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WWII: Struggle for Europe____WWII: Struggle for Asia => First Edition Game => After action reports from first edition => Topic started by: Yoper on October 08, 2012, 06:48:45 AM
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Started a game last Friday and I have already jacked up the Allied cause.
I am the UK/US and Dan is the France/USSR combo. He had to leave early and I didn't take the time to properly analyze the French position before hand. Suffice it to say, I allowed the Germans to just walk into Paris relatively unmolested.
Talk about being rusty! I was definitely not on top of the tactical situation on the continent.
Trying to take care of Egypt and the Home Isles had me working some serious tunnel vision and not paying attention to the French troubles. Well, we will see how the Germans (Eric) are able to capitalize on that blunder.
Now I have to actually email Dan and break the bad news. :o
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Well - now Dan has someone to blame ;)
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I am always the one to blame. I just don't usually give them this big or blatant a reason to despise me.
Normally, it is just my "second rate" play that distinguishes me from the others. :-X
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Well - you can't put a price on good sportsmanship! 8)
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Well - you can't put a price on good sportsmanship! 8)
Nor the chance to heckle Mark :P ;D ;D ;D
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We finally got back to playing this last Friday.
I am now the supreme commander of all things Allied.
On the UK front I felt that I was able to early on get the proper amount of units into the Middle East to stabilize my position and I even did an early attack on Syria to up the odds of a Vichy collapse. Then I got saucy and went for Madagascar.
Unfortunately, I should have taken a turn to set up my attack properly. In getting bounced on the first try, I ended up taking three tuns to get it instead of two. Also, I dropped into Morocco to get it to a higher number and was rewarded with a collapse of Vichy France. But being rusty, I forgot that the rest of the North African territories would go German immediately. At least those PPs won't go Italian.
While this was going on, the Germans started pounding not only the convoys (which I had an adequate defense of the North Atlantic zones going) but the bombing of the Home Isles as well. That really shrank the UK economic output and has changed the power balance in Egypt. Not enough hitting on the subs by my convoy protection. The Med carrier spent too much time in that theater instead of being in the Atlantic helping out.
The economic damage has given extra cards to the US and we are playing with the US being able to spend (and/or lend lease) 12 PPs so they are a bit more buff than would be allowed under the normal Europe only rules.
It is the Fall '41 Turn this Friday and Eric is poised to attack in the East since he knows that I am on the edge of declaring with the Soviets. I could have pulled the garrison last turn as a preempted move knowing that he would most likely go anyway, but I chose not to. I want to see how the situation plays out. I have been buying all heavy equipment up till now in anticipation of large infantry buys once the fighting starts. That along with the 10 conscripts and the half of the Siberian troops showing up makes me feel okay about being able to drop in the right mixture to supplement my core of heavies that I have prepositioned in Leningrad and Sevastapol.
I am going to try an interesting tactic of holding in those two areas and letting him run up the middle. Of course I need to also hold the territory adjacent to Leningrad to remain in supply there and to hold the Caucasus area to remain in supply in the Crimea, but I am trying to set up my forces with enough armor to allow some flexibility to attack the exposed flanks.
Now we shall see how this plays out with him looking like he will get Cairo now that I couldn't continue my build up there based on reduced UK PPs. Then again, I hope that the US (which is almost in) will help apply the pressure on the back side, by land and by sea.
Then again, I could just crap myself like I usually do. :'( :-[ :o
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As always, things are going poorly. For me that is.
He took Cairo and is on the edge of the Caucasus in the south. He is poised to take Kalinin and put Leningrad out of supply after I shifted a large portion of my attacking capability to the south for a mech attack on Kiev. In trying to isolate it so he couldn't retreat, I took a certain amount of hurt that then made the actual attack less than. I ended up bailing with three medium armor after a couple of rounds.
I once again miscalculated my attack ability based on the damned light armor. I can't take the extra infantry along in the mech phase with them.
On a brighter note, I finally had a good night against the subs. I cleared out the German ones in the north and the Italian ones in the south. I withstood an amphib on Gibraltar that probably should have made it in and the US in now in the war with its first batch of units in Morocco along with the UK expeditionary force that went as far as Algiers but has been forced back to Oran.
I hope to hit the Fatherland with some strategic bombing and force some of the Luftwaffe back off of the Eastern Front. It made the life of the Soviet air force difficult in the run up to the aforementioned mech attack and then strafed the crap out of the attacking ground forces.
