More Variants - The Allies ride again - No xargun please

[JanSako]

Xargun is bombing various places, but surprisingly not Manilla or Clark Field. Not sure why not.

Allied flak can be quite strong there. Depending on his losses earlier when taking out the ships in the harbor the Sally units may need replenishment & he may not want to lose Nettie pilots plowing the airfield, especially if your planes are gone.

[Nomad]

December 11, 1941

I have a lot of fighters at Manilla, waiting for him.

As seems to be the normal, my plans for this turn did not work out. It would seem that I missed KB2 in the night
I think he zagged and I zigged. And the Dutch TF did not move as expected and ended up getting hit by the aircraft
of KB2. We will try again this turn to try and hit KB2 with a surface combat task force.

Elsewhere, one of his surface combat task forces in the South China Sea caught a fleeing merchant task force and anillated
them. It is to be expected. An AVP was sunk outside of Soerabaja by a sub.
He took Victoria point and Miri, both the base forces surrendered, so I bought them back for 1 and 2 PPs.
He captured Tuguegarao on Luzon. He tried a Shock Attack at Hong Kong, and that didn't take the base, but did cause me
a number of casualties. Hong Kong will not last long
Troops were landed on Guam and my forces did not bombard attack, they have nothing to bombard with.
There was very little bombing today.

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[Nomad]

December 12, 1941

Things are not going well, but there is some rays of hope.

With his variant points Xargun changed two existing BBs to Yamatos. When he split KB into KB1 and KB 2
he put both Yamatos into KB2. Having thought about it, that is what I would have done, put the fuel guzzling
Yamatos closer to the fuel sources. Anyway, CA Houston and escorts ran into KB2. Two hits on CV Shokaku
and she was listed on fire. One of the hits had a message of a fuel explosion.

Further bad news was a miniKB showing up off Ternate and attacking CA Houston, hitting her with a bomb
CA Houston is damaged, but she should make it depending on what happens in the next turn or two.

Night Time Surface Combat, near Donggala at 68,97, Range 8,000 Yards

Japanese Ships
CV Shokaku, Shell hits 2, on fire
CV Zuikaku
CV Akagi
BB Yamato 2, Shell hits 4
BB Musashi 2, Shell hits 1
DD Arare
DD Kasumi, Shell hits 1, on fire
DD Sazanami, Shell hits 1
DD Ushio, Shell hits 1

Allied Ships
CA Houston, Shell hits 6, heavy fires
DD John D. Edwards, Shell hits 1
DD Paul Jones, Shell hits 1
DD Parrott
DD Whipple, Shell hits 1
DD Stewart, Shell hits 1
/snip

After that SS KVIII put a torpedo into CV Shokaku. I am hopeful that Xargun will exit to the North and leave
me alone for awhile.

In other bad news, CL Boise was hit by a sub launched Torpedo and subject to an air strike that put a bomb into her.
Sadly, sank.

And then the remaining potion of the TF, was hit by KB2 at Balikpapan.

Morning Air attack on TF, near Balikpapan at 64,97

Weather in hex: Heavy rain

Raid detected at 70 NM, estimated altitude 19,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 26 minutes

Japanese aircraft
B5N2 Kate x 27
D3A1 Val x 16

Japanese aircraft losses
B5N2 Kate: 2 damaged
B5N2 Kate: 1 destroyed by flak
D3A1 Val: 1 damaged

Allied Ships
CL Marblehead, Bomb hits 4, heavy fires
DD Barker, Bomb hits 1, on fire, heavy damage
DD Bulmer, Bomb hits 1

Aircraft Attacking:
12 x D3A1 Val releasing from 2000'
Naval Attack: 1 x 250 kg SAP Bomb
27 x B5N2 Kate bombing from 4000 feet
Naval Attack: 2 x 250 kg SAP Bomb
4 x D3A1 Val releasing from 3000'
Naval Attack: 1 x 250 kg SAP Bomb

Heavy smoke from fires obscuring CL Marblehead

CL Marblehead is not too badly damaged and she can survive depending on the next turn or two also.

On Luzon I retook both Cabanatuan and Bayombong.
Guam was lost today, but Hong Kong held out. Every day helps.

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[Nomad]

December 13, 1941

Luckily, KB2 is retiring, probably to Babeldaob.
I should be able to get most of my damaged ships out of the area in the next day or two.

I lost a DD and 2 xAKs to subs around Soerabaja, not a lot I can do about that now.

Xargun took Alor Star, Hollandia and Manus to day.
He only bombarded at Hong Kong.

I bombed the oil at Miri using the PI B-17Ds. The combat report showed some hits, but the mouseover shows no extra damaged ones.
I moved a recon unit from Singapore to Kuching to do a recon of Miri

He swept Manilla today, they only aircraft in the air were P-26A and P-35As. I lost 10 of each, that would be expected.

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[Nomad]

December 14, 1941

Another xAKL lost in the South China Sea to a surface combat task force. This was one of the damaged merchant ships from Hong Kong.
I pretty much write them off from the start, they are deep in enemy territory and chances to survive are slim at best.

On Luzon Lucerna fell, a small piece of the Yokosuka 1st SNLF was destroyed at Batangas.

Some small ground combats took place in Malaya and China. Small losses on both sides

Enemy forces landed at Davao.

In the air he bombed a few places, no real problems.

My recon of Miri showed no oil damage. Bad FoW on that.

