Euro WiF Con 2011

[Joseignacio]

It will be held by the end of October. [:(] Need to wait...

[fallgelb]

@ jose: Don't drive to beautiful Essen, better drive to Hofgeismar
I'm there in October for the first time in my life and as you i don't matter in winning.
We played factory in flames in our latest games and so regarding wif deluxe i'm a little bit out of practice.
As far as i know there are know about 30 players and so about 6 tables.
I'm exited about learning new approaches.

[Joseignacio]

Me too, I am planning ahead, including a complete read of the rules and several other matters, like I contacted Markus (the organizer of the event) and I will travel with him from Frankfurt to Hofgeimar. Thanks anyway for the advice.

The previous evening I will arrive to Frankfurt and will try to pulse the ambient, the previous time I couldn't because spending the night there it was like about 400 euro, 'cause in that time, the EWC happened a week before an important fair in Frankfurt.

[marcejap]

Yeah, i know that Frankfurt is a little bit expensive when the fair take place. Booking now is better, is a little bit cheaper reserve a room 2 mounths ahead.

[Red Prince]

Are we there yet?
Go team!!!
[:)]

[Centuur]

It still is 20 days away... Patience is everything... [:D]

[Red Prince]

[:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)]
[:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)]
[:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:(][:)][:)][:)]
[:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)]
[:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)][:)]

Can you guess which one I am?
[:D]

[Orm]

Yes, you are the laughing one. [:D]

[Red Prince]

ORIGINAL: Orm

Yes, you are the laughing one. [:D]

Don't know how, but I missed this response before . . . indeed! It was a trick question! [;)]

[Centuur]

Tomorrow, I'm going to do a visit there, since I'm going to a large fair with some friends in the area... Saterday, I'll try to make some comments in this thread on the things I'm going to see there...

[Red Prince]

ORIGINAL: Centuur

Tomorrow, I'm going to do a visit there, since I'm going to a large fair with some friends in the area... Saterday, I'll try to make some comments in this thread on the things I'm going to see there...

Ultra-nifty!!! I'll be waiting in eager anticipation.

[Joseignacio]

Helo guys, I can only connect for some minutes because in this hotel you use Internet with prepaid bonuses and I want to keep something for tomorrow. I have been in the same table as marcejap and our game was kind of strange, we played till august 43 only, which was a pity but few more can normally be done in few more than 100 hours, maybe 120.

The japanese was collpsing and out of supply everywhere except in Japan and sometimes in China, the british and americans wiped the italians from the southern mediterranean except for a strong expeditionary force in Syria/Lebannon, and the russians were about to take Irak from the Axis.

The germans never attacked Russia, they got in when Russia declared war (i will explain later) and went back to Romania and the baltic states, protecting themseves with rivers.

On the atlantic coast they had the usual garrison, and this and Italy (Sardina had been partially invaded) seemed to be the weaker areas at that moment...

[Centuur]

On a unusually warm november morning, last thursday, I went to Hofgeismar to visit there a couple of hours. Six tables full of action there. Most of the games were in 1943 at that moment. One table things were looking very bad for the Axis. Berlin did fall during my visit there... The Front was running from East to West from the Crimea right through the Ukraine, Karpathian Mountains, Central Germany into France. Paris was still Axis controlled and Italy was also unconquered...
What did happen in Europe was shortly that the Allies attacked Sardinia and controlled the Isle. They seemed to be concentrating on an invasion of Italy, when suddenly, they changed the Theater of Operations and invaded in Northern Germany and a some time later in Northern France. Since the German/Italian forces were mainly in the USSR and in Italy when this happened, Germany was doomed. It was however a very interesting table, with a lot of action going on, so giving up wasn't on anyones agenda at all, even after the Western allies did invade Italy at that point and Rome was going to be conquered in the very near future. Japan was still very strong, but with the Euroaxis doomed, I don't think that the Japanese are going to survive a 1944/1945 attack by all allied MP's...