With the abort roll rule that we are using, at least I didn't lose a big chunk of the USSR air, but it just wasn't available for the crucial air cover mission of the mech attack since it needed to cover an earlier flank attack and was knocked out of action for the rest of the turn.
We are half way through the current game and will play it all the way out to see what transpires. Part of it is to see how the modified USSR event driven chart worked, along with our other ideas. And part is to see how the US now affects the playout in the Europe only game.
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Does not sound too bad for the Allies if it is mid-1942. What turn are you in?
Maybe you will have to invade France early to take some heat off the Russians?
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Well, we just finished the Axis half of turn 14 (Winter 42) and things look bleak.
The USSR has fallen back to the Urals and a couple of spots in the Caucasus. The Turks jumped on the band wagon once the situation presented itself. I thought that I might be able to hold off the southern flank, but the extra troops that come with them joining is too much.
I have cleaned out the Atlantic and have done some damage through strat bombing, but the Germans are pulling in the 120's and the Italians are mid twenties.
The UK is in North Africa all the way to Tunisia and The US has shot around to the horn of Africa putting pressure on the Italians in Egypt, but my general ineptitude in fighting the large land battles on the Eastern Front has doomed me.
The revised optional USSR entry chart that I came up worked well, and I am pleased as to how it realistically represents the pre-war political situation on the Eastern Front.
We are going to play out the game to see how things fall out. Eric has been above the 25 VP threshold for multiple turns now, but we are interested in getting back in the swing of things and it doesn't hurt to finish out for learning purposes. Hopefully I can take the lessons learned and use them next game against him when the sides are switched.
Even with my poor track record as the USSR, the main issues this game have been a cascading series of events. The terrible defense of France allowed too many German units to survive for later use in other theaters. Then the dice doomed my otherwise formidable convoy defense in the Atlantic. The North African arms race was lost once I didn't have the PPs to continue the build up in Egypt (see the damage in Atlantic). Now the Soviets will be pushed off the map and the US and UK will never be able to produce enough equipment to land in force even if they secure Africa.
Peace in our time will be imposed upon the Western powers by a dominate Axis hegemony. Heck, we were even joking that we may actually see someone build a V2 or a jet fighter for once. ;D
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a good axis player will put Russia in this position almost every time. You are not alone Yoper.
In our last game Germany took heavy casualties in the lead up to Barbarossa. I kept count. 40 units were destroyed in all. It did not matter. Russia was pushed back to the Urals anyways. The problem is that the Germans DO NOT have to attack in order to force a Russian withdraw. Their mechanized divisions can go around. The Red Army must withdraw or be cut off. Its that simple.
To top it all off, once the Red Army is able to start pushing back they will face a 30-40 aircraft (sometimes more!) straeff by the luftwaffe, which yield a 6-1 loss and sometimes greater.
Russia doesn't begin to take back ground until the Germans decide to start giving it back, settling for defensive positions behind the Dnieper. Good luck cracking that nut!
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Well, I am playing a damned good player in Eric (as John and Mark can attest to), but I have my own deficiencies that have contributed to this situation.
I would be in a bit better position if I hadn't tried to be proactive in the south early on, but it would still be pretty bad. The loss of the Middle East is the extra dagger I didn't need to push the Eastern Front past the tipping point.
He may have around 40 air units on the map total, but only 50 to 60 percent is in the USSR area. There are at least 5 fighters in France/Germany, at least 5 ftrs face me in North Africa/Italy, and maybe three in Egypt. Yes, I've gotten hit with the 15 ftr, couple of bombers, and a stuka strafe, but the overwhelming mech units is where I am getting bludgeoned.
Ultimately, I need to more methodical and patient when defending in the USSR while waiting for the cavalry to get in the game. That, or just have Dan be the Soviets. He is the best at doing the deed.
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You can't rely on an incompetent opponent to pave your way to victory. Playing vs the best is the only way to devise a winning strategy. All other wins are hollow victories IMO. I have the honor of playing Scott, known as WASP in the Axis and Allies world. I will tell you Russia just can't cut it. But to keep the damage to a minimum one must do the following...
1 Keep the Black Sea! You cannot allow Turkey to join the Axis. We play the double trigger rule, so Greece falling is not enough to lose Turkey. UK must do their part and the Russians need to keep their garrison on the Turkish Border. Keeps the Crimea in supply which is critcal to number 2....
