Fall Gelb - rematch - the Axis

[Chocolino]

June 24th, 1941

It looks that the situation in Finland is stabilizing. For the time being we can prevent the Russians to take the last VP city Turku.

While the Germans are lagging in the center, especially in the Pripet marshes, good progress has been made in the Ukraine.

[Chocolino]

July 24th, 1941

As long as the Russian resistance remains light, we will continue to pursue two goals, the Ukraine and capturing Leningrad. Since last month we have taken Pskov and Parnau.

[Chocolino]

July 24th, 1941 (II)

The Russian resistance in the south is still very light and very scattered so far. They are obviously holding back by purpose and will commit their units later on. In the meanwhile we will take as much Russian production as we can. But the juicy bits are in the deep south Caucasus.

[Chocolino]

August 24th, 1941

The Russian defense stiffens before Leningrad while we can still advance fast in the south. Here the Russians still deploy single road-blocker units and city defenses only to hinder our movement.

[Chocolino]

October 24th, 1941

The Russians are now finally building solid and continuous front lines with Lvl 2 Infantry. It started before Leningrad, then at Stalingrad and at the Krasnodar / Mykop line. The Russians also defend the only remaining supply railway into the Caucasus which leads along the Caspian sea. Cutting it off will help to break the resistance of the Caucasus defenders.

[Chocolino]

December 16, 1941

Most of the East Front is static over the winter months. Only in the Caucasus region heavy fighting continues. The goal is still to cut the railroad along the Caspian sea.

Meanwhile the British have made a strong landing in Morocco just when the Italians wanted to mop up the remaining Atlantic port cities with some weak forces. Most of the Italian army is opposing the British near El Alamain. Now we have to build some defenses also in the west. Hopefully we can hold Fez for a while (first western VP). Otherwise the French will survive since they are still holding out in Beirut and Aleppo.

[Chocolino]

January 24th, 1942

All the action is in the Mediterranean and in the Caucasus. We need the extra income from the Cacasian oil fields and hope to finish off the English in Egypt. The Italian army is preparing for month in the desert and has just waited for the Germans to join the attack after the landing at Beirut.

[Chocolino]

March 1st, 1942

The Axis leadership is greatly dismayed about their failure to knock France out of the war. Fez fell into British hands before Aleppo could be taken by the Germans. Concerned about counter strikes from Egypt, the Axis took too long to build up near Beirut and then missed taking Aleppo by a single turn. Now it turns out that the concerns were unnecessary since Egypt is defended extremely lightly.

The British campaign in Algeria heats up and the Italians are pressed westwards. The British fleet which had deserted the Med for quite some time is now back at least in the western half. We will send over some Germans to beef the defenses up.

[Chocolino]

March 1st, 1942 (II)

The mopping up of the Caucasus is mostly completed and several strong German units have moved north to Astrakhan in order to create some favorable jumping off position for our upcoming summer campaign.

[Chocolino]

April 24th, 1942

The British have abandoned Egypt which we could occupy with only a minor battle with one of the rear guards. But the Allies press hard on Algiers.

[Chocolino]

April 24, 1942 (II)

The attack on Stalingrad from the south (via Astrakhan) made some initial progress but then lost momentum because of supply issues even along the Stalingrad railroad.

The Germans also made an effort to create good positions in front of Moscow for the upcoming summer campaign. We could take Kaluga.

Strong Russian elements (amongst them at least one full strength Lvl 3 Russian tank corps) threaten Voronezh from the north. We needed to dispatch a few units that were freed up from the Caucasus to help some Axis minor units to defend the city.

[Chocolino]

May 24th, 1942

Progress southwest of Moscow. The encirclement around Orel was actually initially larger 2 turns back.

[Chocolino]

May 24th, 1942 (II)

The Allies are getting close to Sicily...

[Chocolino]

July 24th, 1942

Moscow and Stalingrad in dire straights. The Allies push hard in Africa but their progress has slowed down after some losses of UK and US carriers in the Med. (sunk by aircraft based in Sicily).

[Chocolino]

August 9th, 1942

The East Front at the time of the Russian / Allied surrender.

[Chocolino]

Afterthoughts:

Gary has played the Allies much better than I did in our previous game. I was impressed with how the British (later with American help) rolled up the Italians back into Tunesia. In the end it did not help. I think that with the current settings (hard for all majors) the game is still somewhat unbalanced and only a careless over-aggressive Axis side can loose.

There is a key event early in the game (German war weariness). I decided to pay up and take the PP hit right away. This was a two sided sword since it threw the Germans back in armor production and research being at negative PPs for many month.Not sure if I would do that again.

I have seen a few Russian full strength Lvl 3 tank corps. Not sure if it would have made a big difference investing solely into infantry. Maybe the Russians would have hold out longer and thereby giving the Allies a chance to invade later. Counterattacking (at these reduced major countries PP settings) seems not to be an option for the Red Army in any case.

It also turned out that the Russian attack on Finland was fortunate for the Germans/Axis. Mostly because it got Germany into the war while the Russians were engaged elsewhere. Later the Fins could harass the Russians with many weak units in the far north, soaking up quite some Russian units while also a Karelian front had to be manned against the Germans in Finland.

I enjoyed both games tremendously. Maybe to be repeated in a newer version of ToF. In the meanwhile we may switch to the Pacific and dig up SoP once more.