Sympathy for the Devil: Loki100 vs Stef78 (Stef78 welcome)

[56ajax]

Thanks for your reply and the AAR btw.

My limited anecdotal evidence is that the attrition caused when a HQ/Airbase is bumped is between 0% - 5% of the TOE which is trivial. But as you said every gun counts.

[charlie0311]

All very interesting, as usual.

Pz push into S. Ukraine could be stopped by not allowing FBD to Romania and no German combat units rail through Romania. Not stopped, but limited, ok?

P, I am wondering what you meant when you said something about having an extra xxx hq?

I'm ok with the Pz South gambit. Gerries need to kill lots of Ivans..

Loki very good instructional for pocket breaking.

[Peltonx]

ORIGINAL: charlie0311



Pz push into S. Ukraine could be stopped by not allowing FBD to Romania and no German combat units rail through Romania.
Not stopped, but limited, ok?

Romania is the RH. come on logistics man

You can run the FBD out of "Germany" and the push is the same - I alrdy have tested that and you could lower
the rail though Romania, but again I tested that.

You might understand the logistics of Russia, but your in the dark about Germanys it would seem.

I can do what I do out of Germany or Romania and so could MT and many of the better German players.

Dig deeper.

[charlie0311]

yep, I'm an axis moron for sure.. can't keep my dopey mouth shut.

Almost all my games are v axis newbies and they bail first winter, sometimes summer '42. Play v ai as axis, not about to catch the "top guns" anytime soon.

Actually I enjoy the "digging", must be "mental"

[Wuffer]

yes, Loki, you are right - funny forum sometimes.


Regarding speed/range of the panzers, well, not all generals run them as far as possible, indeed most preferre not - for obvious reasons here best illustrated.
The single little fingers instead of a fist without neither flanking security nor coherence with the slower infantry is a gift.
I liked Silly's slower, but deadlier push with the infantry not too far behind and the mobile units allways with some reserve movement left. And I love BIG P's 'one forward (bait), two behind' tactic as well.

For my taste maybe a mot to much sacrified, but a good result. A nd maybe your good position could absorb the next medium 'ouch' disaster, which will come as sure as snow… But don't underestimatedthe reach of his fast units, as P said Romania is the railhead atm.

[Wuffer]

Charlie,
a 'gambit' - the deliberate _sacrify_of a pawn for a little more operational tempo - did seldom work as desired in WiTE, especially not with panzers. Lol


a noteable exeption of course is P as said abough - with 'one finger streched forward, but fist behind' he found a very effective way of luring the hordes out of the jungle


Where there is no enemy, the pariah is needed to create unity.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: sillyflower

ORIGINAL: loki100

My losses are relatively low as so far I've been able to re-open most of the pockets. Also I think that Stef78 is more interesting in speed of movement eastwards than in catching the Red Army (this will carry on for the next few turns).

Not a strategy that I would recommend for any german player. A gift to the Russians

Must admit I tend to agree, I did a test in the one of the scenarios of prioritising heading east, the end was a disaster. Key (to me) is a German player can't destroy the Red Army in combat and can't replicate the Soviet operational tactic of emphasising the disruption caused by a breakthrough, it has to focus on pockets. I also think that here Hitler was more realistic than his generals, small(ish) unbreakable pockets would have been better than massive encirclements

ORIGINAL: chaos45

Ouch ya you opening up all those pockets in the south on T3 and cutting his supply is a huge set back for early game Germans.

well we'll come back to this in later turns, hindsight and knowing how it worked may help provide some perspective (for me as much as everyone else), but for the moment, cutting supply isn't really leading to a slow down (especially in the south)

ORIGINAL: johntoml56

Thanks for your reply and the AAR btw.

My limited anecdotal evidence is that the attrition caused when a HQ/Airbase is bumped is between 0% - 5% of the TOE which is trivial. But as you said every gun counts.