2 Hold The Crimea! If Germany wants it, they will take it. But make em pay for it!
3 don't waste money on aircraft until late in the game. Preserve what air you do have in order to defend your factories from un-escorted bombing attacks.
4 you don't need 20 AA guns. in territories you have 4-5 forts it will do him no good to straeff you. Your AA guns belong with the mobile part of your army. That means the one that is constantly falling back, haha.
5 you will need armor units late in the game to take back territory lost in the fastest manor possible. It will likely be late 1943 or 1944 until you can seize the innitiative. So start piling them up and protect them. Stuka straeffs are your biggest enemy. ATG's can be purchased to protect you from armored attacks.
6 you want the whermacht to attack you! If Germany succeeds at pushing you to the Urals without a fight, you are in trouble. When he begins his withdraw in late 1943 or 1944 he'll have huge amounts of troops to defend his objectives. Tactically the terrain favors the Germans substantially. I try to leave my army in harms way with a little less than 50/50 odds just to try and whittle him down. The more mechanized components you can eliminate the better!
7 don't get cut off! those paratroopers are his best weapon. They can hurt you in so many ways! I've even had Scott use them to straeff an army in the rear, then hit me again on the mech phase! ugh!
8 finally, the more aircraft the western allies can draw away from the Eastern front the better. There are many ways to do that. Psycological warfare- Its the game within the game.
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Believe me, I know the game! That doesn't mean I always play it properly.
My main issue is the turn to turn ability to see all the possible avenues of attack by my opponent (or even myself at times). Especially on the eastern front where the multiple layers of defense are needed to deal with paradrops and mech encirclements.
It is a similar issue that a game like chess presents for me. I can't readily see the future permutations that are necessary in that game. I can get very tunnel-visioned in what I am going to do and have trouble shifting gears when the situation dictates it.
But that is why I play Struggle. To try and stretch my capabilities. To get better at dealing with the vast variables that are present in this game.
And it is the main reason why I rarely play the conventional A&A games any more. They lack the depth that this game has. I am not saying that I have mastered those games, but they have lost most of their appeal to me because of the limited patterns that one can take, especially the latest version (Global). Having seen what is available in playing this game, those games are a pale imitation at this point.
Also, as I have stated earlier, since we are down to just the two of us right now I hope that the lessons learned will stick with me more readily since the chances to apply them will come about sooner.
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The layers needed in defense of Russia..... its overwhelming. Its crazy how russia HAS to fall back without as much as a single battle. Stand your ground and get cut off, then straeffed be 30+ aircraft trying to get out. ugh.
You are lucky to have a player like this Eric fella to play. A quality opponent makes all the difference. Its why I've kept an interest over the years. Never gets old when your opponent is top shelf. The guys who don't have good local opponents wind up painting their pieces to artistic perfection with all their spare time, lol.
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I know that I am not the greatest, but I do have to remind myself every once in a while that I am playing a damn good player. But as you say, it is better to have someone that pushes you to get better.
I just hope that he continues to enjoy playing against someone like me. I think what works best is the other player that we normally have is a very good player in his own right and it keeps things interesting. But he is out for a while because of work issues.
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as long as you can at least threaten to defeat him you will keep him on his toes and keep him interested.
The biggest "flaw" in this game is how the mechanics of aircraft work in this game. I like a lot of how aircraft works, but here is what i see as the "flaw":
Air superiority by means of fighters is what dictates the innitiative throughout the game. Usually the allies can achieve parity by late 1942 or early 1943 in the west. So what happens is that both sides avoid any air combat that is not at least 50/50. You can't risk losing fighters. So its a chess match from begining until the end.
In the west Germany uses their air power to push the Russians to the Urals and the Volga. If the allies threaten France or the Med, Germany just redeploys appropriate ftr cover to said front. Allied offensive curbed. Once the allies have air superiority in the west, Germany sends all aircraft BACK against the Reds to slow down any advances they begin to make.
It is useless to buy Russian air units.
Japan protects their aircraft as well and its virtually inmpossible to crack that nut as the USA cannot build enough CV's during the coarse of the game to achieve parity anywhere the japs can muster their aircraft in one concentrated airwing. (we use airbase rules)
I love the airbase rules and we have implemented some house rules to make it playable in the med. Otherwise the allies would NEVER be able to take on Italy. EVER. 30 axis ftrs based in Sicily is a strategy that can not be countered.