A second table a very late entry in the war by the USA, also led to strange things happening. The USA had given a lot of lend lease into the USSR and didn't give anyting to the CW. This strategy led to a capture of Gibraltar by the Axis out of Africa after the USA was in the war (!) and a CW who wasn't capable of doing anything else but retreating and building forces to defend the UK. When at war the USA did go for a very aggresive war against the Japanese (and with only three turns in the war, was doing very good indeed...). Nice detail: the French weren't conquered and Vichy wasn't declared. A small surrounded pocket around Toulouse was still in French hands... Spain was of course aligned at that moment and the Med became an Italian lake...

The table that I spend a lot of time was the table were Joseignacio also was playing, so I'm not going to put any information about that table here.

The other table's I didn't got a very good look at in the three hours I got for the visit, since I had other things in the region to attend to...

Perhaps, maybe next year, I want to try and play a week there. Everybody did had a lot of fun...

[fallgelb]

I was at the first table metioned above, playing aggressivly as german with france first versus very able enemies.
Our idea was that if playing conservative we will be played out easily and so let rampage.
Japan was attacking USSR in SO39 and taking all east of chita with zhukov coming against but with no effect until Barbarossa.
We attacked Belgium in SO39 with a phoney war in Poland (and conquering it with an set up failure of poland anyway in SO39).
Until my first attack on Paris in 2nd Impuls MJ40 with +16 everything gone according to our plans. The snake eyes rollteed vs two units there were the first morale check.
After Vichy were the FF of Algeria-Morocco with five strong French corps in there the second morale check and the out for our gibraltar strategy because we see no possibility to get tanger.
We turned around, conquered greek and declared very surpringsingly for our relaxed enemies in MA41 war on Russia in Rain in Arctic and with all ARM and Mech in the North.
In spite of LOOL the Russian player get frightened as Smolensk fell in the third impuls and as i was conquering Stalino and going for Kalinin in MJ41. The Russiand advance on Rumania was cencelled. Unfortunately my attack on Kalinin with +14 and snake eyes failed and the russian counter attack on Stalino with +7 succeede so that my offensive with little back up was stopped MJ41.
We had a little bit bad luck with an us total war in MJ41 and in not having the initaitive in the 12 turns of 41 bis 42 but of course the ability of our enemies were responsible for smashing our front in the west and in germany with the US-Troops late41. We had not the capacity to defend Italy and hold against the CW and US in France (and than germany).
Our last succes from my point of view was, that we managed to stabilize the three fronts (East, West and Italy) and were retreating fighting to a Line From Munich to the moutains in CSR, to the Carpathians in SO43. I think the line could hold until Summer 44 but Tokio was conquered in SO43 so the game ends with a Total victory.
My Japan Ally suffered even more than me from bad luck (he looses in the US surpsrise Impuls round about 15 CONV and the old US BB manged to sink his CV with a lot of surpsise points in 42).
I was happy to get the "Will fiht to the end"-Award for our high finghting spirit and I will try to be at the Euro WIF CON 2012 in Hofgeismar (it will be araound 26. Ottobre i think). because you find very able enmemies there.

At another Table we see a "Danish strategy" (two players from Denmark) with a kind of mathematical Modell playing germany: no losses in slowly conquering Poland 39 and France 40 (as i count one Inf Div and a few air units so far), and after the fall of France only Strat Bombing CW (with air combat modifier from +2) to the stone age and a profound Barbarossa 42.

At table 5 we saw a victorious Axis with a Barbarella 42 (and Susi not Suez, and Gabi not Gbiraltar) and a boring but effective Bunker Strategy.

[hjaco]

I was playing Italy/Japan on the Danish team. My German ally wanted to build all Synth Plants right from the beginning delaying Barbarossa until 42' while hurting the CW in the meantime as well as keeping US entry low to hurt their prewar production so awoiding allied landings in 42'.

We did nothing in the Med apart from killing off any allied ships with naval air which was quite successful making it an axis lake. Germany autoed Poland and Denmark while boldly attacking letting CW reinforce Rotterdam with MOT corps in order to kill CW BP. Sadly Adolf was not able to take Rotterdam on 3 goes and only got it after CW abandoned it. This enabled the allies to dig in behind the Dyle river rolling succesful for allied support og Belgium.

France collapsed in J/A and Vichy was created mostly due to Japanese whimpering on my behalf. We really should have let the allies collapse France as CW as usual dug in near Bordeaux which took some effort to kick out mostly due to bad attack rolls.

