Defender of the Revolution: Q-Ball v Tarhunnas

[M60A3TTS]

Pass the popcorn. I gotta see this one. [:D]

[gids]

im watching this :p

[Q-Ball]

I appreciate the comments, but I never seriously considered quitting. When I asked for the game, I asked for an opponent that would stick it out, so I'm sticking it out, to give Tarhunnas the opportunity to gain complete victory, or get bored and suggest we quit. Until then I owe him a game.

It's no fun getting your ass kicked in public, and no doubt I am getting smoked. No fun, and games are supposed to be fun, so I am chalking that up to lessons learned and see if I can turn it around.

I am plugging forward pretending I am taking over another game. This was my first attempt at playing Soviets in a PBEM, and I obviously screwed it up. I think I know how.

My Mistakes:

1. I withdrew too much, but I did not do a full Robinsky as some have mentioned. I had a unit on every Panzer unit every single turn; I did pull back from the Infantry. In fact, I wouldn't have as big a pocket this turn if I had pulled back from the Dnepr sooner.
2. My main mistake was NOT railing forward all my units. I decided to make many units walk, figuring they would build strength and I would save rail capacity for Industry. The fact is that the units don't take up much capacity, and you must rail them forward. THIS WAS MY BIGGEST MISTAKE
3. I underestimated the mobility of the German Panzers, and prepared defenses in front of cities, but not behind.
4. I didn't garrison the cities themselves; I didn't think he could reach them, and wanted everyone digging outside the city. Another mistake.

So, I am going to learn from these mistakes and give someone a much better game next time. I don't think I actually suck this bad at WITE, just had a bad week, and didn't let myself get any experience at the Soviets before taking Tarhunnas on.

At any rate, I have been slow play the last couple days due to a camping trip, but back at it.

Situation:

So now I am pretty screwed, caught in a snowball of declining rail capacity, and increasing need to rail things out. I just hope I don't completely collapse.

[Klydon]

ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS

ORIGINAL: Klydon

I think Larry has shown the way with his AAR against Pelton. Despite getting just absolutely hammered in 1941, he was in a position to continue to resist in 1942. I think most everyone was fairly sure what the outcome would be, but the point is the Russians seem to be very capable of taking the most severe battering and still be in a position to offer resistance.

Out of this mess, you can take some comfort in a couple of things. First, losses for both sides is fairly low for this time of season. That is going to change if he can nail all those pockets, so it is going to be up to you to save as much of your army as you can. What doesn't get destroyed doesn't have to be replaced in terms of armaments points. You are still in a position that even whatever he destroys now, will come back yet, even if it is a shell.

With PG1 heading north, that should mean the Stalino area is safe; for now. Don't fool yourself, those factories need to be gone by spring and there is a chance he could still get them during snow, but not likely. Either way, you need to defend them heavily. I would look to try to keep the armaments in place for now in order to help fill out units for your blizzard offensive. You are going to need a good blizzard offensive, which may be quite possible depending on how losses go and how well he sets up for winter. We have seen a number of Germans do well with their campaign only to take a terrific beating during blizzard. Case in point, if he doesn't clean up the situation north of the Crimea, there could be some possibilities there. There is a good chance that the line won't advance much past Moscow and a counter offensive may take it back.

A lot of what happens in the winter will depend on how well you organize your forces in the shock armies, get the proper leaders set up there and then come out swinging.

Hang in there. [:)]

Re Larry I am not so sure about that. At first I was also impressed by how his Red Army reappeared at the end of 1941. Then looking deeper it was pretty obvious as it is with the same game now against KLilly, that Larry simply used all his resources and rebuilt the Red Army of 1941 rather than evolving it to the new. It has to be open to question whether that type of army can survive in 1942, or whether it simply becomes Barbarossa Redux. It didn't take long in '42 for Pelton to consume the Soviet Fronts and again KLilly is repeating the same process. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery they say. Of course in a similar situation others may take the Red Army to the next level. but perhaps it remains to be seen what size of army emerges. When Larry fleshes out the shell divisions in winter, come Spring it looks like a long, wide carpet. A Red Army with numerous corps may look a lot smaller. So I think we are still waiting to see the book written on how to survive catastrophic losses of Moscow, Leningrad, the Donbass and come out of winter with a chance to win the war.

My point was it could have been hard to imagine it being worse than what Pelton managed to hammer Larry with. Even at the end of that, Larry still had a good sized army (in troop strength) and also was ok on artillery and tanks. That Pelton was going to drop the hammer on him in 1942 was never in doubt. Larry is still learning the game at this stage and did really know what to do. Q-Ball is a far more experienced with the game and has been through a blizzard as the Germans. I expect him to take this as a learning experience and while he may be doomed in the long run, he does have a punchers chance with the winter. After that, who knows. Tarhunnas is an excellent player and not prone to make mistakes, but you never know. Tarhunnas was especially bold here to nail some industry. I don't blame him for doing it at all, even at the potential cost of some of his motorized stuff. That can be replaced. What was destroyed can never be replaced for the rest of the game.

