THE LAST KINGDOM: Sillyflower v sveint. SVEINT WELCOME

[sillyflower]

This atrocity occurred in Brest Litovsk on 12 May. Pictures of the Nazis throwing babies into fires were deemed to distressing to show on a family-friendly forum




The peoples of Russia will take courage and inspiration from these infamous war-crimes. The Teutonic Knights were routed and slaughtered by Alexander Nevsky and the Russian people centuries ago, and their descendants led by Comrade Sillyflower will do the same to the degenerate descendants of the Teutons, once she manages to extract herself from a giant daffodil.

[sillyflower]

May 8

I know, Dear Reader, that you probably want to learn more about Barbarossa, but patience is a virtue.



The Bordeaux Boys are back doing their usual thing of being annoying. They had a short stay at Scapa Flow and are now at small xxx strength. With the income from Oslo and the 1% production boost from rare metals, I reckon this is worth 2 PPs per turn. What is not to like especially as it greatly lowers Italian national morale threshold for surrender as well. I would not have won our previous game if I had not taken Norway.

[sillyflower]

Meanwhile, in the English channel the combined Axis surface fleet hides in Brest with fighter cover whilst Axis subs lurk near all the Irish ports. Allied naval forces stay 1 hex out of range of the bombers in Berlin, but reaction attacks by uboats result in 1 of them sinking and the other taking 2 hits, without any allied losses. I enjoyed that.The invasion fleets do the naval equivalent of dancing round their handbags to keep out of range of attacks next turn. 2 carriers and other assets reach Scapa Flow for resupply.

[sillyflower]

I can't put it off any longer




An heroic performance repeated when attacked a 2nd time, so no rail conversion here.

[sillyflower]

AGS



The main point of attack is here. Not as bad as I had feared, but it will be a long summer...............

[sillyflower]

AGN/AGC



The ants did much better than expected and even isolated 2 of the 3 panzers, tho' I don't think sveint is short of JU52's.
Leningrad gets 4 more AA guns to add to the Siberian inf xxx upgraded to elite status. L'grad is easy to bomb but hard to defend with fighters due to lack of airfields

[sillyflower]

I think that the time has come to give a strategic overview from the Casablanca conference. Held at the Casablanca Hotel in New York for obvious reasons.

I'm feeling happier than I was 6 months ago. Sveint is very spread out. There are now 21 G units in UK + Ireland + some Spaniards. 4 in N Africa and at least 1 of those must be a xxx to be able to put up any resistance to an allied O.

USSR
In Russia all the regular armies and the 19 armoured xxx are all '42 tech with the armour transitioning at pace to '43 model. I should be able to start upgrading the reserve armies in June. Sveint only has 9 panzers and no mech xxx to my 19, but I can afford the petrol. My Red army is much stronger that it was at this time in our last game, and the invading ground forces seem weaker.
I'm buying 1 inf army per turn but putting most of my PPs into upgrades and keeping the interceptors as strong a possible. The latter is a challenge and I can't keep the all in the front line, but having 12 must be hampering the LW and seems to be preventing paradrops.

The threat of paraspam does not exist. I've seen 1 G para in the north and 1 It. in the south. No paradrops yet: I'm writing after doing my 5 June turn.Either they are all acting as expensive port garrisons, or else there has been mass recycling. Good thinking by sveint anyway. I think paraspam may well work in '41 Barbarossa ,but not '42.

The LW is very big, but all other axis air units have been disbanded. I think that he only has 7 fighters, or 8 at the most. suspect sveint thought that would be enough to destroy the red air force and to pound the red army to bits with large numbers of bombers.I suspect that the last minute doubling of my fighters might have been an unwelcome surprise.

ECONOMY
Allied production in just over 1K per turn. Both UK and USA are donating what they can to the USSR. I've had 10 or 20 more merchants arrive, with I think 80 more on the slipways, That should be more than enough now that the axis navies are very weak, and in no position to restart convoy warfare.

NAVAL

The axis naval forces have taken a beating. In the previous turn, the Italians lost 9 more subs around NW of Ireland. They were obviously there to interdict invaders, but they found themselves trying to interdict fleets of warships and only got 2 hits in return. The now-combined surface fleets fled to Danzig. I just hope they keep moving and using more fuel.

THE MED.

Has a lot of UK forces. There is clearly no threat to Turkey: even the 2 G units on the border have been taken away. The complete absence of any axis ships or aircraft in the theatre mean that I should be able to do something useful. I need to keep stretching sveint's rubber band.

UK

I remain flexible. I don't really care where the mainly US invasion fleet lands, or when. Ireland would be a good option, but with 2 ground units protecting each port, and bombers in Dublin, it will be potentially expensive. This is because I would need to cut off all their supplies to weaken the first.Still, most of the 2 navies have no other use because sveint is not mad enough to build another Graf Zeppelin for 1000 PPs or so (I can't be that lucky) or to repair his remaining warships.

Norway

Another rubber-band stretch. See report on 5 June turn to follow.

[sillyflower]

May 22



Allied naval forces provoking reaction attacks kill 9 Italian subs for I hit on a BB and 1 on a CA. Spanish ground forces flood into Ireland. Potential invasion forces do the naval equivalent of dancing round their handbags just out of reach of enemy subs.

[sillyflower]

Russia




The Nazis make steady but fairly slow progress. Any 1st summer turn which is not a disaster is a good one in my book.