In the meantime Japan was having a hard time in China due to really bad start luck. Ground strikes didn't succeed so attacks didn't succeed as well giving Japan relatively high losses. Strat bombing where ineffective with first production loss in J/A 40 [:(] Therefore i feared Soviet intervention and so Vichy was created.

In 41' China was reduced/pushed up into the mountains and Si-An finally fell after 2 years siege because I finally managed to flip a corps!

Axis subs went wild in the Atlantic even with a lone Italian SUB in 0 box at US East Coast finding on a 1 against no convoy escort. In fairness should be said the CW player did protect his convoys - a more unexperienced player may have thrown the game here. Southern England was changed into rubbles by strategic bombardment from NAV's and all German LND even destroying a factory still burning in mid 44'. Curiously the allies never bothered to built a Synth planth so it was really funny to hear Roosevelt state in mid 42' he was having an oil problem [:D]

Barbarossa was launched in J/A 42 due to advancing in bad weather and kill off stray russian stragglers at the borders. Germany launched a carefull offensive in 42 and even 43 pushing through the center and getting 4 hexes on Moscow while killing off 4 Russian HQ's including Zhukov. What saved Russia was keeping their ARM/MECH alive. Russia was shaved almost 300 BP until the German retreat began in late 43'.

The allies went for Italy in 42' and 43' hitting their heads against a garrisoned Sardinia and Malta. Sardinia took them until late summer 43' to conquer which only shows the importance of fighting for your perimeter. They realised they were getting nowhere, shifted focus and went for an unplanned surprise invasion at Bremen and got some 10 hexes bridgehead. They got a similar bridgehead in Normandy but was being pushed out of Germany in summer 44' when the game ended.

In the pacific Japan was being stressed by all allied major powers and had to fight russia to get Siberia and a precious peace. CW was being declared war upon in N/D 41 and NEI taken out. Singapore went in M/A 42. USA began with early pressure seizing the Marshalls while the Royal Navy based in India harassed convoys together with Chinese aircraft and US SUBS. Mountbatton was charging through Burma towards Siam in order to get bases for land based air. Having lost some 40 BP i China Japan was quite weak and only survived due to the allies focusing mainly on Europe.

The Phillippines was taken in late 42', Truk fell to a full stack MAR invasion in late 42' (+5 attack) and promptly retaken by Japan in an super combined. Killing of the MAR gave Japan the time to get the perimeter defense in place and building up their forces. US got another +5 on Truk and reduced defenders to an flipped ARM HQ but axis won next turns initiative and reinforced with an INF Corps and supply unit.

Game ended after M/J 44' where the western allies accepted defeat.

Had the game been playing through, the allied beachhead in Germany would have been crushed while the allies would have broken out in western France with stabilizing lines behind the Seine in winter 44'. Fronts would have been pushing back to the borders of Germany/Italy by end of the game. Russia was replacing losses and gaining ground mostly because Germany was retreating. In M/J 44' Germany would have accelerated all 45' UFO's and Italys force pool was mostly empty. In the Pacific US would take Truk for good if they had invested sufficient units for it.

All in all we had bad luck on the offensive with the axis but luck on the defensive.

[Joseignacio]

By now, photos of the event can be seen at

http://www.eurowif.de/con11/bildercon.htm

[HansHafen]

Wow, looks like it was awesome. I am jealous and sad I couldn't be there.

[Joseignacio]

Well, my short description of our game:

We did a bid, but all of us were new to bidding and we had not prepared it, hence that first USA was given for only a -2, then I reacted and took UK for a 0, then other countries were selected and finally Marce, who wanted to play Japan (or I think Italy) was loaded with the german for a +2 more or less.

I was playing UK, and later on had to carry USSR for a couple of turns or so.

From the guys you know here there was Marcejap who was playing Germany but had to do Italy most of the time (the Italian player, Dirc, had some problem with the employee who was going to substitute him in his shop in nearby Kassel), and at the end of the game left Italy and Germany to Dirc and he played Japan.

Poland collapsed as usual. However, we managed to take out of Poland both pilot teams and the division and HQ (these for the British pool).

The british disembarked at France with complete stack of HQ+corps+AA, while I brought from Egypt a second HQ + corps and added an inf div from Britain. It was the first time I defended France so strongly.