The other cost is that sometimes you will completely lose the SU as a result. So that is a longer cost (2 admin pts) than the cost of moving it out. Its like a lot of things, it works for me - not least I don't trust the auto-reassign routine and I want those SUs out of the Ukraine in any case.

ORIGINAL: charlie0311

All very interesting, as usual.

Pz push into S. Ukraine could be stopped by not allowing FBD to Romania and no German combat units rail through Romania. Not stopped, but limited, ok?

P, I am wondering what you meant when you said something about having an extra xxx hq?

I'm ok with the Pz South gambit. Gerries need to kill lots of Ivans..

Loki very good instructional for pocket breaking.

I don't think that Stef78 has sent his FBD into Romania. But its clear he has set up the angle of his attack to parallel the Romania border - one thing I do obsessionally is to look over German spearheads and count hexes/MP to rail and apart from where I cut him off, his are pretty much even all they way down his spearhead.

ORIGINAL: Wuffer

yes, Loki, you are right - funny forum sometimes.


Regarding speed/range of the panzers, well, not all generals run them as far as possible, indeed most preferre not - for obvious reasons here best illustrated.
The single little fingers instead of a fist without neither flanking security nor coherence with the slower infantry is a gift.
I liked Silly's slower, but deadlier push with the infantry not too far behind and the mobile units allways with some reserve movement left. And I love BIG P's 'one forward (bait), two behind' tactic as well.

For my taste maybe a mot to much sacrified, but a good result. A nd maybe your good position could absorb the next medium 'ouch' disaster, which will come as sure as snow… But don't underestimatedthe reach of his fast units, as P said Romania is the railhead atm.

I think that Sillyflower's model is exceptionally hard to defend against. I can see how you become tempted not to pull back (which seemed to happen to Brian) and then get caught out. Stef78's approach seems to be one of disruption and trying to wreck my industrial base - I guess he's prepared to trade off other things for that

[loki100]

Turn 4: 10-16 July 1941

When I opened the turn it was clear in the north that Stef was going straight for Leningrad.



I'd already pulled out the specialist factories and this turn moved 5 of the HI, 4 (of the 15 AP) and all the trucks. Thats enough to keep me on track for my rough goal of 200 HI-300 AP and all 140 truck factories.

The centre was a bit quieter. One small breach in the defences west of Smolensk Most of the action seemed to be connected with destroying my pocket on the Berezina.



My assumption is there will be action here next turn once they have recovered some supply. I can only presume a HQBU has taken place.

South was the biggest surprise.



Given all my effort to cut supply lines I was really surprised at how far they were able to move (I've indicated roughly where the front line was). On that basis, its clear that Stef is after Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye. Over the next two turns I manage to evacuate 5/9 HI and 15/24 AP factories from those cities.

I doubt I am going to save much more than 200 HI, if I need to I'll start to prioritise HI evacuations over AP.

In the centre, I made an attempt (failed) to push back the GD brigade behind my lines. Otherwise both at Moscow and Leningrad focussed on creating secondary lines.

In the south, as you can see I'm trying to hold onto Odessa. Lots more pocket breaking and cutting off of spearheads (the stars on the map are where I either opened a pocket or cut off the advance guard). Pulled almost everything back to the Dneipr – too little rail cap after the factory moves to do much more – ideally I would have sent more to the lower Dneipr.



But I was fairly content that two turns of badly disrupted supply deliveries would slow the German lunge in the south.

Just for info, here's the OOB. No real surprises at the moment.



My losses increased as the early pockets were finally destroyed.

The Germans lost 16,000 men (6,000 kia), 64 tanks and 31 planes, I lost 222,000 men (14,000 kia, 190,000 prisoners), 1,800 tanks and 200 planes.

So far my permanent losses are 86,000 kia and 600,000 prisoners. In comparison against Vigabrand I'd lost 70,000 kia and 670,000 prisoners. Perhaps reflecting Stef's more aggressive opening he's lost 257 tanks so far (compared to 218).

