LiquidSky (WA) vrs Pelton (GE)

[LiquidSky]

Just got home from a gruelling 12 hour night shift. To be followed by another 12 hour shift tonight. I see i have the turn but i am afraid it will have to wait until tomorrow morning when i start my three day weekend. I leave you all (and me) in suspense until then

[LiquidSky]

Okay...I couldn't help myself. I had to get up and download the turn. The good news is I successfully invaded. The even better news is both paradrops worked, taking Rotterdam and the hex south of it, so the port is open to the ocean. The bad news is I lost 15% of my strength in the invasion (against no opposition I might add) and I gained -29 vps for this.

And the 26th panzer and the 44th infantry are blocking Rotterdam from moving west. (Didn't they lose the 44th at Stalingrad? And I thought they stopped at 24 panzer divisions...oh well, I guess that means there is a 25th floating around somewhere)

Amsterdam looks to be defended by a lone security regiment. And Haarlam is a full infantry division. It must be the supply center.

And for those of you in charge. I can see ! next to some airfields. Which I probably shouldn't be able to see in FOW. It tells me that there is some Luftwaffe in Arnhem and some airfield near Essen. Bad programmers...bad. Probably bombers about to initiate Plan Pelton. Given that I have roughly 3000 fighters that can reach the coast of Holland, I suspect this won't be a very long operation. After all.....England isn't exactly Sicily or Sardinia as an airbase.

Oh..since this is somewhat important. Weather has remained Rain, with Light Mud. For those curious, Light mud in this theatre means 90% combat effect. Not a big deal.

I should add...this plan was conceived from the very beginning. My understanding of the rules is that I have/will have fulfilled the requirement of having 10 hexes in Italy, France, or Northern Europe for both the January and umm..later 1944 turn.

Wow...I shouldn't have looked. I lost 70 Troop ships. A quarter of my force. This wasn't a cheap invasion. Good thing I may never have to invade again [:D]


As for the EF box, I don't care either way. I feel that is a decision best left to the axis player. I can and will use it against him.

Some other ideas I had, but threw away are:

Bomb Amiens and other garrison cities that the Germans have to put units in. Reduce their CV in hopes of causing a CV crisis.
Invade Northern Denmark to make fighter bases for bombing Northern Germany. (and to allow paradrops on to factories to destroy them)


Anyways, I am really tired, so I am going to sleep the day away so I can go to work and galvanize more wire. Without fear of the Americans dropping ordinance on my factory.

[JocMeister]

[LiquidSky]

Well I seem to have had a rather successful turn. My invasion is fully ashore, and I managed to take Amsterdam from a security regiment, and The Hague from a crappy LW division. Pelton still holds on to Haarlam and Den Helder with a fairly strong division each, but they are hopelessly cut off.

After some spectacular successes against Germans on the front line on rail hexes, I got bold and attacked anyone I could on a rail line except for Utrecht which might have held a non railmode infantry.

[marion61]

We need pics from the front! How long you been out of bed!

[LiquidSky]

going to bed now. I took a picture but i will wait until Pelton moves to post it.

[Baelfiin]

Nice smashing

[Q-Ball]

ORIGINAL: Baelfiin

Nice smashing

Doesn't look like it was smashing. A Hasty attack against 3 division stack who had ZERO combat value. They were on Rails, it looks like he just emptied all the boxcars..........

[Baelfiin]

Any attack you make is a smashing [:)]

[LiquidSky]

Here is a picture of the landing, after my turn was complete. So the follow up troops have hit the beach as well.



Amsterdam was attacked from the North, over the river. Since I had no unit left that could move in to take the vacated hex, I had to airdrop a british para unit onto the city.

For fun I also dropped the American para south of Amsterdam, and the Polish brigade attempted to land on the airfield behind the HG division..but scattered north.

I sent roughly 4000 aircraft on various missions in a fairly tight area behind my beach head causing all kinds of damage/interdiction. The seazone is a fairly solid 99 for me, so no danger of losing control of the ocean.

One mistake I notice is I should have tasked the two para brigades to land on the other side of the Ferry in the north. I would have been able to roll a couple Canadian armour divisions over before he could react. It would have been a useful dangerous beachhead that I could exploit in summer '44.

[Flaviusx]

Well done, sir, impressive.

[LiquidSky]

In a lightning attack, Pattons Shermans lead by Omar Bradley push 10 miles into Netherlands, smashing Nazi panzers in their way. Asked for a comment Patton replies "Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more"

Meanwhile in a long drawn out battle, Montgomery and the 8th army finally capture Den Hettar from the Hun.

[LiquidSky]

The front as of October 30th. VP's are getting lower and lower as the U-boats are being produced in large numbers, and casualties from the invasion are alarming the public.

Attacks succeed to push the line forward a bit, and to clear out the north. Only Haarlam remains to fall, although it is defended by a 1st line dug in German division. Supplies are reaching the ports in large amounts, but the heavy rain prevents much in the way of air giving my aircrews a well deserved rest.

I have noticed that Auto Naval Patrol does not get intercepted. At all.

I decided to cross the river in the south to keep my options open, although it could end up being a focal point for a German counterattack.