Then, the german player aligned Hungary and sent a good part of the Wehrmacht there, along with most of the Luftwaffe. I was surprised he didn't take Denmark but this seemed to be a good tactic because the UK had still enough units and transports to make a beachhead.

Tha japanese was kicking the chinese backwads out of some serious deployment mistakes of the chinese american player.

Yugoslavia fell quite easily, even more than usual since it was 39, and however I feel it doesn't make a difference to have one or two corps more when you face Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe.

Belgium and Holland were attacked soon afterwards with the usual consequences, helped by lucky luftwaffe attacks (through all the game and IMHO, the german built too few planes, and many times ground strikes had lower odds than we usually see sometimes because of attacking even in wrong climate). Only the belge plane was saved for the UK and rebased to Dover.

We had agreed a terrible and horrible mix of rules and optionals, due to the fact that some of us were strongly for 7.0 others wanted to include FiF and some 8.51 draft. As a result of this mess, one of the agreements was that every country could select or not "the Rise of The Undead" rule of FiF that was fortunately revised at 8.51 so that you only get 1 BP per corps destroyed in your home country, but every country should announce what would they use at the beginning of the game. Not surprisingly Chinese and French wanted that. Don't remember USSR.

1940

We made however an advance defense in Belgium, given the strength of our forces (2 hexes BEF + French reinforced by colonial troops and southern units) since the french had had several turns to rail everybody up and bring some terr. This gave us a USA chit roll for defending a minor with at least 4 corps.

The Italian player had his own agenda and this helped us at first, since it would have been impossible to distract so many units to the North or bring them easily through the Mediterranean if he had declared war on France. He did not. Anyway we had complete stacks in Belgium and almost as many behind.

When the Wehrmacht finally attacked, it was countered by a savvy (I took good note for the future games) mix of AA which really blocked several luftwaffe attacks of 1 or max 2 bomber ( he was short of planes I believe, so he had to rationate the attacks, plus he only had 3 HQs) and ground artillery which seemed to be everywhere too, to support land attacks, as well as well positioned HQs to support or/and restore. In the gaps where there was no AA he put the AT brigades he had, as you can see in the image.

The german Panzer were not afraid of AA or AT but their attacks, specially after few units flipped by ground str.,were unsuccessful, at most they gained one hex with a blitz, wether with a 2B or just a B, even though the spent once o-poins. Of course, this rose the value of our stacks...

Meanwhile the chinese, although they had been forced back to the inner China, at the very gates of their last cities (especially at the north), they made a determined defense and they even made 2 or 3 counterattacks rebutting the japanese in the very mountain. Unfortunately, in a japanese attack Mao was sent back to the spiral, what left most of the commies OOS, but maybe because of the climate the japanese couldn't benefit from it, then Mao came back and the front resisted.



The italians declared war on Greece. By then I (CW) was about to receive my third HQ, built at the beginning of 40 and inmediately sent 4 peacekeapers to Greece, followed soon (next turn?) by HQ and some bombers (only units that could rebase there by then) in Crete or nearby.

That HQ was supposed to go to India, what made me a little worried about how was I protecting it against possible japanese attacks. I didn't care about Greece but I wanted the American chit roll, and then it kept the Italian busy.

Greece was reinforced in Athens and another northern city close to Bulgaria, which were the only left ones. Athens resisted several attacks in 1940 with a combination of tough defence (naval support, bombers, english white printed, HQ suppot +2, ...) and good luck. For one second I doubted wether it was really Sparta or Athens (This is Sparta!!!!)



By the end of 1940 Germany was not still a serious danger for France, they had taken few or very few hexes further than Belgium and the winter would made the rest. Not surprisingly the German did not assist the Italian in Greece even when (in 1941) he finally took Paris till one or several turns after the fall of France.

There was not even one sub attack, although one was planned but finally did not take place because of the low reach of the german subs, beacuse of not having France (Brest) as friendly port, and because italians were not at war. I was overjoyed.

1941

France resisted pretty well as you can imagine, until spring, but by then De Gaulle arrived, and by then the french had their own small blitz pool formed by De Gaulle+mech+arm+ mech div ... due to that (stupid?) rule of the Rise of the Living Dead, which was giving France a lot of additional BPS, along with the resources CW was supplying.