Couple of game play points. One thing I do at the start is to set myself a series of 'budget' that I can then expend.

So for example, I have a budget of 2 million pows. Now I have changed my mind on this as the game develops and my own views change (it used to 1.8m). The idea is that I am quite prepared to sacrifice up to that number in 1941 in order to protect other things that really matter.

For industry, you start with 240 and around 135 are completely safe in 1941 (depending on how 1942 goes you may need to move some of this). Here, I've decided I have a budget of 40 (but can survive if I lose 60). So far (Stef78 has T9), I've lost 17 (I'm including HI cut off in Leningrad here).

My budget for truck factories is 0. I want all 140 to be available for the entire game.

For Arms Pts, you start with 370, 161 are safe in 1941. My rough goal is to lose no more than 70. But I treat these now as secondary. More is good to ease you over the 1942 army rebuild (and the new rules on post-Nov returns won't make any real difference), but sooner or later arms pts cease to be a concern. Usually around mid/late 1942. So the volume you have influences how early you return to surplus and perhaps how easy it is to reconfigure the army in 1943. But its not game ending to have less than ideal.

In effect, my mental model is I have 2m prisoners I am prepared to trade for no losses in truck factories and no more than 40 HI factories.

Second bit is pocket breaking. I tend to set the at start tank and motorised divisions to 50% ToE. My logic is they tend to be unready if they have fought, they shed cv when you move them and you want to save the trucks for later.

But even 'unready', with around 18MP, they can retake hexes that are in Axis control but outside zones of control – and flip adjacent hexes.

But the best tool is the cavalry divisions. They tend to have higher morale (ie lower MP costs) and can often move past a ZoC. From playing a couple of new German players (mostly in the scenarios and one early ending campaign), I think they tend to under-estimate how disruptive these can be. A lot of Soviet players I think are over-cautious. The cavalry is valuable, and hard to replace (a squad cost 4* arms pts compared to a rifle squad), but its a case of working to your priorities. My hope is that by breaking pockets and cutting off spearheads, I buy some of the time I need for industry evacuation.

[sillyflower]

ORIGINAL: loki100

I think that Sillyflower's model is exceptionally hard to defend against. I can see how you become tempted not to pull back (which seemed to happen to Brian) and then get caught out.

Thank you. I devised it specifically to deal with Brian's very aggressive defence strategy that had discomfited me in our earlier abortive starts. It is also necessary to some extent to retain mobility (it's that last unit with lots of MPs that makes the successful pocket) because I've never used any fuel exploits. I rarely played as German, and never understood any of them before they were stopped so I can't claim any moral credit for this!

[Powloon]

Your opponent really doesn't believe in flank security does he [:)] Nice moves cutting off those spearheads! At the very least that is going to start getting inside his head and perhaps make him more cautious which would be a minor victory in its own right.

From my (limited) experience it seems possible to move panzer group 1 SE fast for the first couple of turns and then use the Romanian rail to resupply which then allows for another 2 turns at more or less full movement. So I would guess he will have to pause in the South next turn but I have been wrong before [:D]

Another thing that stands out from your stats last turn is you seem to have a lot of planes? I'm guessing you didn't have an absolute massacre on the first turn?

[STEF78]

Some thought about the early turns:
- Loki is a very skilled russian player, hard to grasp, well aware of the german abilities
- One FBD less and 20 MP for HQBU is a huge change [:(]
- Why do leaders loose abilities when they are used to a new job? Weiss inf rating was reduced from 8 to 7! German leader's ability is a key on the long term! [&:]
- Air forces look effectively stronger than before

That's all folks!

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: sillyflower

ORIGINAL: loki100

I think that Sillyflower's model is exceptionally hard to defend against. I can see how you become tempted not to pull back (which seemed to happen to Brian) and then get caught out.

