WC round 3: Willy vs. Belisarius!

[stevemk1a]

He he he ... one dump for every two 120mm's, and I turned off half of my OB 105mm tubes to conserve ammo, usually that's good for about 18 turns or so ... I regained radio contact with the Moersers at a very opportune moment

In other news, the smoke screen up north thins enough for a Flakvierling to tag a SU76, and a PaK to bounce a few rounds of a T34. In the middle area, a Soviet AT gun is spotted and harassed.

[Belisarius]

Bah. Game was lost from the start.

One turn to go, Germans hit everything, Russians hit nothing.

[stevemk1a]

Ok, the agony is almost over! Last turn is in your box ... Good luck Bel!

[Belisarius]

Easy for you to say... :rolleyes:

I'm glad to have this travesty out of the way. Germans win a marginal victory, score ~8000 to ~2700.

I don't like to whine, but this game WAS lost from the beginning. I was NOWHERE close to the VH area, and willy could just rush forward and camp around happily, as the VHs strangely enough were ALL on HIS side of the hills. :rolleyes: He could rest at the rear slope and just poke forward to take some potshots at me. With the visibility I had no chance of getting close. Artillery did the the rest.

I'd like to say it was a fun game, but I really didn't enjoy it at all.

Willy's a good opponent, though. He makes good use of what he has. I'm up for a rematch with the new H2H and better map (read: not computer generated) anytime.

Password was "urrah".

[stevemk1a]

I would agree that the map and conditions did not favour the Soviet player ... I basically rushed in quick and set up defences then sniped, and capitalized on the fact that my "gloryholes" were luckily in the sweet locations However, I'm lucky that Bel didn't continue capitalizing on my early game mistake of popping smoke in a clumsy manner to disguise my Mortar positions ... (I need to study up on a better drill for that one) I was pretty worried that he would continue laying rounds on my 120's !

Having said that, I have been on the receiving end of unequitable games like these myself, and they are no fun for the one on the recieving end, so I also hope we can do a remach when the new H2H comes out. I did the setup for this one, so my apologies, Bel!

My password is 'cheshire'

[Belisarius]

That smoke routine of yours was a bit...novel...I admit. Eventually the smoke you popped covered over a full screen, and I had no chance of fixing your mortar positions anymore, so I guess it worked out in your favor anyway. Also, what really sucked the wind out of me was that you had good clear areas behind your front line to allow for overwatching fire. I had no means of covering both my advance AND your rear lines with smoke. So when I got up to the front line, you could knock me out from further behind. More of an advance/delay than a meeting..

Here's a tip: Use one or two of the tubes and plot a smoke target somewhere in your backfield where you don't have anything! If you time it right, the opponent won't see the firing, just the smoke. Then he'll have to choose from, say, 6 smoke pillars instead of just 2 or 3. It makes it very expensive to target. I used this with good effect vs. Viking in our last game (which I lost but anyway). I popped smoke in my lower corner, 10+ hexes from anything. He took the bait and the next round he was wasting ammo on nothing but trees.

What I did enjoy was the challenge I was faced with. Now, almost everything turned against me, which bitters me. I think three factors decided it:

*) Distance
*) Visibility
*) Accuracy

As it was, Willy had the advantage in all three. With either a smaller map, or lower visibility, or switched forces it had been a close call.