There were bloody attacks and unexpectedly the line was broken in a pretty strong point, just out of the Maginot line, close to Metz, I think it's a city, and the german having only 2 hexes. The Maginot garrisoning units retreated backwards as usual except those in Metz (to defend key resource/factory/city) but maybe in a rather disorganized way, and were easily destroyed after having a role through blocking with ZOCs.

Slowly the germand started to emburse Paris, but the french had still a lot of good units, including the armors and the british were holding fast the coast, allowing stubborn defence. In a certain moment, the Armoured spearhead envolving Paris was hit by British succesful ground strikes (with everthing in range), paralizing advance for two valuable impulses...

After having cleared only 2 hexes in front of Paris, the germans didn't want to wait any more and spent o-points to make an assault, which was successful. The problem for them is that it was te beginning of a summer turn, and they did this without caring to beat the rest of the french units, which could have been good too, in order to have one or two more hexes to assault Paris. Then the "maquis" french came...

... I call it Maquis because Paris was taken so it was like guerrilla, but in truth there were serious 3:1 or so attacks on the Germans, some of them with blitz bonuses and/or HQs support. The result would have been expensive enough for the german under normal circumstances but the Luck allied with the French player who rolled a 19 and a 20 in 2 from 5 rolls (maybe 6) The result is that the german player lost several good units (units good anough to be frontal, inside France) including a MONT corps to a total of at least 5 units.



The british had ceded land with order one hex backwards at a time, coordinatedly with the french. Now an HQ and it's stack embarked and left for Egypt, while the other HQ and stack raced for Bordeaux (excellent defendible hex, you can only attack from one hex) to have the German try to kick us out of there (and distract them from other uses), or accept we'll keep a foot in France!!!; including the AA to counter the Luftwaffe. In the photo below some french units will move in the french turn to attack the german flipped HQ, unfortunately not killing it, as well as the other stacks, and the stack of the garrison of Lille made a kamikaze attack as well...



The German followed the CW stack closely to the south but we eventually reached Bordeaux although an infantry corps had to be left in the woods before, to cover retreat. The german air transported a Para and a Mont div for an unknown reason, to Bayonne. However, that was a mountain hex. I saw a possibility to harm him more and made a very lucky ground strike, flipping the corps and moved blocking supply, then attacked with my single stack + naval support. Destroyed both, not sure now if planes and crew too. Later embarked for more glory at Lybia, the oblective of distracting wehrmach and Lftwaffe was fulfilled.

The italians continued to attack Greece and although some lesser units were lost in the Greek/CW side, both cities resisted well and there were several more units blocking mountains and ready to reinforce Athens from an island nearby (with a strait pass, see map). The Greek eventually raced for Tyrana but the germans finally came in time to block the advance.

Finally the Germans raced to Greece (although they had not moved the unused units from France to Greece at once. In fact they were slowly railing them to Poland. The Russian guy had told us he could have declared war to Russia when they had everythng but for 5 or 6 garrisons and militia in Poland but for some reason he did not. Now the German was coming back.

An expeditionary army composed of fast non-motorized (mainly) units and a good part of the luftwaffe was finally racing south to Greece, Bulgaria was aligned and very soon I saw my northern city (Tessalonika?) was going to be overwhelmed, by then only a Terr was there. I embarked my HQ and left for India. The next attack of the italians was finally successful. My american ally was encouraging me to defend Grece at all costs, since he was almost arriving, but by then that was already impossible.

In the meantime, I (CW) made a mistake, I let the Italian take without problems Lebannon and Syria, which he would soon use against me, without declaring war because of american entry chit rolls. Not only this but he also aligned Irak, getting vital resource/petrol. I had my HQs at France or just arriving, and he found me when I had started to go for Tripoli, since he left few units there, so I could only block him with impovised stacks in Tel Aviv and Damascus of div+terr inside cities, while I waited for the second HQ and stack.



By then (end 1941) the russian had grown so strong that the german was afraid to attack, so he did not, and this meant a lot of luftwaffe was set to the Mediterranean and like 4 corps to Lebannon (if I remember well), included one armored corps. They were able to pass because of recurrent extreme bad luck with the dice of the CW player.