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[Nomad]

December 15, 1941

Pretty quiet turn. DD Piet Hein sank from damage inflicted a couple of turns ago
Likewise xAKL Mauban also sank from previous damage.

Davao fell to the Japanese, and there were some small ground combats in various places.

I send my B-17s on a 10,000 foot Naval Attack mission. They attacked but did not hit any
ships. They did shoot down a Nate.

One thing that still has me puzzled, is the lack of a follow up port attack at Manilla.
I lost 8 subs on December 7 but I have not lost another one. I am showing a screenshot
of Manila from December 8, It shows a lot of subs with serious damage. I have most of them
partly repaired and moving to Australia for complete repairs. There were at least 8 subs that
easily could have been sunk with a follow up attack a day or two later.

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[Nomad]

December 16, 1941

Bad play and bad luck has cost the CL Marblehead off of Soerabaja, she was sunk by 3 sub launched torpedoes.

More small ground combat, Vanimo in Northeast New Guinea falls to Japan.
the forces at San Fernando on Luzon hold.
A Shock attack by Japan fails at Hong Kong, but we suffer heavy losses.
Brunei holds against a DA.
We both bombard at hex 84,48 one hex SE of Ichang, no effect
My forces hold again at 71,56 the forest hex East of Lang Son.

Japan landed forces at Sorong.
In the air, my forces were all stood down, he bombed a various locations, no real damage anywhere.

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[Nomad]

December 17, 1941

AO Trinity was lost to a sub launched torpedo Southwest of Balikpapan,
At this time it is hard to escort and protect everything in the SRA.

On the ground, Sorong, San Fernando, and Brunei all fell to the Japanese.

A bombardment at Ichang shows I do not have enough to take the base, so I will move back to the Northwest.
My units outside Lang Son held again and inflicted nice casualties on Japan.
He is using the 2nd and 3rd militia regiments and I expect they are not too good

Minor bombing in various locations, again no real damage inflicted.

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[Nomad]

December 18, 1941

Quiet day, an xAKL lost in the South China Sea.

Empty Taiping in Malaya fell. Hong Kong held another day.
On Luzon I pushed a remnant of the Yokosuka 3rd SNLF back toward Aparri

Some sweeping and bombing. Little effect.

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[Nomad]

A big oops in our data base. It seems that his extra 9 billion CVLs were set to have a nationality of none and the were not in the reinforcement que.

Things happen and we are restarting. Maybe I can make less errors this time

[BBfanboy]

You should check to see if the CVLs are in your queue for you to use!

[Nomad]

I looked, but they were nowhere to be found. We also corrected a couple of other things that were wrong, but were not enough
to cause us to think of a restart.

[Nomad]

New turn 1 is done and sent. Waiting on the carnage.

[Mark VII]

G'day Nomad,
Sorry you guys had to restart, you both probably learned a little for the next try.

Would you mind sending me the link to Andy Macs variants thread. I've looked and looked and cannot find it. I opened your zip to see the options but would like to see the discussion on that thread.

regards,
terry

After our first foray into variant land, xargun and I have embarked on a new game. This time we are using 400 variant points, so this will be a wild game for sure.
we are using a slightly modified version of AndyMacs Variants that were listed as version 1.4 form Andy.

[Nomad]

Hi Mark, it is actually an AAR started by deaniks, found here. Andy is his opponent

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 5&t=382449

I did also post an excel version in my first post as an attachment. We only modified a couple of items.

[Nomad]

One thing I have done over the last few days is to question all of my "automatic" decisions. I have been playing this game off and on, mostly on,
since it came out. I have a number of things that I have been doing because I have always done them. Those things I have been questioning
and I am changing a number of them. I am not really going to go into what those are since it is possible that someone reading this will be an
opponent at some date in the future and I do not want to give away my secrets. I just wanted to put out the idea that maybe everyone should
question what they "always" do.

[BBfanboy]

Oh, we agree! Whatever you secrete should be kept to yourself!

[Nomad]

December 7, 1941

After a couple of hiccups, we have finally gotten started.

Again he has split KB into two parts, and it looks like they are 3 CVs each.

As can be seen, not too much damage at Pearl Harbor.
More at Manilla.
Total ship losses so far are not at all bad, but I will lose more in the coming days.
Air losses are not terrible bad, but worse than earlier games. He swept Singapore and I lost a bunch of Buffalos there and at Rangoon.
I am not sure what he did different, but he did not lose as many aircraft at Pearl Harbor this time.

He landed troops at Amari, Laoag, and Vigan. There were paratroops at all three locations and shock attacks took the empty bases.

The usual bombing everywhere.

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411208 Pearl Harbor.png (549.53 KiB) Viewed 707 times

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411208 Air Losses.png (64.41 KiB) Viewed 707 times

[Nomad]

December 7, 1941 continued.

To be sure I thought about sending out surface fleets from Pearl Harbor. But I decided not to.
If they were successful, it could end the game prematurely and I don't want that to happen.
And if I failed and ended up with surface fleets out in the open ocean, it could end up with
me giving him a free shot at sinking what he didn't turn 1.

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[CaptBeefheart]

Too bad you gents had to restart, although that's about the lightest Pearl damage I've seen, barring AARs where Pearl was ignored.

The force levels you'll be playing with are going to be amazing, not to mention the 25 CVLs the IJN will get in 1944. Any clash will make the real Leyte Gulf seem like a skirmish.

One other thing: Are you gentlemen retired? You really crank out the turns, which is great.

Good luck!

Cheers,
CB