Thank you. I devised it specifically to deal with Brian's very aggressive defence strategy that had discomfited me in our earlier abortive starts. It is also necessary to some extent to retain mobility (it's that last unit with lots of MPs that makes the successful pocket) because I've never used any fuel exploits. I rarely played as German, and never understood any of them before they were stopped so I can't claim any moral credit for this!

Its very methodical which is one of the things that appealed, but can see how it was a fit to a given playstyle. Risk against someone who doesn't hang around is that you are too slow in beginning the serious cull of the Red Army? Tend to find even a couple of turns of unchecked growth can be very hard to bring back down to size.

ORIGINAL: Powloon

Your opponent really doesn't believe in flank security does he [:)] Nice moves cutting off those spearheads! At the very least that is going to start getting inside his head and perhaps make him more cautious which would be a minor victory in its own right.

From my (limited) experience it seems possible to move panzer group 1 SE fast for the first couple of turns and then use the Romanian rail to resupply which then allows for another 2 turns at more or less full movement. So I would guess he will have to pause in the South next turn but I have been wrong before [:D]

Another thing that stands out from your stats last turn is you seem to have a lot of planes? I'm guessing you didn't have an absolute massacre on the first turn?

In a way what Stef78 has done is the opposite of Sillyflower - it certainly made me fall back much more radically and quickly than my usual approach. But last turn (8) was the first hint that Germans may have gone too far/too fast - I need to summon up the courage to open the T9 that has just arrived [;)]

I think that is close to the approach Stef must have used, I think he managed to eke out a substantial degree of mobility over five turns (so again more than I've seen in recent games)

Don't think he put a lot of effort into the T1 turkey shoot. I lost 2,499 on the ground. I think he was saving his 'air-miles' to pound my ground units (there is an awful lot of interdiction going on too). Oddly .08 may push appreciation of the T1 bombing strategy either way.

I've often taken the view that wrecking the I-/S- series rubbish is optional. And now there is a real benefit to committing your airpower to optimise the damage to the Red Army in the opening turns. So that may argue for less effort. On the other hand, I'm using the I-rubbish (even the biplanes) simply for air attrition. Damaged planes feed into lower squadron morale, so that may argue that maximising the T1 cull is a better strategy.

ORIGINAL: STEF78

Some thought about the early turns:
- Loki is a very skilled russian player, hard to grasp, well aware of the german abilities
- One FBD less and 20 MP for HQBU is a huge change [:(]
- Why do leaders loose abilities when they are used to a new job? Weiss inf rating was reduced from 8 to 7! German leader's ability is a key on the long term! [&:]
- Air forces look effectively stronger than before

That's all folks!

You've forced me into a different approach, not least since you are threatening so much industry I'm abandoning what is lost on the grounds there is no use losing troops to try and save what is already gone. So my counterbalance is to try and lose less (and create cats cradles around the key cities in the centre of the map) so as to cope with a weaker industrial base.

As above to Powloon, I'm using the VVS far more aggressively than I have done before. Can't really get a grip on the AA deployments till I have the arms pts issue under control, so that is the only tool to weaken/attrite the Luftwaffe. I reckon even the I-153s have some value.

[sillyflower]

ORIGINAL: loki100

ORIGINAL: sillyflower

ORIGINAL: loki100

I think that Sillyflower's model is exceptionally hard to defend against. I can see how you become tempted not to pull back (which seemed to happen to Brian) and then get caught out.

Thank you. I devised it specifically to deal with Brian's very aggressive defence strategy that had discomfited me in our earlier abortive starts. It is also necessary to some extent to retain mobility (it's that last unit with lots of MPs that makes the successful pocket) because I've never used any fuel exploits. I rarely played as German, and never understood any of them before they were stopped so I can't claim any moral credit for this!

Its very methodical which is one of the things that appealed, but can see how it was a fit to a given playstyle. Risk against someone who doesn't hang around is that you are too slow in beginning the serious cull of the Red Army? Tend to find even a couple of turns of unchecked growth can be very hard to bring back down to size.