[sillyflower]

v. busy day so only time for 1 post tonight



US troops move to Norway to forestall any silly business

[sillyflower]

Russia 5 June



AGN not looking very aggressive. Generally I sit fairly tight. I have enough cash in the bank to keep refit/upgrade at nearly 400 PP for upgrading decent units(I now have '43 assault advance), and of course the need to keep up fighter numbers, and to buy 1 inf army/turn. Only inf xxx ants have been killed so far, and I have disbanded a few when their readiness is hopeless and the manpower and PPs help.

The Russian tac bombers are all starting to bomb some Finns, apart from 1 on naval bombing duty down south as an anti-invasion force. This would have started last turn but I forgot to send the bombers up north on T1.I don't expect to do the Finns any harm whatsoever, so this is purely to gain experience without receiving casualties.

[sillyflower]

The Irish are very charming people, so we give them a little hug to show our appreciation. Starving the axis of supplies is simply an unfortunate by-product of this policy.

[sillyflower]

19 June.

Sveint is ahead of the historical position in Russia[X(] but I failed to keep a screenie. I really thought I had because wanted to show the destruction of a German inf xxx with supporting heavy arty at the tip of the Nazi spear pointing at Vitebsk. My attackers had to come out of our trenches to do it but it was well worth it IMHO. Sveint very rarely fails to provide a retreat path, so such opportunities need to be taken.





Back in the desert:

2 British tank corps and the RAF give a German dug-in inf xxx a wake-up call, tho' many of them will not wake again. The other tank xxx has heavy arty which helped. The 2 ports have been blockaded for a couple of turns before this, so hopefully his ability to replace casualties and regain cohesion will be impaired. Just hoping that the 3 unknown units are not 2 elite panzers + Rommel, but they should all be safely in Russia, unless he's being sneaky and hiding one in the UK.

[sillyflower]

A picture of the Emerald Isle which looks rather like the previous one.



The losses screen gives losses of the player's last 2 turns, but only the last turn of the enemy, so it always looks worse than it is. The American losses are due to their pitiful performance in Norway, not my poor decision-making. Russian losses are relatively modest for 2 turns.

[baloo7777]

ORIGINAL: sillyflower

The losses screen gives losses of the player's last 2 turns, but only the last turn of the enemy, so it always looks worse than it is.

I don't ever remember reading this and I usually ignore that screen because I could never understand where it came up with the losses. Is it in the manual somewhere?

[sillyflower]

I don't think it's explained anywhere but I hope Alvaro will be able to clarify if he reads this AAR. I worked it out simply by comparing the losses screen with losses as recorded on the columns which give the result of each individual combat. Also losses screen figures for Russia at start of my T2 were the same as the total Russian casualty figures in the casualty screen.

It is sub-optimal. If the losses screen recorded total losses during one's previous turn + the last enemy turn (which is what I thought it did from the description), that would be quite useful.

[sillyflower]

3 July 1941

North Africa. We have Rommel, but probably no panzers



Although my supply line is incredibly tenuous here, I have trucks and air support, and the strong blockades of the 2 nearest axis ports should mean that sveint's supply chain is probably not much better.

[sillyflower]

Russia




A relatively quit turn, and the only destroyed units were the remains of 3 ant inf. xxx. I am expecting AGC to try to head north 3 or 4 hexes west of Vitebsk, between the 2 rail lines going north. I reinforced the area as best I could and I have a lot of strong units there, and he has a maximum 2 interceptors + I assume that the the 2 unidentified air units in range are bombers which would mean that he only has 3 to try to weaken the defense before the ground troops have to leap into dinghies to cross the river. His 2 panzers with engineer kit are both down south, and I haven't yet seen any more heavy arty in the area.

I expect him to make more progress in the south.

[sillyflower]

July 17



The lack of action in the North came as a pleasant surprise. I have removed the AA guns from L'grad.
My tac bombers all shuffled west to bomb sveint's remaining ships. They 'bottomed' 2 CA's: 1 G and 1 It. Better than not killing any Finns. I suspect that they won't get another opportunity.

In the south, I'm sure sveint posted pics of his thrust. Revenge for losing 1 army and 1 mech xxx came with the destruction of his paras.

[sillyflower]

17July elsewhere

No fighting in N. Africa as the Nazis pull back slightly towards Tripoli, and my tanks were only going to get a 2:1 on a fresh inf XXX, despite the RAF reducing the visible CV from 13 to 8.

In my usual random way, I forgot to take a pic. of UK. I don't trust sveint. I do in the normal meaning of the word, but I do not trust him not to be super-sneaky. Why would he swap the German units (presumably divs) in the Irish ports for weaker Spanish ones? The answer must be that the Spanish units are corps. Having no wish to create a super-Dieppe, I took the port in NW Scotland instead. My money is on the spare G unit between Glasgow and Edinburgh being a panzer xxx. If I'm wrong, it's a mech xxx but I don't think he has any of those. I made my dispositions on that basis: even giving my paras, who flew in from Scapa Flow, AT guns. 1st time I've given them to anyone I think. My US bombers in Scapa Flow are in range to help the defence.

My plans remain fluid. Invest heavily here, or pin him down and go somewhere else as well.
10 new US merchant ships are launched and are immediately put to work on Lend Lease duties.