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we require an airbase for every territory bordering the med in our house rules. The airbase rules work perfectly in the Pacific. The med needed a little tweaking.
One idea I had been toying around with was making a country be able to 'rebuild' fighter aircraft lost in combat. That way air superiority could always follow the desired trajectory regaurdless of bad dice. You still take the loss economically for your bad luck, and it takes 3 turns or more for those aircraft to get back into the game so there still exists a tactical penalty as well. This would theoretically encourage more air combat.
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sorry for hijaking your thread.
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Yes, we also use the extra airbase rule. But we go with a bit of a price reduction. 4 PPs for the first level and 3 PPs for the second level.
Also, we have come up a set of rules to mitigate the carnage of the air to air combat. We use an abort rule for any roll of a (1) . That unit is out the rest of the battle and can't be used in the mech phase. In doing this you do limit the overkill of the air to air battles.
Regular fighters still kill 33% of the time but it isn't the 50% of the base rule. That extra pip does change things enough to help your sanity.
We also have changed to AA fire from fleets that make them more powerful versus an air attack. Any naval unit targeted by an air unit fires back at that unit with a kill shot. That is, up to its AA shot amount. If more air units are attacking than the naval unit has AA shots, then the defender picks which attacking units to target.
Any other naval unit that isn't targeted by an air unit fires abort AA shots. You total up the amount of extra shots and just roll them as general shots.
Once the targeted and general AA is fired, then the attacking air units fire at their targets.
All this is done after any air to air combat has been completed.
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so aircraft 'abort' an opposing aircraft on a roll of '1' and kill them on a roll of '2' or'3'? That would make even more aircraft left as the game moves on.
With your airbase rules have you found it next to impossible to root the Italians out of the med? Allies could never build enough airbases, it doesn't matter how cheap you make them. Can you keep increasing them past a '5'?
We tinkered a little with the AA rules but in the end we settled with the standard rules. We do give 'abort' shots to Battleships if there are more AA rolls than aircraft attacking.
We are currently testing out a rule with paratroopers. Rule is that para units may not attack any territory without being accompanied by attacking ground units. The one exception is if the para units cross a body of water. Makes the eastern front actually playable. Germany still is able force a Russian retreat, but it is slower and has not gotten as deep into russia. Lenningrad helf for a few more turns and Moscow didn't fall until spring 1943. And even then the Germans couldn't hold it. I think I like this one. If the axis find themselves hurt too much by this rule we may balance it in other areas as its nice to finally have a fair fight in Russia.
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so aircraft 'abort' an opposing aircraft on a roll of '1' and kill them on a roll of '2' or'3'? That would make even more aircraft left as the game moves on.
Yes, that is the idea. It is really designed to allow the guy who is sitting there with less air unit to still use them. If not for this kind of rule, they will just sit there until they have enough to come close to parity.
And then they may finally have enough to only have them decimated in one roll of the dice. The other night I rolled well against the Germans, but some of them were aborts. It allowed me to kill a bunch of his fighters, but it wasn't a clean sweep since a portion of the rolls were aborts.
Instead of me killing 9 of his 11 fighters, I only got 7 with 2 aborts. Still a very good showing, but not the total crushing that the base rules allow. He hit me for like 4 kills and an 1 abort leaving me with 8 fighters after the battle was done.
So in the battle that we had he escorted the Urals bombing raid with 11 ftrs and I responded with 12 ftrs. The numbers would mathematically be: Germany kills 3.66 and aborts 1.83 while the USSR kills 4 and aborts 2. He got around average and I got above average, but the abort rolls helped to minimize the kill factor.
It also addresses your idea of the ftr rebuild. Why come up with a special rule for bringing back ftr units when the abort roll allows units that are already on the board to last a bit longer?
With your airbase rules have you found it next to impossible to root the Italians out of the med? Allies could never build enough airbases, it doesn't matter how cheap you make them. Can you keep increasing them past a '5'?
I have seen that the airbase issue has been more of a problem in the Med during this game, but I also know that it can just as easily be attributed to how badly I am getting my ass kicked in the whole game! The Germans are so powerful that they are just flooding the Med with units (ground and air) that getting enough of my air units there is tough. Normally, the Axis don't have enough resources to
be that powerful in the Med so the Allies are constrained by the airbase rule.
