Franko starts an 80 year war... (PBEM WC)

[Curieus]

Only minor things are happening. We sent your MC squad back home to tell of your impending victory. They were so motivated that they moved so fast that disappeared from sight, just vanished man, i tell you

[Curieus]

apparently did quite motivate the spanish.
They are appearing like roaches from behind the cupboard where you are spraying.
Off course this behaviour is so spectacular that my front line troops can do nothing but point and drool (Remember this is even before B.Gates was born, i already told you we dutch have some foresight ). Or was that because of that invisible artillery bombardment. (No shells in the movie, but suppression figures indicate 210mm shells )

The only bright side is dutch hospitality whereby general rbrunsman is being releived of the pressure of coordinating two armoured 81mm mortars thanks to a judicious application of 75mm AA shells.:p

[rbrunsman]

Originally posted by Curieus
The only bright side is dutch hospitality whereby general rbrunsman is being releived of the pressure of coordinating two armoured 81mm mortars thanks to a judicious application of 75mm AA shells.:p

Those are my favorite units!

I haven't seen the turn yet, but you can rest assured that if you have harmed my mobile 81mms, the full wrath of the Nat. Spain Army (such as it is:rolleyes: ) will come down upon you on my last turn!

[rbrunsman]

Sure enough! Those blasted guns of his have a long reach!:mad:

And, since his arty is so powerful I had to satisfy my desire for revenge on my last turn by killing one infantry unit and routing one engineer(?) squad with my recon vehicles in the south. It cost me a recon vehicle (due to yet another **** AT gun!) to do it though.

Oh well, my turns are over and we shall wait to see what the Colonel can do with his troops to take some of the VHs, as I have all three VH clusters in the middle of the field. To blunt the effectiveness of his guns against my swarming AFVs, I smoked the whole line, north to south, with my remaining smoke from my mortars. Unless the Colonel has something up his sleeve that I am totally unaware of, I believe the Nat. Spain Army will be looking for its next "colony" to bring into the new Glorious Spanish Empire.

[Curieus]

A) HQ
B) Command post
Ammo carrier
75 mm AA
C) Command post
Ammo carrier
75 mm AA
8 Staal AT
8 Staal AT
E, F,S,T) 13 MC squads
G) 3x M38 AC
H) 3x M36 AC
I, J, k) 3x 4x Cardenloyd (1 MG infantry tank)
L,M) FO
N,O) 6x 15cm Howitzer (off board)
P,Q) 4x 12cm Howitzer (off board)
R, BH) 8x Gun Team
U,V,W) 9 sniper
X,Y) 6x scouts
AA,AB,AC,AD) 12 x schwarzlose HMG
AE, AF) 8x bicycle infantry
AG) 2x sapper
AH-AR) 8x 20mm solothurn AT rifle
8x 6cm mortar
26x NL rifle squad
AS,BE) 8 Daf heavy trucks
BF) 4x horse cart
AT,AU) 6x 8 Staal AT
AV, AW, AX) 12x 7Veld inf gun
AY, AZ) 4x 4cm AA
BA) 3x 6cm mortar
BB, BC, BD) 6x 20mm AA

On the OOB: The commandpost were essential for rallying those AA guns, although i goofed a bit and forgot to attach some more (as i intended to do)
Most of the snipers (6x) were intended to keep an eye on the back area in order to spot infiltrators.
The 6 AC were all the "real" armour i could buy. The 12 Carden lloyd were bought in the hope that they'd be less impressed by artillery fire. A false hope
Trucks and gunteams were used massively in the north to move infantry and guns. A few were held in reserve for moving guns behind defensive positions.

Score:
E NL
men 276 395
art 0 6
soft 0 5
AFV 8 10
points 4780 1345
Spain marginal victory.



Evaluation:
IMHO spain had several advantages: All the victory hexes were 9 hexes closer to spain than to NL, and spain was the first one to move. The terrain also slighly favoured spain.
In the south A high ridge on the spanish side overlooked the VH.
In the middle a wood shielded the hexes from my sight.
The north hexes could be called "equal" opportunity.
A second advantage was that spain had a broader choice of armour and mobile troops. He did use the mobility, but i am not so sure he used his armour as well as possible.
On average spanish equipment is also better (and quite a lot) than dutch equipment.

The dutch plan was to fortify along the south and middle and to attack on the north wing. The southern flank was pretty much stripped from infantry, with only 1 platoon(?) infantry covering the the south,
Because of this this section of the front was reinforced with minefields covering 70% of this parts' front line
1 Infantry company covered the middle and 2 sappers were used linking the middle with the northern attack where the rest of the men were loaded in trucks and used in the north.
What really stopped my attack were the 210 mm artillery shells. Where those had fallen all units would have 99 suppression and be impossible to rally, not to mention the horrendous casaulties.
Perhaps i should have stopped the attack the moment the Artillery started. At that time i still thought that there was a possibility to setup an overwatch over the northern victory hexes.
In the end the combination of rain and artillery made this battle quite a static one.
On a side note, i was actually amazed, that given the amount of armour spain seemed to have, they did not even try to attack. They had at least a 2:1 numerical superiority, and if we subtract the carden lloyds it becomes closer to 4:1 or higher.
Perhaps that Rbrunsman can tell more.


In the buying i had problems with the rarity mainly with the AC's and a complete lack of AT platoons, i wanted to have at least 1 AT rifle per carden-lloyd.
Another bummer was the lack of infiltration units available

On the scoring:
Most of the causualties (excluding AFV's on both sides) were caused by artillery and the big difference in scoring is mainly caused by the VH.
Still the casualties on the dutch side are quite a bit higher, so i congratulate rbrunsman with going to the next round.

But really you foolish spaniard, if you think one battle constitutes 80 years you are wrong. We lost this one, and we will lose some more, but look up in your history in the end you will loose. As soon are the fighting reaches the real polders you will drown in water and your homefront in sorrow.

[Curieus]

As i am not sure how the tone of the "analysis" above will be interpreted, i wish to make sure that the following is my opinion:

Despite those minor spanish advantages, i would like to state that i learned much from rbrunsman, and he deservedly won.

The only major point against him was that he didn't follow *MY* battleplan

[rbrunsman]

I didn't take your post badly. I was just waiting for you to send me your last turn so I could see what you did and then report back with my OOBs. I can't access the game without your save files.

How about a rematch with some proper armies?