About then the Japanese declare war on Britain and inmediately cleared NEI, we had a battle including a force of CW taking the HQ to India and a corps. The HQ could pass and reached Calcutta, where it would prove very useful. Another mistake of CW, the other corps I aborted Lumpur, while another of my corps was blocking but it was obviously flipped and unfortunately could not trace, so it was an easy prey, ..., along with the transport. [:o]



I lost early in the game 3 transports, the others by very bad luck, which would have serious consequences like very few planes transported to Egyp till late in the game.

The japanese very easily overwhelmed my units in Burma, even though the Chinese were then in a position to try to help and tried to. We had built a road in Burma to help bring the resource. He lost planes in the attempt to ground strike them.

1942

There was a steady defence in the borders of India, and only at the last stages of 42 could the japanese take one hex, but then Mountbatten and an ARM-HQ arrived (the previous HQ was then sent back to Egypt) and nothing else could be done. In fact, we stroke back and killed an INF uin the Burma mountains, unsupplied (year 42).

All along 41 and 42 there were no attacks on my convoys except one in 42, in a crowded Bay of Biscay, but I had had no losses (didn't find) so I easily aborted them all and remade the line through North Athlantic.

The american friend came to our rescue in Europe. War!!!

However, the italians soon had lost a good number of convoys (mainly because the american player was not as unlucky as me [:@] ), and there was a kind of misunderstanding between the two players who payed Italy and those were not rebuilt. That made the italian have for the rest of the game a TRS in a vulnerable position, which I was not able to find along many attempts every impulse, then he would have been another transport away from OOS and with a very limited mobility to Africa.

The war at the desert was not advancing too much because CW could not unsupply Italy and sometimes supply themselves (thanks God the japanese mostly didn't pay attention to Red Sea) because of my bad luck. Out of 20 rolls i had 17 of 7 or more, while the Italian had like 17 1s, 2s and 2s, with a marked tendency to 1 and 2. As a result, and although CW had received all the buildable CVs (my 1st priority) and had pretty decent planes on them, it was impossible to have good possibilities to counterattack in Lebannon, attack with advantage in Libya or invade anywhere.

CW suffered severe losses including 4 CV in one turn!!! And my super long range Navals (range 20, cost 4) seemed to arrive only in time for their destruction with pilot and all (I lost 3 of them).



Fortunately, more and more carriers, of even better quality were arriving, but only to fill partially the losses, instead of becoming the projected sea bastion in the Mediterranean sea.

The CW anyway, managed to send some units to make a line between Damascus and Tel Aviv, including 2 HQ and one armor, and simultaneously attack in Tobruk, where we destroyed the last serious defense in the way to Tripoli. The port nearby and the port close to El Agheila, served to disembark CW units racing to Tripoli. The americans invaded italian occupied Argelia, and like a crossbolt leaded through Tunisia to Tipoli as well.

USA and CW arrived about the same time and made a coordinated attack on the reinforced hex (italians sent a second -white printed- corps) of Tripoli, winning the battle and the country.

There were three CW attacks with odds about +12 and +13 in Siria and Lebannon, two of which were successful for the british (but Phyrric) and one was defeat, but in all three of them the roll was 4, 5 and/or 6, which resulted in extremely heavy loses for the british, and due to the unexpected of the result (up to 3 units) some expensive and special units had to be killed (twice my Para corps, for example). And at sea a transport was sunk unit along with it's Mar unit.

The americans debarked as peacekeapers in a forgotten (by the jap) Hong Kong, and later declared war on Japan, using the surprise for two port attacks. Unfortunately, and although I warned him, the USA player (disagreed and) made a mistake and counted too much surprise on his side so the weak attacks (one nav each) made pretty big losses to the jap, which were not legal. [:-][:(]

1943

Tripoli taken, but we couldn't do too much due to Ita and Ger supremacy in the Med. !!! Finally the USA invaded Sardinia, which was soon countered by the italian.



While I did't have too much to do by then except attack the german-italian force in Syria/Lebannon sloooooowly.




Although the Italians had frogmen from the very beginning, CW constructed theirs ASAP, even though they are of inferior quality. In 1942 they strike La Spezia, sinking an Amph and damaging a CV (yes, an italian CV) at least.