The main thing about our game right now is that it should have been called long ago based on VPs, but I talked Eric into playing it all the way out just to see how things go. As such, things like the airbase issue that you are talking about are coming to pass simply because we are out past the "norm" that is usually seen in a game. In our usual experience (in a game that doesn't skew this far outside the norm), the Axis isn't powerful enough as it concerns the air situation that the airbase rules are a problem for the Allies.
They eventually are able to slowly roll back the Axis in the Med through patient work in the Western Med and eventually look to tackle the Boot after cleaning up North Africa. My problems in this game stem from the loss of Cairo, which really come from getting behind in the Egyptian arms race thanks to an unsuccessful defense of the North Atlantic Convoys. That money drain affected the balance and it cascaded from there.
The part here that helps with the Allies work here is the change in naval AA that we came up with. We always found it hard to move forward in the Med with Allies when using the base rules since the ftrs just dominated the navies. It was too much. That is why we now use our targeted and abort AA. It give the navies better survivability while also allowing the air units more life too. They can be sent away to fight another day. And it causes a bit more drama/decision making before and during a naval battle.
As for the last question, no we don't go past a five airbase. Allies just need to have carriers to help address any imbalance in airpower that may exist. While I am getting my ass kicked as badly as I am, I still can't understand how you are getting the amount of air units that you are describing into the game to have 30 ftrs in Sicily? How you can strip the other theaters of action to have that many in one place?
Eric probably had around 50 total air units at one point, but he needed to have them spread between Russia, Germany/France, Egypt, and the Central Med. You seem to be able to ignore other areas of the map and just jam them all in one place. I don't get how that can realistically happen.
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Scott doesn't put much effort into offensives vs the UK or in the med. Full throttle vs Russia. The airforce will usually stay in one big hulk. If it looks like the allies could potentally land in France , he'll send it there. He'll put appropriate amounts of aircraft in the med when required. Otherwise he'll put it in Russia. This works well into 1943 when he loses air superiority. Then he begins a slow withdraw. His army is usually so large from 6-8 turns of collecting close to 100 PP's that he can stand his ground in most places. He'll never try to make a push toward egypt, instead he forts down a bunch of infantry in Tripoli and you can either send a ton of troops to Africa to weed them out or just let Italy fight on into 1944 or 1945.
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Back to the battle tonight after a couple of weeks off.
We will see what headway can be made in the face of mounting German pressure. Had to abandon North Africa with the UK to save the Home Isles. Right now the Huns are in Wales and were just pushed out of the Midlands.
The US is pushing towards Cairo through the Sudan and the USSR is hiding behind the river line on the edge of the map.
I did eventually have a question for John and Mark as to the line that is edge of the game playing area when playing an Europe-only game. Since I cut the map into four parts for transport purposes (and placement into poster covers) we are only using the Europe map up to those last three territories that are the Urals and the two directly below it.
But I remember discussing the topic of where the theaters change over for purposes of strategic movement (specifically air) in the Asian land mass and it seemed that we declared it a bit farther east than where we are playing right now.
Now most would say that this is a bit academic since the game will likely be over if this truly comes into play, but it would be good to know just as an aside for later clarification.
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Ok - been out of the forum loop for the holidays and play testing new advanced rules. Had our annual Winter War gathering which turned into a nail biter! Ok so I'm not sure that I understand your map question...
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When playing an European theater only game (of the regular/basic game), what is the furthest limit of movement eastward?
The scenario specific rules talk about placement of UK infantry produced off map being placed in the sea zone adjacent to India, which in the case of my map cutting still exists on the map board that we are using. But there is no mention as to the limits in the USSR as to how far out the game is to be played.
I do realize that this normally wouldn't be an issue since a game is usually over based on VPs by the time such an issue arises, but since we are going beyond that parameter, I would like to know where the edge of the map is. Preferably, so I can fall off of it!!!
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Hi Yoper - sorry for the delay in getting back to you - it has been a busy holiday and now I am back at work in China. . .The Europe map was originally designed all by itself as a 3'x4' map before we added Asia. . .so the boundary is about on the 4' line - pretty much along the Western border of China up East of the Urals if my memory serves ok. . .
cheers,
Mark