2x3+ Team Side Game - BOTH SIDES

[Beria]

German Guns - many thanks to Der_Panzer for producing these for us

see posts 736 and 737 above for Axis OOB and AFVs graphs

[Beria]

German Aircraft - many thanks to Der_Panzer for producing these for us

[Beria]

Soviet OOB - many thanks to Der_Panzer for producing these for us

[Beria]

Soviet AFVs - many thanks to Der_Panzer for producing these for us

[Beria]

Soviet Guns - many thanks to Der_Panzer for producing these for us

[Beria]

Soviet Aircraft - many thanks to Der_Panzer for producing these for us

[Beria]

Soviet Vehicles - many thanks to Der_Panzer for producing these for us

[Telemecus]

Reserved for future requests of information on Snow weather turns

[Telemecus]

Reserved for future requests of information on Snow weather turns

[Telemecus]

[Beria]

Coming up next! [:'(]

[Telemecus]

Had several PMs asking if this AAR is continuing. So should say a definite yes and indeed I have my part of it drafted for the next dozen turns. We plan to present the blizzard in a different way. And leverkuhn a long time observer of the game has been doing his own analysis of the game seen from both sides. So at the moment just collecting everything together before going on with the AAR.

[Telemecus]

A note on experience levels of players at the start of the game

A former Soviet player wrote that at the start of the game all Axis team players were experienced and all Soviet players were inexperienced. They also wrote a message to some players from then such as KenchiSulla calling them a Nazi. This was dealt with by moderators from these forums. But I have been asked to make a note of what were the experience levels of players at the start of the game.

During the sign up all players were asked to give an indication of their experience level and this can be seen at https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.a ... age=3&key= . Players did swap teams because of this. As I was the only one to say I was experienced a special rule was made that I could never move units close to the front lines or in combat and could not perform air missions. This meant for this team game my role has essentially been advisory.

In practical terms it soon became clear the two southern ground commanders did start with a lot more knowledge of the game than the others. As is traditional for anyone who is a new player on forums who is seen to be exceptionally good the southern Soviet commander was called "Pelton" fb.asp?m=4331453 . KenchiSulla also had experience as a Soviet player and in allocations was left to deal with the air force in their area on their own.

Post 78 fb.asp?m=4377067 and post 82 fb.asp?m=4377142 of this AAR both show the best and worst case scenarios of the openings by the Axis in north and centre. They demonstrate the common openings of players used to playing against the AI and then playing another person. And how an experienced Soviet opponent could have chain breaked the pockets to flip most of the Axis captured hexes back to Soviet control leaving Axis motorised units isolated a long way behind their frontlines. Similarly use of airpower was just generally pushing airbases up with all their airgroups on them and with no regard to the rail repair network. When I was asked by the Axis centre commander why their transport aircraft would not fly and had to explain to them they were on bases that were too far from rail, and were only using up vehicles to move them in airbases and resupply them, I started drawing diagrams of how to use the air arm efficiently. These diagrams and pictures made for Axis north and centre commanders were the origin of this AAR, were also used in the 8MP team game AAR https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4250683 and countless other posts in these forums.

I do think pretending that the Axis team were full of expert players and the Soviet team were all noobs at the start of the game is sour grapes after the result. This was certainly not the view or what was known at the start. The wonderful thing about this game is that those who joined it as novices, were open to learning and stuck with it became incredibly good players as a result of it.

Pitt the Younger
I would rather be inexperienced and learn from my mistakes than be one of those who claims to have become experienced while still making the same mistakes again and again.

[Beria]

Mamluke who joined as southern Soviet commander also said it was not about different skill levels but said it was

Mamluke, Soviet south commander
I think the early imbalance of players leaving the Soviet team.

You have an Axis team who stuck with it and learned. And a constant change of our players who did not stick around. At the start of blizzard there had been no changes of Axis players. When I joined the game the Soviet team channel on discord was described by another in the team as a "sewer" . Many had left including five Soviet players because of personal problems with someone in the Soviet team. Since the summer 1942 campaign began only bitburger had left the team along with their other v1.11.03 games because they wanted to move on to v1.12 - and they still pop in to the Soviet team channels to advise. The difference in atmosphere and team dynamics shows.

