Time of Writhe - Axis

[elmo3]

Nice AAR.  I see Losses Dealt and Losses Received reports.  Are there any more specific reports about what happened in your opponents turn?  Thanks.

[Chocolino]

Hello Elmo3,

thanks for reading the AAR. Yes, reporting is fairly circumspect, especially in the current V1.6 (we started before it was released and still play V1.5). But even in V1.5 there is much more than presented here.

To save space, I only report on the overall cumulative losses of Germany vs the USSR since I consider this loss ratio of importance for the success of the campaign (Germany must destroy a much larger quantity of strength points as their income is lower). But you can get info on every land, sea or naval battle. The land battles include hex location and outcome and are usually enough to figure out what has happened in your opponents turn. There are further reports on economy, income, research, sea convoys and special events.

It is actually so much that I often don't bother to go through all the details even though I should....

[elmo3]

Great, thanks very much for the answers and the great AAR.

[Chocolino]

April 16th, 1942

The US attacks neutral Spain. There is nothing the Axis can do to help as Spain remains neutral. But we build new units for a Pyrenean defensive front. This will become very interesting now as the Russian campaign will drag on for quite a bit longer even in best circumstances. I doubt we have the strength to defend against one more strong opponent in Europe while requiring most strength in the East.

[Chocolino]

We got lucky, the US and the Allies accepted our offer for cease fire and eventually peace at the borders of 1939. The game is over.

(It turns out that the US does not enter the Western alliance in V1.5 but cannot even attack Europe on its own because of some technical flaws in this version. Gary experienced some severe problems after the invasion of Spain and we agreed that without the US, the game is pointless.

I am still convinced that the Axis would have lost the game in the long run even though they are currently looking successful. The war is still long. So the Axis can be happy to get away with a tie.)

It is not easy to let the game go now as one gets quite attached to it after so many month of playing. But that speaks for the fascination of ToW despite its faults.

Gary, Thanks for the game and hope we can give it a retry in a newer version.

[gwgardner]

Thoroughly enjoyed it.

My biggest mistake: I squandered probably 4000 PPs in the USSR on futile counterattacks with armor, against a clearly superior foe. I figure I lost 12 armored corps.

No way you were going to lose. When the US invaded Spain, it chopped lend-lease by 2/3. You were about to witness a collapse of the Eastern Front. And you could have held the Pyrenees for a good long while, I think.

By the way, I refused Vichy about 20 times, then at one point I decided: go ahead and accept Vichy, and then the US could declare war on Vichy and invade at Casablanca. But when I tried accepting Vichy, got a CTD. So the poor old US was sitting there on the east coast with 5 strat bombers fleets and 5 air armies and nowhere to put them.

What was your PP production each turn at the end?

[Chocolino]

During the last months German production was in the mid to high 300s always varying depending on the success of your strategic bombing.

The fact that there was a choice to refuse Vichy was a big surprise to me during the game. I relied on it taking place. Good to know that the refusal decision also had also its drawbacks. That makes it an interesting event.

The German advance in Russia would not have been possible if the US could have intervened earlier. In that sense the game was highly irregular anyways as you had to deal with too many handicaps.