Sapper 22 Invades his Homeland

[hfarrish]

ORIGINAL: SigUp

All issues aside, the game is nevertheless quite good. It's complaining on a high level. Sure, replacement rate for both sides could be better, combat model could be better, air model could be better etc. But in the end it is a terrific game and if you can find a suitable opponent (like me right now with loki [:D]) it is very much enjoyable. The problem with the South is the surprise turn. The surprise turn rules does its job fairly good in the North and Centre, but in the South it enables the Germans to do too much. Then again, the South is a very tricky matter. If the Germans are limited to their historical June - early July gains, the Wehrmacht will barely make it past the Dnepr. A human Soviet player would never allow an Uman, not to mention a Kiev, to happen. My take on it is shown in my AAR. I have no problem with the Germans getting more than was historical possible to balance out the lack of pockets later on, but the mega Lvov opener just goes too far.

EDIT: A problem I have with a post T-1 start is that it fixes the deployment of the panzer corps. While I don't do the Lvov opener I still send a panzer corps from 2nd to 1st Panzer Group. I personally need 4 panzer corps in the south.

I agree with all of this - right now I keep trying to play other games only to come back to this one, warts and all. Just too much fun. As far as the T+1, my guess is that you could easily have 4-5 or more different T+1 deployments. There are more than enough willing players on the board to create a variety of start options that German commanders could select. Just a thought.

[janh]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx
I'm furious at Sapper both for abusing the game system but more importantly for taking advantage of you. He ought to pick on somebody his own size. There's only a very few people who are both at his level of play and willing to deploy the cheese without any restraint. He ought to confine himself to that league. Playing newbies for suckers is, as I have said, extremely dirty pool.

I wouldn't be so harsh with Sapper to be honest. Tom has made a few mistakes that certainly didn't go unnoticed by Sapper, especially if you take the quality of German recon into account, though the big drama is only the south and has nothing to do with mistakes of any sort.
I don't see much fun in Sapper's playstyle either, it breaks the model of the game and shows where the simulations fails to capture essential limiting factors present in reality for the attacking side. Yet as such I think Sapper's contribution as "bug-tracker" here may be quite valuable for patching or the development of the next titles. He isn't winning the War in my eyes even if he formally beats Tom, but just as others who focused too much on pushing rules to the max rather than looking for the realism perspective, he is also providing quite a few "Lessons learned" on game design and modelling of this conflict. House rules and things to take into account when playing or seeking a good opponent...

[Mehring]

ORIGINAL: janh

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx
I'm furious at Sapper both for abusing the game system but more importantly for taking advantage of you. He ought to pick on somebody his own size. There's only a very few people who are both at his level of play and willing to deploy the cheese without any restraint. He ought to confine himself to that league. Playing newbies for suckers is, as I have said, extremely dirty pool.

I wouldn't be so harsh with Sapper to be honest. Tom has made a few mistakes that certainly didn't go unnoticed by Sapper, especially if you take the quality of German recon into account, though the big drama is only the south and has nothing to do with mistakes of any sort.
I don't see much fun in Sapper's playstyle either, it breaks the model of the game and shows where the simulations fails to capture essential limiting factors present in reality for the attacking side. Yet as such I think Sapper's contribution as "bug-tracker" here may be quite valuable for patching or the development of the next titles. He isn't winning the War in my eyes even if he formally beats Tom, but just as others who focused too much on pushing rules to the max rather than looking for the realism perspective, he is also providing quite a few "Lessons learned" on game design and modelling of this conflict. House rules and things to take into account when playing or seeking a good opponent...

I don't like house rules, the game should evolve until it works, but otherwise, +1

[Flaviusx]

Janh, next time I see Sapper in a thread advertising for an opponent and if he gets a response from a newbie, I'm going to tell that newbie what the deal is so he goes into this thing will full disclosure. I had half a mind of doing so when I saw the recruitment thread for this game. I knew it was going to be a disaster.

I'm through giving this stuff a pass.

You want to debug a game? Here's my advice: set up a match between Mktours and Sapper. That will be a true cheesefest. Sapper can play the Sovs (he has all sorts of Soviet cheese too, btw, which I think is equally appalling) and Mktours can handle the Axis. No house rules. There will be more bugs than you can shake a stick at. And it will be something resembling an even match.

[Mehring]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx



You want to debug a game? Here's my advice: set up a match between Mktours and Sapper. That will be a true cheesefest. Sapper can play the Sovs (he has all sorts of Soviet cheese too, btw, which I think is equally appalling) and Mktours can handle the Axis. No house rules. There will be more bugs than you can shake a stick at. And it will be something resembling an even match.