Stef is french so plays with style and l'audace. How you do things seems to be more important here in France than elsewhere - which I mean as a compliment. They are always fun to play as I remember from what I think was the first ever miniatures wargames convention in Paris about 35 years ago. 3 of us went over from England and had a fantastic time - not least because cold-hearted english method crushed french flair and elan in every game. [In fairness we were all far more experienced than they were and the rules they used partly originated in our wargames club [:D]].

@ Stef - do you know how I could find out if there is a wargames club in Tours or somewhere else near here that plays historical wargames with miniatures?

[Powloon]

I've been using the Sillyflower model (or my poor imitation of it anyway [:)]) against the AI. The poor AI cannot seem to cope. Whilst a human would be leery of placing units in front of a combination of infantry and fuelled up panzers the AI can't seem to help itself [:D]

Anyway back to Loki's excellent AAR!

[STEF78]

ORIGINAL: sillyflower
@ Stef - do you know how I could find out if there is a wargames club in Tours or somewhere else near here that plays historical wargames with miniatures?

PM sent

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: sillyflower

...

Stef is french so plays with style and l'audace. ...

he does indeed, its very disturbing to my peace of mind to see more of the Rodina disappear each time I get a new turn back [;)]

[loki100]

Turn 5: 17 – 23 July 1941

In the south, there seems to be no stopping the Panzers. Not really sure where their fuel is coming from but I suspect that is the industry at Dnepropetrovsk lost. Overall despite Stef78's rapid advance I am on schedule for withdrawals and quite prepared to lose at least two of the main industrial centres.



In the centre, the Germans move again generating a pocket on the Dneipr. In my turn I manage to break the pocket and cut off some of the German units.



I've marked on the map where I broke the pocket.

Less progress in the north. Not sure if this is lack of fuel or the better defensive terrain. Anyway I pull back to my prebuilt defences closer to Leningrad. With hindsight I think I gave up too much, too quickly here but I am short of rail capacity and finding it hard to reinforce this sector.



Here's the VP situation – it appears as if I am losing



In the south, I respond in the traditional way. At some stage constantly cutting their supply lines has to hurt?



I'm still worried about a lunge north towards Kharkov. The T-34s and trucks have gone but the rest of the industry is still there.

OOB



Losses remain fairly light. The Germans lost 17,000 men (6,000 kia), 64 tanks and 31 planes. I lost 150,000 men (14,000 kia and 120,000 prisoners), 1020 tanks and 60 planes.

[STEF78]

ORIGINAL: loki100

Turn 5: 17 – 23 July 1941

With hindsight I think I gave up too much, too quickly here but I am short of rail capacity and finding it hard to reinforce this sector.

Agreed, I was surprised with this withdrawal but it'a hard for the russian to know if the german has or hasn't a full PzK with 50 MP

[Peltonx]

He can fly in fuel to the panzers, BUT he is end of his chain until turn 7.

He can still hang back withen HQBU range with a Corp or 2 and nail you next turn.

I chain my HQBU's

1 turn 3, 1 turn 4, 1 turn 5 and fly fuel into the Corp that at the front.

If he has an extra HQ he can pull back a small PC and do one turn 6

Which is how I get to Kharkov or Stalino turn 7 if Russia player runs and does not screen.

D-Town turn 5 is really normal if hes rotating HQ's right.

If you play me expect the same, but I never let my Panzers get cut off other then mybee the lead raider MoT division

[Wuffer]

ORIGINAL: loki100

ORIGINAL: sillyflower

...

Stef is french so plays with style and l'audace. ...

he does indeed, its very disturbing to my peace of mind to see more of the Rodina disappear each time I get a new turn back [;)]

it worked. and very fast.

both the north and the center appears quite weak in the defense.
But I wonder where his bulk of infantry is? Guessing it's on the way to Moscwa?