Witness to World War 2.

[Elessar2]

No post-mortems? [&:]

I find how quickly the Eastern Front deteriorated for the Germans utterly fascinating.

[lecrop]

Amazing AAR of an amazing wargame, thanks for sharing.

[Orm]

ORIGINAL: rkr1958

Turn 36. Jul/Aug 1945. End of Turn.

Victory Totals.

If the game had ended after August '45, can we declare a winner?

[Centuur]

ORIGINAL: Orm

ORIGINAL: rkr1958

Turn 36. Jul/Aug 1945. End of Turn.

Victory Totals.

If the game had ended after August '45, can we declare a winner?

These are the historical objectives:

Nat. China ~ 1,
Commonwealth ~ 21,
France ~ 5,
Germany ~ 1,
Italy ~ 0,
Japan ~ 9,
USA ~ 15,
USSR (incl. Communist China) ~ 15.

So the USSR is the winner of this game...

[TeaLeaf]

Just for my understanding of bidding, so please correct me if I'm wrong!
There can be no winner of this game since there hasn't been any bidding at start?

If the MP's historical totals are taken as their modified bids for this game, then scoring looks like:
1. Allied Player = 57 (total allied objectives) - 57 (total modified allied bids) = 0
2. Axis player = 9 (total axis objectives) - 10 (total modified axis bids) = -1.

So the Allied player would have won with his higher score (yes, 0 > -1 [;)]).

If this game had had 6 players (again with historical modifier), then scoring would have been different, looking like:
1. CW 23-21 = 2.
2. Germany 2-1 = 1.
3. Italy 1-0 = 1.
4. USSR + Fr. (17+4) - (15+5) = -1.
5. USA + Nat. China (12+1)-(15+1) = -3.
6. Japan 6-9 = -3.

But ofc. the above scoring is moot in this game, since no1 actually placed a bid and we don't know how Ronnie would have bid against himself [;)].

[Orm]

Thank you.

For games with no bidding I think that using the historical objectives is fair. And I do not mind using the objectives listed above for determining the winner. But somehow that list doesn't feel quite historical. Historically, Germany should be conquered in the May '45 turn so how can Germany control one objective?

[TeaLeaf]

Because Germany 'controls' Stockholm.

At the end of the game if an objective isn't controlled by a major power, its victory point goes to the MP with the closest capital.
But IDK if it's right to award this to a MP with a conquered capital...

[composer99]

I would not use the historical objectives to determine the winner. MWiF certainly doesn't.

The RAW7 scenario booklet, in the Bidding subsection of 24.1.2, states:

Each player’s modified bid is calculated at game end, and equals their bid plus their currently controlled major power’s (which may change during the game - see 13.7.5) expected total. This table shows the expected totals of objectives for each major power at the end of Jul/Aug 1945:

Major Power 4-Map
China, Nat. 2
CW 19
France 1
Germany 10
Italy 0
Japan 5
USA 17
USSR & ComCh 13

(I have not included the expected objective totals for the 2-map campaigns.)

That is, the game does not expect the war to end with major powers occupying their historical objective totals. Not only should Germany not be conquered by July/August 1945, it should still be holding on to a respectable amount of territory outside the Reich.

In a six-player game, we get the following victory totals for this game. This assumes everyone's bid is 0.
Germany -8
Italy 1
Japan 1

CW 4
USA/NatCh -6 (-5, -1 more for aligning both Brazil & Mexico)
USSR/Fr/ComCh 7

Now, the rules for liberation state, "For the remainder of the game, the liberating major power controls the liberated major power for all purposes", which I take to mean includes counting its objectives. Since the USA liberated France, we would take the French objectives away from USSR and give them to USA, which changes their totals to -3 for USA &c. and 4 for USSR.

So either USSR wins, or USSR and CW tie.

[TeaLeaf]

My personal preference:
A solitaire game doesn't have bidding, so for me the winner is very subject to feeling. Major Powers Without their capital certainly do not qualify in my book [;)].

But if a MP must be chosen as winner, I think both the historical totals as modified bid and the campaign modifiers alone (assuming a bid for every MP) could be helpful. I could argue for both, but still subjective I think.

[composer99]

As a post-mortem, I'd be inclined to think the game turned out the way it did because of three factors:

(1) The Japanese lost badly because they waited too long to turn to the Pacific. Without looking back over 120 pages of AAR, I'm not quite sure if there was any specific turning point, but I definitely remember thinking they let that slide for far too long. In the end, Japan only had a positive objective count because the US and CW decided to invade Japan proper with a view to conquering it, instead of either going only for Tokyo or going for objectives (and Japan was only 1 objective over their expected amount at the end of the 4-map game, so a reasonable effort would likely have got the Allies two to four other objectives).

(2) The Germans did really well in the USSR, up until some time in 1943, because the USSR really flubbed its defence in 1941. Between the Commonwealth landing in Sardinia and Sicily in 1941, and the Germans building at least a respectable number of subs (again, if memory serves), Germany wasn't super-focused on fighting the USSR. Especially since they left the start of Barbarossa late - the start of July/August, I think? So the circumstances favoured the USSR, but they still managed to end up getting pushed back super deep into the USSR, Turkey aligned, and so on.

(3) Once the USSR was able to turn the corner in 1943 up in Siberia, the Germans waited far too long to begin withdrawing from Persia and the Caucasus, the end result being that their forces there got trapped and became the world's largest PoW camp. This more than anything else set the stage for the disaster that befell Germany.