Oooh, you got me exited. Where can I buy tickets for the great WitE fondue?

[Tom Hunter]

Just a few points
Sapper was completely clear about what kind of a game he was going to play. I replied on purpose.
I like playing games until they break. Janh makes very important points, and I will add that if Sapper is showing that the game design itself has big problems that is a good thing, it’s the only way they get fixed. I did the same thing with the gunnery model in War in the Pacific in 2006 or 2007, which got fixed in Admirals edition.

A good AAR like the one I am posting makes improving the game easier. It also makes my learning curve a lot shorter, Toidi has been especially helpful in this.

I’m playing to have fun, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, winning and fun are not the same thing.

There are no victims here, there are no complaints in my posts about anything Sapper222 has done. I’m not surprised by any of it, and I admire a lot of it. A game with house rules or against a less experienced player would be nowhere near as satisfying.

Some of the comments on this thread strike me as real concerns: Southwestern Front is removed from Soviet control by German envelopment T1, is legitimate, especially in a game where the replacement rate for the Red Army is about 50% of what it was historically. Others seem much less relevant.

I picked Sapper because he struck me (correctly) as someone who would be fun to play. People keep coming back to the AAR, so I gather its fun to watch too. Enjoy

T9 coming

[Tom Hunter]

Sapper pushes into the gap he opened last turn with as much force as he can muster. He is clearly trying to pocket the armies here. I sent a lot of troops to counter last turn, but the Soviet ability to hit back is very limited in August 1941. Leningrad is likely to fall, with most of its factories, I’ve got the usual Soviet goal of drawing the fight out as long as possible. I doubt that the Soviets are strong enough to cut him off this early in the game, but we are going to find out.

[Tom Hunter]

In the center I took a gamble and lost, and Sapper has 9 divisions pocketed as a result. You can also see him starting to set up an attack on Moscow from the North, the fairly obvious plan is to pocket Leningrad and then move south, and the plan works a lot better if the area around Kalinin is in German hands. I shifted troops North to stop that, we will see if it works.

South of Moscow will be a problem, those 9 divisions were a nice blocking force and held the Germans in T8. Sapper has numeric superiority of about 1,000,000 men between the German army and its Allies, and this is spreading the Red Army thin.

[Tom Hunter]

All is quiet in the South, Sapper222 finishes isolating a couple of divisions near Stalino, but launches no attacks, the Red Army fortifies near Rostov, and starts building new armies on the Donetz, blocking the road to Stalingrad.

[Manstein63]

Tom what version are you playing?
Manstein63

[Tom Hunter]

Latest patch, but with the original winter, Non-random weather. When I play again I'll want random weather, because predictable weather allows players to make moves knowing exactly when the weather change will change movement and supply, which is less interesting for me. I think one measure of a player is how they handle unpredictable circumstances.

[Tom Hunter]

Near Leningrad you can see Sapper moved another unit to the rail line, and I moved more to take it back, its actually in my hands but I think the 5 hex rule may stop me from repairing it. I gather the HQ Sapper put under the motorized infantry will keep him in supply? Someone mentioned that in a previous post.

Sapper222 left a relatively thin force near Leningrad, and I have done the same, moving troops east to deal with the situation on the rail line, and to make sure I don’t end up with a huge pocket.

Where I wrote many failed attacks I attempted to bomb and shoot my way out of a small pocket, but failed against both the division and the regiment. Sapper222s rail head is close to the front so he has plenty of supply. My troops were moral 40+ but that was not good enough. I did fly supply in to the trapped units, but this is another place where I am losing divisions that I cannot afford to lose. The cycle of losing a few divisions, and not having enough to build a solid defense, and therefore losing a few more, is well underway.

On the plus side Sapper is sending troops into the swamp, which is much better than sending them to Moscow.

[Tom Hunter]

In the center I fell back because I don’t feel I have the force to block the pnz corp the way I did in T7, because part of it is surrounded and the rest is up at Leningrad. I fell back to my second line infront of Moscow, and to the line near Tula further South.

Sapper’s main axis of advance is obvious, but there are three that concern me, one in the North threatening the Kalinin area, that has encircled 5 divisions in a loose pocket, and two coming from the South.

