The Rematch MM (Axis) vs HB (Allied)

[MagicMissile]

June 6 1941

In the north Riga is abondoned and the Soviets retreat. I follow. Again not that much combat but one must remember that at the time when the real war started June 22 the Germans are already pretty deep into the Sovietunion.

[MagicMissile]

June 6 1941

In the south the same thing. Kiev falls months ahead of the historical schedule. Now is the question how to cross the Dnepr river.

[MagicMissile]

June 6 1941

I also feel I have a bit more luck than HB. My subs do better, lucky with the weather and now also Rokossovsky killed in action.

[Harrybanana]

Real life has once again overtaken MM and he has resigned both games. In both games we made it to the September 41 so the summer was almost over.

Considering MM only had 6 U-Boats, he did a lot of damage with them. But I was building a lot of MM with the UK so I think I was up to about 220 or so. One thing I did not do is conquer Persia. On the one hand this meant that there was no default Lendlease of 5 PPs through Persia. But on the other hand it meant that I was not wasting MMs on carrying oil from Persia to the UK. This extra 30 MMs was what I needed to carry all of the UK's Resources along with the maximum number of UK Lend Lease to Russia.

Our Lines in Algeria didn't shift at all with me sitting two or three hexes West of Oran. In Libya I tried an invasion of Benghazi to flank Tobruk and briefly captured the port. But Benghazi was recaptured (and my unit surrendered) by the Axis. So we were pretty much stalemated in Libya as well.

In Russia, the Russians generally retreated in good order without any disasters or the loss of any good units. The Axis captured Leningrad and advanced to within a couple hexes of Moscow, but they were pretty well shot by then. Russian force strength was over 2000, which normally would be very good. The problem was that my Russian Army National Experience was only at 33%. And this wasn't because the Russian's weren't fighting hard as from July to September I never retreated more than a couple Hexes at most. The Russians even counterattacked when possible. Notably I attacked a German Armour unit several times and had it reduced to a 1 Strength with no where to retreat without shattering. My final attack was at 8:1; it Held. I have had both good luck and bad luck before with respect to the advancement of Russian Army Experience. But I have never seen anything like this before, where the Russians gain only 3% over the course of 10 turns of active combat.

This game really was undecided; but I think that unless I got extremely lucky and the Russian experience level increased a lot over the Winter (from 33% to at least 40%) the Axis was going to win. As I said at the end of my other game with MM, in order for the Allies to win just about everything has to go right. In this game just about everything did, but I still don't think it was going to be enough. MM disagrees with me and thinks the Allies would have. I think we do agree that either way it would have been close.

[MagicMissile]

Game over.

I wrote some final words in the other AAR. I do think my German campaign was lost as well. But I dont really know the engine that well so I cant really say how much impact the low Soviet xp would have had maybe I resigned too early but I just saw the pitiful amount of losses I managed to inflict and the huge Soviet army at 2300 in September 41 I dont think I have ever seen such a high number at that time. Maybe even a proper winter offensvie could have been possible in this game.

Anyway thanks for the game. Great fun!

/MM