans (better logistics until you get to the Rhine, by which time the Germans are out of everything).

[loki100]

Or to add

Ok, I made 2 early mistakes that came back to haunt me constantly:

a) I still think stacking up Corsica is a valid approach, but you can't defend one of the ports just by naval interdiction - in the end the Allies will pay the price to grab it. So its crudely a 5 division commitment or don't bother. Linked to this is the approach of retreating units out of a port into an open hex so they are destroyed not just routed back the mainland;
b) I've mentioned this, I was very pleased with myself for easing out so many Pzr/PzrGr formations out of the garrisons and into Italy. With hindsight this is not a good idea. You have the illusion of strength but of course the Allies can always (should always) go around you. At the time their mobility stayed in the 40-45 MP range so the cost in trucks was obscured and it was pleasing to more or less wipe out a few US armoured divisions.

The problem hit when they came back from playing with Uncle Joe, and found an empty truck pool. All those returns which should be the heart of your 1944 force were effectively for show and defense only. As mentioned, if GR had added to the misery by hitting the truck production then things would have been even worse.

I'm not sure if my 1944 strategy had any validity or not. My logic was bot to lock too much too far west was going to ensure I paid a full price for compromised mobility. I know playing the Allies that the advance phase can be tricky to manage but I think I forgot why. In most games, that comes after a set of bruising battles, you know the Pzrs are weakened but dangerous, so your goal is not to give them a target while grabbing as much as you can before the front settles down. My approach changed this decision frame radically, in effect the Allies know there is something waiting for them that can indeed chew up a weak/isolated spearhead. So there is no reward for pushing forward and an obvious penalty, so you advance with caution.

That leads onto a couple of other issues.

We've discussed the issue of using brigades + TF to undermine port defences (crudely the TF artillery gives you masses of disruptions meaning it falls easily to a main attack). Its one of those things that are either a bit exploitative or an excellent use of the game mechanics. What it did do was to remove one of the pillars behind my 1944 approach.

The other pre-existing issue was that GR was sitting on a huge VP score. Most of this was earned by simply better strategic management of his resources (as is clear from the posts, he spends a lot of time putting this together and has the enviable ability to always have one more unit than you'd expect). But BC doing day bombing in 1943 also acts as a very large multiplier. This has been discussed at length and no point saying more but not only is it VP rich, it effectively takes 30% of the German fighters out of the game.

So my approach was based on a couple of things that just weren't the case. There was no reason why the Allies should advance as if they were in the post-landing pursuit phase. Equally once they had established contact, they could just wait - existing VP score and the evaporation of my port defences in the south.

So I could have pulled back, I did think about this, if all I wanted to do was to grind the game out as long as possible, in theory I could pull back so far as to recreate the supply dynamics I was trying for - but there really is no point to that.

In general, these 2 games have changed my views on Italy radically. I've often promoted a take Rome for the VP, grab the Northern Tuscan cities (because you can), flip to defend mindset. In my game, I didn't actually leave much more in Italy than you'd need for this, but managed to spend the summer of 1944 levering the Axis out of the Appenines. GR simply left another complete army there - I wasn't prepared to even think of matching that, so lost it all before the summer of 1944.

[HermanGraf]

GR and Loki - Thank you for another fantastic AAR!!! I learn a whole lot from these posts!!

[John B.]

Thanks for another outstanding AAR!