Sappers infantry is coming up to the front line, and his rail is getting closer as well, which is further stressing an already thin Soviet position. The fallback reduces casualties, and the fronts are pretty well organized and equipped for August 41 (which is to say they are rotten) but cannot fight a stand up fight. I’m pretty sure Moscow will go before the mud, but maybe I’ll surprise myself. I think the key problem is that I have 226 units on map, and that is not enough, especially when you remember that many of them are air bases, and there are still a few orphan corps HQ out there.

[Tom Hunter]

In the South Sapper is 38 hexes from his rail, I pulled back, and the turn is pretty quiet. I’m pulling units out of the Crimea as their TOE gets full, and slotting in new units, using the quiet front to fill them out while maintain the appearance of a stronger army than I actually have. So far that has kept Sapper away, which is fine by me.
T9 10 arm from Tula to Izhevsk then 6 more, which used up my rail for the turn. I’m getting the impression that the optimal moves are 10, then 7, then 4 because they create the smallest rounding losses.
The Red Army is up to 4.1 million men, holding steady at 40000 guns, has 3518 tanks and 5300 planes. The Germans are fielding 3.3 million men and losses this turn were pretty low all round.
As I play the game, learn it, and read the AARs and comments, I think the big undiscussed item is the victory conditions. They are not designed around the real political objectives of the commanders, two of which were:

1) If you are Soviet, attack if at all possible
2) If you are German, never retreat

Failure to follow these resulted in being sacked or shot, which is certainly a personal defeat if you are a general. There were many other things that could be factored in as well. A game as sophisticated as this should not have such simple one dimensional victory conditions, it makes designing everything else harder.

[Tom Hunter]

Sapper goes for the pocket at Leningrad, pushing my defending armies out of the way and driving as much infantry North as he can. If I can get my troops out this will be a big help for Moscow in the next few turns. If not, a major defeat for the Red Army. Unfortunately though it will help the Moscow defense for a while it will probably be over long before turn 18 when the mud comes.

As you can see there is a constant flow of fuel to Sapper's lead units, same as his other games. In T10 its been dropped by JU transports, not bombers, his bombers are focusing on my airforce to a certain degree, though I have not been very cooperative about giving him targets.

[Tom Hunter]

Those are Sapper's words, he is still pushing in the SW quadrant, and a little bit in the center. I thought the attack began turns ago. There is a small pocket that I will break this turn, but the troops will be in trouble T11. I'm going to start pulling factories out of Moscow because I don't think I have the troops to hold. Basically I think the Red Army is too weak to hold anything within 20-30 hexes of the front for the next 8 turns, delay yes, but hold, no.

There was very little action in the South, so I will post that map with my T10.

[Bozo_the_Clown]

Two attack against regiments and one paratrooper is all you need to pocket his entire spearhead.

[Tom Hunter]

@Bozo I've either had terrible luck, or really failed to figure out the right sequence for attacks. Or maybe the game is functioning as designed, because most Soviet attacks failed at this stage in the war.

I'm pulling back in the game, because I do not think I can break through, but I have an alternative save and would be interested in experimenting or doing some analysis.

The short version is when Sapper is in supply and rested my attacks tend to fail. That said, I've launched attacks that pushed back pnz division at time, but generally Soviet attacks fail, which is historical, though not as much fun as attacks which succeed.

Finally looking at the map, the attack from the West on a single regiment has to be across a river, using units with about 40% supply because they have been far from the railhead and forced to move. From the East I can get 4 divisions on two regiments, but anything that attacks is likely to be pocketed next turn, and I am low on troops.

My understanding is that the HQs and air supply at the head of Sapers spearhead would keep him supplied, setting him up for a powerful backhand blow if he wanted.

I'm not really arguing, clearly if its possible to blow these units apart I can cut him off, I'm just not sure how it works given the circumstances.

[Tom Hunter]

Here is a sample attack, I bombed 6 or 7 times with light air raids before hitting the Germans, then went in for a planned (not hasty, I forget what term the game uses) attack. Many of my troops were at close to 50% fatigue, which I assume is detrimental to the attack. I am unsure why 13th army got such a penalty, distance from its HQ?

I would like to pull units off the frontline to raise moral and reduce fatigue, but my front is quite weak as it is, if I moved more away from it I think Saper222 would quickly surround what is left, and that would leave me with even less.

[Tom Hunter]

At Leningrad its all about running away. I’ve got some decent strength blocking forces in place and Saper222 is way out at the end of his supply for most of his units, so maybe I’ll make it. He is using air supply on his motorized units but there are not that many at the tip of the spear. I suspect he has started moving some pnz towards Moscow.