AAR Allies May 1944

[shermanny]

And here's France. The lines all over the place are got by pushing "8", and they show supply info. This too is an end-of-turn picture. Allies have taken Brussels and Antwerp, and have dented the German canal line between Maastricht and Hasselt, and the minor river line at the Ardennes junction of the Meuse (also known as the Maas) and the unnamed river (it's the Ourthe). Perhaps more important, the Allies work their way onto the Walcheren terrain feature. The Allies can bring fleets into ferry waters and use them to carry assault crossings of those ferry hexes from controlled to hostile hexes, but that can be quite a production and it's nice to be able to get there by foot and bridge. The strength-four regiment holding the connection open is hosting a fresh tank battalion as its attached support. With less, the Germans might easily counterattack and put the 7-strength infantry division out of supply and delay the opening of Antwerp to traffic. We have to hold all the hexes bordering its connection by major river and ferry to the sea to be able to bring in supplies by sea.

The capture of Antwerp completes the port-grabbing mission begun a few turns ago. Together with the ongoing rail repair efforts, we should see our divisions better supplied and thus better able to move and attack in the coming turns.

The Germans have guarded their left flank strongly. Four Panzer divisions stand shoulder to shoulder along the Ourthe, though there was a relatively weak point we could hit just East of Marche, and that's now held by US 6 armored division, which can probably hold its position against any attack the Germans can safely mount given the influence of air power on movement and battle during the current reasonable weather. The dent in the canal line East of Hasselt is also one that will not easily be repaired; again, the guys holding it enjoy the benefit of some woods.

[bairdlander2]

Pretty far advance by Allies turn 20.Looks like he has the bulk of his armour pushing towards Cologne.

[CaptBeefheart]

I just got this game and am trying out the Sicily scenario, and thus am very much at the newb stage. Having seen the logistics tutorial video, would it not be better to reduce the priority of some of your rear depots and raise the front line ones to 4? No doubt I'm missing something.

Cheers,

CC

[shermanny]

If I set a depot to priority zero, it will just disburse its supplies and shut down. It will refuse inbound shipments. I want my ports to receive shipments. It may be just an opinion, but I think of intermediate depots as buffers. A surge in demand on a forward depot can be made good by drawing on intermediate buffers, perhaps, even if there isn't enough rail capacity to get the needed quantity straight from the ports.

Toward the end of the war, I suppose I could reduce priorities on intermediate depots.

[shermanny]

Turn 18, and the Allies surge into the Netherlands, at least this side of the Maas. We are behind schedule in some respects, as the historic Allies had made more progress in Lorraine and had got Luxembourg, Bastogne, St. Vith, and Eupen by the 15th. On the plus side, we have an operational Antwerp.

We trap two German infantry divisions at Turnhout. We tried to bag 2SS Panzer, a couple hexes away, but as the battle markers indicate, we had to fight to drive off its neighbors and the units securing its connection to the rear, and by the time all that was done, there wasn't time to finish the job.
[This is new to GGWITW. Combat in a hex causes "delay points" to pile up, and these penalize movement out of the hex. The more intense the fighting, or the more combats there before the place falls, the worse the delay.]
So the Germans in the marked semi-pockets will eel their way out to fight again. Historically, this happened again and again on the Russian Front, as well as in the Falaise pocket.

Further South, we also begin an incursion into the Ardennes. It won't do to give the Germans a nice clean line there. We have to have options rather than be stuck with just one way forward.


In Italy, a rather tame turn as we just close up to the new front and poke at it a bit.

[marion61]

Just a suggestion, but you might try disbanding those rail yard depots on the same rail lines behind the front. Move the depots as close to the front as you can, because at each depot stop your going to lose supply that could go to the front lines. And turn the depots up to priority 4 where you expect most of your fighting to happen.

[shermanny]

Turn 19, and the Allies have an opportunity in the Aachen area. Any discontinuity in the German defenses can be a gift of time to an allied attacker. Divisions that might have been bogged down attacking even weak defenders have their whole movement point allowance available for exploitation.

This game tends to be stickier than WITE, because of the terrain, because of the weather, because of the fact that severe combat in a hex creates delay points that make it hard to move through, and because the Allies don't have "HQ Buildups" to spring them free of supply shortages. But when the supply does fall into place and divisions have had a chance to refit, Allied mobility can be a game changer.

[shermanny]

Here's the situation in the key sector at the end of the turn. It's hardly an impressive advance by E Front standards, but the distances are shorter here. Aachen is indeed flanked, and the Huertgen forest, the scene of bitter and prolonged fighting historically, has fallen to the exploiting 4 US armored division.

The gray circled (1)'s show where combat imposed delays. Because of these, other armored forces were not able to exploit.

This view doesn't show it, but the region where the action is thickest is also the scene of quite a bit of interdiction. This will make it difficult for the strong German Panzer divisions South of the penetration to react to the penetration, do whatever they need to do, and get set for the next turn after having done it.

[shermanny]

Picture here.