If nothing else, both players will gain experience by going through the blizzard and into 1942 at this point. From a community standpoint of view, more data with 1.04.24, etc is good.

[von Beanie]

I believe this is QBalls first game as the Russian. It takes a lot more skill to play the Russians in 1941 than most give credit for, especially if the German opponent is skilled with the use of HQ Buildups. And the only way to learn how to play well is against a human. I'm sure QBall will do much better in his next game as the Russian. It is too bad his first attempt at it had to be in public.

[cpt flam]

right with you
suffer same thing against PDH [&o]

[76mm]

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see the big problem for the Sovs; he has light losses and while he as lost some industry, I think he only needs to save 50% to reach historical production levels, and I don't think he has lot that much, right?

[randallw]

There is a pretty basic way to help keep large amounts of factories from being overrun: the factory icon on the main menu will highlight cities with them, in red.  Any place with Germans too close, get 'em out on rails.  ( It is easy to forget the existence of the icon, from personal experience )
 
For most cities there aren't enough factories that eat up the rail cap enough to leave a lot of ground units to have to march on the turn.

[Speedysteve]

Q-Ball has lost a lot at Moscow.......Kharkov too + others dotted around. The Moscow amounts will hurt. The Manpower even more so in preventing a buildup of the Red Army > In theory a weaker winter buildup > less ground gained > tougher 42 etc etc etc.......

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: randallw
There is a pretty basic way to help keep large amounts of factories from being overrun: the factory icon on the main menu will highlight cities with them, in red.  Any place with Germans too close, get 'em out on rails.  ( It is easy to forget the existence of the icon, from personal experience )

This feature is currently not very helpful, IMO, since it also highlights hexes with stuff that can't be evacced--resources, ports, etc. It is pretty tedious to hunt and peck through all of these hexes to find which hexes still contain things which need to be evacced. What we need is two different colors of red to distinguish between hexes with factories that can be evacced and those with factories which cannot be evacced.

[Arstavidios]

I'm pretty much in the same situation.
with the use of HQ build up and focusing on destroying .the factories the Germans can get there before you can move your factories out. and there's little you can do about that.

[vlcz]

Now things are going really interesting and different from the myriad AAR, a really mauled soviet war machine on hands of a good player against another in his same level, thanks for not quiting Q-ball. I´m sure this game will be useful and interesting to follow, at the very least to test soviet recover capabilities, and it´s allways easier learning from [others] failures than successes [8D]

[janh]

I agree, this makes it so much more interesting to follow. Now it will not simply come down to the Red Bear wearing down the Germans brute force, but it will take Q-Ball skill to get to Berlin. Curious how it will end...

[Flaviusx]

Q-ball isn't getting to Berlin.

However, he's rightly identified what he got wrong in the game, so he knows what not to do in the future.

[Flaviusx]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see the big problem for the Sovs; he has light losses and while he as lost some industry, I think he only needs to save 50% to reach historical production levels, and I don't think he has lot that much, right?

His losses are about to blow up. He's been kicked out of the best defensive terrain in the map. The German has a month of good campaigning weather left.

His rail cap is down to 60% efficiency.

He is trapped in a horrible feedback loop where he needs to massively shift his forces while at the same time get more factories out of harms way. Something will give.

The factory losses have been enormous.

In the long run, it is the replacement situation that matters, not so much the 1941 losses. People get too focused on whether 3 million Soviets get killed or 4 or 5, really, irrelevant.

What matters is preserving your rail cap, industry, and manpower.

[Ketza]

I dont know for sure the industry of 76mms that I killed off in our game as It was my first game and didnt keep track of such important things but I think I destroyed a fair amount of it. At a mimimum Leningrad, Kharkow and Stalino with a smattering of smaller cities. I also killed close to 4 million of his troops before the blizzard and he still has a rather strong army close to 7 million in strength in the summer of 42.

I think Qball is in a better position then most thing he is.

[Speedysteve]

I'm not so sure Ketza...throw Moscow into the equation with all of it's Manpower as well.....time will tell though and I admire Q-Ball for sticking it out.

[Mynok]

It will be interesting to see Qball's manpower levels as he builds new units and sets them to refit.

[gids]

Tarhunnas is not the easiest 1 to take your 1st try at russians.....believe you me

[randallw]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

ORIGINAL: randallw
There is a pretty basic way to help keep large amounts of factories from being overrun: the factory icon on the main menu will highlight cities with them, in red.  Any place with Germans too close, get 'em out on rails.  ( It is easy to forget the existence of the icon, from personal experience )

This feature is currently not very helpful, IMO, since it also highlights hexes with stuff that can't be evacced--resources, ports, etc. It is pretty tedious to hunt and peck through all of these hexes to find which hexes still contain things which need to be evacced. What we need is two different colors of red to distinguish between hexes with factories that can be evacced and those with factories which cannot be evacced.

Except for a few places, the cities/towns with factories that can be evacuated are larger ones, where the name actually shows on the map ( compared to towns where the name only shows in the popup box ).