[LiquidSky]

With the Heavy rain turning everything to Heavy Mud, I still managed to take the last hold out in Haarlam freeing up all the Dutch ports. Supply is awesome with around 100k worth sitting in my ports. Construction units are finally starting to repair Rotterdam and Amsterdam with the other ports being almost completely repaired.

I tried bombing some German factories, but everyone missed or decided not to fly because of the bad weather ( I goofed a couple settings). At least morale is high, and they will be well rested when the Heavy Rain finally stops.

[JocMeister]

Well done! [&o]

Even if he do manage to stop your advance you can now use short legged Spits and P47s to start working over the LW and provide escort. Besides you can now simply skip Italy all together which is probably 300+ VPs saved.

[LiquidSky]

A couple of more turns done. Not much in the way of ground movement. I managed to hold off a concerted German attack on my exposed stack in the south. Twice. I built a Fortified Unit and gave it some support units to help hold the hex.

The weather cleared up a bit to rain, so I bombed the U-boats to get rid of the -15vp's per turn. A more manageable -4ish. The next turn the weather became snow, so I was able to bomb Essen with an extra 450 spitfires from my new airbases along the coast. They do a good job shooting down enemy planes.

The funniest thing is the Italians surrender.

Yup...I never set foot in Mainland Italy. And Sardinia/Corsica appear to have no German units in them, so the defecting Italians take the islands for me.

All in all, I suspect that this front will be static until spring. I really wish I made an attempt to take Utrecht before he dug in. Its gonna be a pain to get by it.

[Q-Ball]

Why do you need to take Utrecht? With the ports intact, you could spend the winter fortifying this bridgehead, building up supplies, and plan an invasion for somewhere else. You can build all the airbases enough to have all kinds of fighters ranging into Germany

[LiquidSky]

Its not that I want to take Utrecht per se...its just something on the way to the major river. Problem is I have Patton leading the 7th army, and you know how he can get when he hears the word defence. I have a plan I want to try for taking the city. If I rest everybody up, and put a large reserve army behind the attackers, maybe I can get a lot of reserve activations. And use a lot of interdiction to prevent or at least punish his.

"I don't want any messages saying 'I'm holding my position.' We're not holding a goddamned thing. We're advancing constantly and we're not interested in holding anything except the enemy's balls. We're going to hold him by his balls and we're going to kick him in the ass; twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all the time. Our plan of operation is to advance and keep on advancing. We're going to go through the enemy like shit through a tinhorn."

Patton speech addressing 6th armoured division, May, 1944.

[LiquidSky]

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

Dec11, 1943. Turn 24 Weather: Snowing...still.

Despite the bad weather, bombing of Essen continues, with Spitfires from the Netherlands bases helping immensely. I doubt the Luftwaffe can take much more of this and will have to retreat back to his mid/north German bases to protect the interior factories, and write off the Northern Ruhr.

I got 6vps this turn, for a campaign total of -142, so I am still a long way away from reaching a victorious conclusion. My 3-4 turns of supporting my invasion really cost me in U-Boat points.

Patton decided to attempt a breakout, but failed in his three attacks. I don't think we will be getting to Berlin for Christmas.

Some notes about the game so far:

When War in the East came out, I thought it would be the best game ever. And I really wanted to like it. I tried to like it. In the end, I was just so irritated by the game that I couldn't play it anymore. It had some things I liked, but the things I didn't just, well...grated on me.

SO I didn't pay much attention to War in the West while it was developed. But when it was released, I happened to be on my 22 day two week vacation (I'm a Teamster, don't ask [;)] )

So I bought it. And spent a lot of time with the AI trying to figure out the different systems. Especially air. After some spectacular failures (like invading divs in ports), I began to notice that I was actually really enjoying playing the game. Despite the flaws (which will/are/maybe being fixed).

This game is a lot like chess in that it really makes me try and think a few turns ahead. Instead of just doing turn by turn like most games I play.

As for a VP system, well...I always try and match what I am doing with an eye to the VP's. I look at VP's as a way of channeling somebody into a more correct path, but still allowing for variation. It shouldn't be so restrictive as to railroad someone into history...and it should reward clever play. And punish poor play.

I have been following a strategy of bombing the UBOAT stuff every 4ish turns. And only the big ones around Hamburg...and Danzig as well, if I think I can get away with it. The rest of the time, I just bomb Essen and surrounding area. Maybe a little farther south at Cologne. Before I took some cities, this usually meant I was getting around zero vp's per turn. That's okay...as I get deeper into enemy territory, I hope that I get more and more positive points...and the game is over a hundred turns long. So even a few points a turn can result in victory.

As it happened, I took a chance on using the 8th and BC on the turn I invaded..instead of bombing the UBOAT stuff. And it cost me dearly as the weather prevented my bombers from flying for a few turns after. Probably -60 to -75 points lost. But I should be getting a few more bombing points for destroying Essen. So it should work out by the end.

[Peltonx]

Good game bro.

Nice to see someone who can exploit the rule sets of a game as WA's there is so much to exploit, but so few who think out side the box.

You have my respect.

No pt in wasting your or my time when WA's will be in Berlin turn 40-50.

Thanks for the game, you helped mine allot.