[shermanny]

Turn 20, and some rain. But the interdiction seems to have done its job last time. The Germans did manage to cut behind part of US 4 armored division, but the surrounding divisions had a rough trip and are now, at least for the moment, rather weak. The first map shows the situation at the start of turn 20, together with some anticipated advances. The plan is to drive in the German line at the point four hexes due East of Marche, cut in behind the armored force (it's 19th Pz, brought over from the E. Front) showing attack strength 5 and defense 21, then rout it, brush aside the German forces surrounding the point of 4 armored, and then go deep.

Not everything went according to plan, and in particular 19 Pz put up a stiff fight and could not be dislodged. But enough went well to make this a banner turn.

[shermanny]

This move highlights something WITE players all have to learn about the hard way, myself included: fast forces can go a long ways and it pays to garrison defensive features several hexes behind the front lines. Any little something will do, often. Exploiting forces don't have the movement points to slide through ZOCs and advance through several enemy controlled hexes, and then mount a prepared assault crossing of a major river. If they don't just happen across an effectively undefended bridge (as at Remagen), they'll be baulked.

Here, Cologne takes the place of Remagen. US 9 armored div has the bridgehead.

It's only been in the last two turns that my "opening" advantage has showed up in the middle game. This advance has been made possible by control of the channel ports and of Antwerp. Big, well fed, nearby depots are the key to this kind of mobility.

Why do I mess with so much RR work far in the rear? Because at the rate we're using supplies, we need a well connected rail net bringing supplies up to the forward depots from ports near and far. Intermediate depots can be drawn on faster than they're replenished from further back, but only for a week or so.

[shermanny]

In Italy, the Allies break the German line but it's moot. The situation in the North is such that it's time for the Germans to bring forces back from Italy. We may trap a division or two, but there won't be any big pocket in Italy. There are, at any rate, "city points" to be got from liberating or taking towns. My guys in Italy have to gather the harvest, but I do need to think about shipping some of them over to France.

Or maybe they should drive into France across the Alps and liberate Marseilles?

Or maybe see if they can get across the real Alps and into Germany?

[shermanny]

The bridgehead over the Rhine has held, and now must be enlarged. The screen of fortified zones that stands in our path is weak; in some cases, 0 strength. Scheduling an attack against such a zero-strength fortified zone causes it to surrender, with no losses to the attacker and no expenditure of munitions points and ammo.

Aachen is another story. The forces there are an infantry division and Pz Lehr, and their defensive strength, in the city, is 22. We'll need to bring something like 40 attack points to bear on it to be sure of taking it on the first try, and they'd best be mostly infantry, which fights better in cities.

Then, whatever still has movement points will hurry to get across the Rhine and expand the bridgehead before the rains really set in. It's difficult to get these sorts of turns right. On either side. A small slip can open a door, and a small slip in exploitation can see it slam shut again. In time, some virtuosos of the game will appear. For now, we're kind of feeling our way, though my longer experience with the game, from having come aboard the play testing earlier, has to have helped.

It makes one appreciate the abilities of some of the "great captains", the ones who brought off operations the first time through. And it helps one to understand how it could be that other great captains, say Monty, could have been the authors of failures such as "Market Garden". They probably had even more fog of war to contend with than we have in the game, and they certainly didn't have the benefit of history or of previous run-throughs of the war to go on.

[shermanny]

With Aachen fallen, the forces not engaged there can move forward. Another screen of German forces will have to be cleared away. The map and its text explain the mechanics of sequencing. There are some potential snags. Some German forces have unknown strengths, and others may be stronger than the numbers we're looking at indicate.

[shermanny]

The "delay" circles tell the tale best. Numbers circled in gray indicate that Allied attacks on the hex took time, and that Allied units attempting to exit the hex will pay an MP penalty to reflect the fact that time has elapsed before they could enter it, leaving less of the week for further exploitation.

Despite some tactical miscues on my part, the situation at the end of the turn is encouraging. Now, there's a proper bridgehead, with depth so that units can cross next turn and not face the movement penalties that the game engine imposes for crossing a river into enemy ZOC.

In Italy, the Germans backpedaled, but 4 Fallschirmjaeger division was defending in mountains and couldn't be extricated. It'll tie one or two of my divisions down for weeks but in the end it will have to surrender.

[shermanny]

Turn 22. Rain all over the place. We simply stand down the air forces. They've taken a brutal pounding and a rest is in order. On land, with the bad weather, we have to rein in ambitions and tend to our supply lines, widen the bridgehead, and make incursions where possible into the German lines so as to break up nice clean organized lines, if that can be done cheaply.

Picture shows the situation before the air phase. (Which will amount to nothing more than naval patrols for our part, this turn.)

[shermanny]

Picture.

[bairdlander2]

VP screen,if total vp's are 519 it means a draw?

[Joel Billings]

Yes, at the moment it's a draw, but the points are not likely to remain at this level. BTW, I see 418 partisan/garrison points, which leads me to believe that the Axis player in this game didn't realize that you must maintain some garrisons even after the invasion (either that or they were willing to pay the price to free up a few more units). These 400 points are a major hit that could make the difference in a close game. Something for Axis players to take note of.

[bairdlander2]

I am the Axis player in this match,and yes I did not maintain garrison requirements.