All this time some other players were supposed to carry the Russian (the russian player left the game because of a misunderstanding) but finally the german declared war. However, they din't do anything, partly because the german couldn't use surprise, since the russians were away, partly because the germans move forward for the 3 resources near Kiev and the URSS player was worried about that advance, partly because the german then came back and defended in the river close to Latvia/Lituania, and in the Romanian border. Also, and mainly, I am sorry to say because the game seemed to be close to an end because of time and the players who were supposed to move the russians simply passed to have more fun sinking more japanese fleet.

1942



I took the russian and spend o-points for a successful (and if I recall well, rather lucky) attack breaking the riverline and getting in with an ARM and a MECH guard banner, and nobody is flipped. I attack like about +8 or +9 i believe, so it was not too bad, but I get like a 15...

The german ground strikes, and although (I thik I recall) the necessary roll was a 3 or less, he is lucky enough to flip both units with one plane.

The german then, sent everything to ground support and so did I. Due to german underproduction of air force, we URSS were slightly stronger in fighters and vastly in bombers. I sent everything in range and I had normal or good luck (I had been suffering a lot of 4s and 20s against in the mediterranean dogfights, and I was answering sistematically with 11s, 10s, 12s and some unusual 15s) and using our superiority I destroy all his active fighters taking some losses though, forcing him to open way with his remaining bombers (some had cleared) if he wanted to reinforce. He did (!!!) and lost some more good bombers for a support that didn't really change the odds (obviously unlike mine), I passed all the planes and I had more support than I could use (being my land units worth 23 points). However he was lucky in the roll and got back the space, although I think my units got only a /B.

I think he made this because he didn't care because the game was leading to the end.

I sent my frogmen again (rebuilt inmediately after using them) and they sunk the just repaired CV and damaged some more units. This time I was very lucky with the surprise, otherwise it wouldn't have been so succesful because with the rush of the last turns I attacked believing the italian fleet was still inside La Specia but only 2/5 remained (about the same number had left the previous impulse and others were patrolling).

The Germans strat bombed England!!! Since Luftwaffe was not really needed in Russia, part of it had died honourably in the mediterranean, along with a lot of RAF units, and part were in Brest area strat bombing England. I had sent everything to Libya, since the American had declared war on Portugal and now I could rebase planes... He made 1 or 2 PP damage a couple of times... [8|]

The Japanese was totally blocked in China and India unsupplied and kicked from the Pac/Asia islands, production most of the time reduced to Japan resources and the continent factories separately (no convoys in Japan sea most of the time), it was clear it would fall before 44.

The conquer of Italy was still a work to do. No germans inside (or few) but Sardinia well defended, the Italian fleet still almost as strong (bad rolls to find), ...

Germany was safe in the russian front due to the other russian players having done nothing several turns. [:@]

In the last minute Germany decided to go for Sealion to have a nice end of the game. Used like I was, to german total inactivity in the West front, except for the strat bomb, I didn't have a single bomber to give support, or any land unit except one garr in London that I could have railed to the coastal city close to the invasion. Several ones were arriving next turn, and I counted on some americans who set for N Africa without warning. Still, it was a homeland notional. He invaded with an amph and an inf unit + a mar div but he had a very bad roll (I think 4 or 5 ) and the result was 13 so both died.

The game ended about summer 43. IMO we won, Japan was at the verge of collapse and Germany/Itally simply couldn't defend from UK/USA, with most of the german land units blocking a similar number of URSS units in URSS close to polish border and romanian border.

Later on the german showed me he could have sent more units (hidden) in reach of UK, like a PARA or two (maybe the second was a MONT ready for transport). To be true, these final 10 minutes of the CON I was almost not paying attention. He showed me what he thought he could have done:



I told him he would probably have succeeded had he sent those along with the invading party...

All possible merit for this AAR goes to Marcello, whose photos I am using.

Here is a link to a Marcello AAR he made on his own and I heve not even read yet...

https://www.facebook.com/#!/notes/marce ... 9768323224

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Lovely AAR. Thank you.[&o][&o]

[Joseignacio]

It's nothing, just some quick notes and Marce photos. [:)]