D-Day to the Ruhr

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On the east flank the Br/Can units are soon to have their hands full just holding this area [Pz Lehr, 21.Pz and 17.SS Pz are identified, it looks like more are behind those] and trying to keep the Panzers from moving westwards and causing more trouble. The Br 7th Armored has landed [red on brown units].

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Elmer makes a bunch of attacks and gets nowhere, and seems to take a lot of losses, assuming that 'friendly' means friendly to him. I don't know why its put as Friendly and Enemy because that is either confusing or contradictory, it should be Attacker and Defender shouldn't it ?

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I've decided to make the priority the Vannes area. Historically the WAllies cut the Normandy peninsula off before going for Cherbourg, so that's what I'll do here. The 21.Pz has a lot of tanks swarming on the US 2nd Armored, but right now they look to be weak enough to be pushed aside, and I've got two infantry divisions moving up to the area [green circles].

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Supply is still decent. 'Wild Oats' is detailed in the briefing doc, it allows me to drop the Br 1st AB Div, which is in in England in reserve. I can't see to what benefit I could use it right now, so I won't do it.

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Some of the Fighter units have a short range so its a good idea to move them from England when captured airfields are available, preferably when the airfields are out of range from German artillery.
Generally, I don't spend much time fiddling with the air units, I assign them missions and leave them be turn after turn. I review them in the Air Report every few turns just to see if any are in the red, in which case I rest them. The same with the Naval Units, they don't even need missions assigned, just park them in the best position and let them sit. Only if there is a real important attack will I assign Naval and Air specific targets, that way you get the full effect. Otherwise, they generally support everything they can at less than full effect, which is usually sufficient.

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Elmer is making lots of scary attacks on me, but seeing the combat results provides relief from the fear as he is doing little damage. The inset shows the WAllies current supply situation. 25 is about as low as I dare go [by bringing in more units].

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On the west flank, nothing has been happening here as I have been pumping all the newly arrive divisions into the center in the drive to cut the peninsula. Now the 12.SS Pz Div has shown up and are starting to hit the US 82nd AB Div.

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In the center, the weight of the US divisions is pushing the Germans back and hopefully I can reach the Vannes area soon so that I can get on with taking Brest.

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On the east flank the Br/Can infantry are holding against all attacks. The Br 11th Armored Division has arrived [Blue circle] and hopefully will put some pressure on the Germans and help keep them away from the US area.

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A Minor Port is repaired, Woohoo! I had stopped bringing in new divisions because I didn't want the Supply Level to drop any more but now I will bring in another US Inf Div and move it west towards Brest.
You may notice these 'debug' lines [Red circle] in the News Summary, but probably not. They are something we use during design to help monitor what is going on, and usually they are turned off [but I keep them turned on because they are real nice for troubleshooting].

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Two more Minor Ports are repairs, I will bring in the US 3rd AD for the drive on Brest. The 3rd will be arriving on the continent four days before it did historically, which is no big deal, but it reminded me to mention that the way that the WAllied player is in control of reinforcements reflects how they would only bring in as many formations as the captured and repaired ports could support. The less units the player brings in, the more supplies they get. Bring in too many units and you will suffer low supply.

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I noticed in the Combat Results list that one of the German attacks resulted in heavy casualties to me. I wanted to know where it was, so I hit 'B' and typed in the coordinates and it showed that it was the spearhead of my Br Armored Divisions. That 'B' Hotkey sure is nice.

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Not every WAllied unit arrives by Theater Option, nor do they all affect the Supply Level. Corps level units arrive by their own schedule, which is determined by the number of divisions that have been TO'd in. These units don't affect the Supply Level.

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Disaster! Channel Storms! And just as the US 9th ID was approaching the south coast at Vannes, some 2.SS Panthers showed up and messed up one of my Cavalry units. The Germans also made a decent counter attacks at Loudeac.
The in-game effect of the storms are the Mulberries are withdrawn, reducing supply to less than 5 across the front [one will return later after the storms], air and sea transport are zero'ed, all naval units are withdrawn [sent to safe harbors in England] and Air Units go to 25% effectiveness.

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A scary sight as Elmer has stacked up a lot of units on the northeast flank [those are the strongest units on top of the stack, most are much weaker]. I'm sure the Canadians can hold. I hope.

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Storms be darned, US 9th ID has reached Vannes with the support of CCR/2 AD, and Elmer isn't very happy about it. He is counterattacking and I am stretched too thin and supplies are stinky while the storms continue in the channel.

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Elmer did try to bust me up on the northeast flank while the weather was bad, and he had some success. I have to single out the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade here, it suffered attack after attack but held its ground, giving me reason to believe that I might be able to recover this situation.

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An award must also go to the US 102nd Cavalry Group, which also held against multiple attacks.

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With the storms over, Naval Units are ready to return to battle stations, and a Mulberry Unit has arrived. Historically, the Mulberry at Gold Beach was repaired and began functioning, while the one at Utah was damaged permanently and never repaired. In Scenario we cannot repair the Gold Beach Mulberry, so the original was removed and now we have to move this one back into place. Obviously you can move it anywhere you want, but at this point in this play there are only two reasonable places, either the Br/Can or US beach. Its another decision to be made, and I will move this one to the Br/Can zone. It might seem imperative to move it to the US zone because of the upcoming drive on Brest, but I want the most supply going to that northeast flank where Elmer has been making progress. Same as originally, load the Mulberry onto a ship and move it to the broken sea road and park it there.

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There are a lot of units I could bring in, but I can't afford to take the supply hit. But it seems very necessary to get some help to the US units trying to hold that salient at the base of the peninsula at Vannes, so I will release the Br 43rd Inf Div. It can move to take over some over the US zone and thereby allow some US units to move to where they are needed.