The point has already been made that there is such a thing as team skill and it is not just adding up the skill of individual players. If you have a team which is happy and finds it easy to discuss the game and ask for and give help you get much more out of the players.

[Telemecus]

Axis Team

With the sudden unanticipated departure of an Axis player the Axis team was to become for the blizzard

North - Crackaces
Centre - Lictuel
South - KenchiSulla
Air - Xhoel
Chief of Staff - timmyab
and myself as Supreme commander

[Telemecus]

A big credit and thanks is due to Crackaces. Just after the start of the blizzard campaign the 2x3+ Axis team dropbox and 2x3+ dropbox for both sides were deleted. This is the complete irrecoverable deletion of the whole dropbox being cancelled, not single files being deleted which can sometimes be recovered. This was totally unexpected and until then I did not even know that was possible. Crackaces was the hero of the day as he had been keeping backup copies of all game saves even when they were briefly not a player in the game. Because of them we were able to recover almost all of the important files that had been lost. Without them the team game would have ended then. Many thanks again to Crackaces!

[Zorch]

ORIGINAL: Telemecus

Pitt the Younger
I would rather be inexperienced and learn from my mistakes than be one of those who claims to have become experienced while still making the same mistakes again and again.

Better not to make mistakes at all.

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: Zorch

ORIGINAL: Telemecus

Pitt the Younger
I would rather be inexperienced and learn from my mistakes than be one of those who claims to have become experienced while still making the same mistakes again and again.

Better not to make mistakes at all.

Is that Pitt the snotty nosed teenager?
Who next? Pitt the Toddler?

[Beria]

ORIGINAL: Telemecus

ORIGINAL: Zorch

ORIGINAL: Telemecus

Better not to make mistakes at all.

Is that Pitt the snotty nosed teenager?
Who next? Pitt the Toddler?

Pitt the glint in the milkman's eye [:D]

[Beria]

T025 Command Boundaries

I took the command boundaries from Axis allocations and superimposed them on ours at the end of turn 25 in the map below.

Most of the action during the blizzard for the Crackaces will actually be against the Darojax as the Soviet centre commander. They are now in charge of the shock army deployed west of Lake Rybinsk too for an attempted envelopment in the area.



The boundary between Soviet Centre and South commands is Tambov which will be a hotspot during the blizzard campaign. Rather than giving one commander control over the main areas of action, instead two commanders will have to co-ordinate a lot across their boundary. Not ideal.

Darojax, Soviet Centre Commander
In fact tell you what if you tihnk you can achieve any progress with my units down there you definitely have my persmission to take control of them and make it happen (this turn only) : ) Be my guest

Mamluke, Soviet South Commander
thank you comrade. will see what I can do

Neogodhobo, Soviet Supreme Commander
Aah..bickering among my Marshals. This is the sign of a true offensive [:)]

So in turn the Axis Centre Commander will spend most of the blizzard in combat with the Soviet South Commander.

The command boundaries do have some perverse consequences. Further up the map brigades are being merged into other units to boost their ToE while further down

Mamluke, Soviet South Commander
need more units to cover the entire front better no?
even so, for the North and center, yeah, that does sound like a good Idea, you can achieve decent unit concentration and the terrain is good for that
But for the South, I can't do this (much). My front is way to wide and I will need the brigades to achieve my defense.
however, On narrow fronts like the Crimea and Rostov, this can make a BIG difference.
I will be honest, If I can manage to just sacrifice a load of rifle Brigades instead of divisions in the South. I will be happy
Brigades are expendable (and fast to train) divisions are not.

If you have no points left then merging units is free. The destroyed units come back free for the same reasons. But if you have a south spending points to create brigades to get enough "unit density" while the rest are merging units because they have surplus, then it might make more sense to shift the brigades to the south instead? If you do not want to reallocate between commands than you can shift their boundaries, widening for those with too much and narrowing for those with too little. Or reallocating armies or even fronts to the next commander along to do the same without changing boundaries. This is the sort of thing a Supreme Commander should be watching out for.