There are some memorable scenes and lines in that movie. Among them: (1) Jimmy's "we cleared the ground, we planted it, we harvested the crops" prayer of self-reliance; (2) his dialogue with the man who comes to ask for the hand of Jimmy's daughter in marriage ("do you like her?"); and (3) the return of The Boy at the end, walking into the old church.
In college, a bunch of us boys once had a long, midnight discussion in the hallway about movies sufficiently moving to make one's eyes moist. An upperclassmen nominated that scene - the church service stopping as the door opens and The Boy hobbles in on crutches. He said, "That'll bring a tear to your eye." He was right.
"Rats set fire to Mr. Cooper’s store in Fort Valley. No damage done." Columbus (Ga) Enquirer-Sun, October 2, 1880.
Verging on Victory: The Allies need about 1k points now. Japan: 90,900. Allies 180,700.
The bulk of the progress the past two days was the capture of Tsuyung (a 300-denominator base, due to lack of supply, probably only gave Erik 150 points), another good P-51H sweep of Tokyo, and more enemy armies getting battered.
The opening deliberate attack at Hakodate, by lead armored units, came off at 1:1, dropped forts to 6, and resulted in disproportionate IJ casualties. That was by just 1500 Allied AV. Another 6700 AV arrive over the next two days. I think Hakodate will fall within four days. That should be the final straw.
If something goes awry there, Hong Kong's forts are down to 3, and it may fall in about a week (as a bunch of fresh units are inbound). Also, Kunming (another 300-denominator base) should fall inside 10 days.
A massive Allied army is at Shanghai, ready for the Allied amphibious assault on Moppo. It's highly unlikely this will be green-lighted, as the war should end before it could ever prove helpful.
In fact, I think the war would have already ended if not for that massive air raid on Tokyo a few turns back that gave Erik something like 500-600 points or so. I don't regret that, as I really wanted to get a feel for it for future consideration, when the next time comes.
"Rats set fire to Mr. Cooper’s store in Fort Valley. No damage done." Columbus (Ga) Enquirer-Sun, October 2, 1880.
It is impressive that the Japanese have held on so long, against pretty much the rest of the world. It will be interesting to hear their side of the story once the official end comes.
You could stretch it out a few days with another big raid over Tokyo ... [:D]
I see your "tongue in cheek," expressing the futility of such an exercise. Indeed, it would be the Reverse Marianas Turkey Shoot. Hellcats/Bearcats don't compete vs. enemy LBA. The torpedo bombers and dive bombers would suffer horrible fates, as well.
No more Raids Over Tokyo, this war. We'll have to await the next.
Massed Allied sweeps over Tokyo are doing great, scoring at anywhere from 3:1 to 10:1. But Erik still has 800 or more fighters there (and 1200+ at Osaka). It might takes months of good sweeps to inflict enough damage to allow effective daytime bombing, if ever.
"Rats set fire to Mr. Cooper’s store in Fort Valley. No damage done." Columbus (Ga) Enquirer-Sun, October 2, 1880.
That's a great testimony to the job Erik has done holding his air defenses in solid shape. If we extrapolated this game to real life, I imagine the ultimatum to Japan would be: surrender or Tokyo gets nuked.
The problem is, manpower was destroyed at Tokyo but the fires were not enormous. You would have been better off burning a cursed kimono. One was and the resulting fires killed about 100,000 people.
My suggestion was simply to prolong the game . . . [8|]
Seek peace but keep your gun handy.
I'm not a complete idiot, some parts are missing!
“Illegitemus non carborundum est (“Don’t let the bastards grind you down”).” ; Julia Child
VJ Day! Japan surrenders. Hakodate is the straw the breaks the camel's back - heavy 4EB followed by a strong attack by armor takes the base 2-3 days quicker than expected. Strong P-51H and P-80 sweeps of Tokyo, plus an IJ army vaporizing near Hankow, helped.
The game ends with an 14k Allied AV at Shanghai waiting to board ships to invade Moppo. It would've been interesting to see how that went - just how strong Erik's attack would've been. He hasn't used kamikazes in more than six months, so I assume his force is pretty large and elite.
That's the trouble with the game ending. I've been playing as though it might go on forever. I have troops positioned and prepping; TFs afloat with supply and small invasion forces targeting places like Sorong; troops are moving by rail to new positions for overland attacks. ...and the game suddenly ends.
Now what will I do? [:(]
"Rats set fire to Mr. Cooper’s store in Fort Valley. No damage done." Columbus (Ga) Enquirer-Sun, October 2, 1880.
Darn it! I wasn’t quite ready for it to end. I knew Hakodate would likely be the final straw, but I thought it might take another three or four days, given the six forts.
When I stepped in for Joseph, I think it was Bullwinkle that basically told me that I didn’t stand a chance. To add fuel to the fire, I witnessed your dismantling of Lowpe even while I was trying to figure out a way to get started. As a result, I had serious doubts whether I could survive, let alone achieve some level of victory. The nadir came off the Kuriles, when you hit Death Star pretty hard and there were doubts as to whether the Allies would hold Sikhalin Island. Those were dark days but exciting and fun times.
As a result of my respect for your abilities, I had grave misgivings about taking you on in the immediate vicinity of Honshu as long as you were supplied and had an advantage in the air war. One of your strengths is mixing things up (and good) when in a knife fight in the dark. I also wasn’t sure the Allies could win without taking the big Japanese points centers in China. For all those reasons, once the Allied army from Indochina moved up, I chose to go after China rather than immediately landing on Kyushu and/or Honshu.
I doubt I would do that again in any game, because I know more about Japan’s troubles and the Allies capabilities, and I have more confidence that I can handle good opposition.
I might could’ve won earlier had I invaded the southern Home Islands, but I still have reservations about that. You just might’ve scored so many points that I’d have ended up regretting not going after China.
I do regret that the strategies pursued ended up discouraging you from attacking. You chose the right strategy, given the rules and the numerator vs. denominator dynamics of the game. But it sure would’ve been fun to see a reverse Sikhalin Island around Kyushu.
I’ll send an email later or post more in my AAR about various strategies. Actually, I already posted summaries a few weeks ago, as I knew the game would come to an end…and ofttimes games simply fade away quickly once they end. There usually isn’t a lot of discussion.
You are the consummate gentleman and sportsman. Never a discouraging word. Always courteous.
As for your abilities as a player, you are elite.
Dan
"Rats set fire to Mr. Cooper’s store in Fort Valley. No damage done." Columbus (Ga) Enquirer-Sun, October 2, 1880.
Shenandoah is a good movie. Post WW2 Stewart is sandpaper in his deliverance.
Have you read Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain? It's not one of his more famous books, I find it intriguing... The "grayness" of the main theme plus it's use of the newness of fingerprints.
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Would that have been near Somerville at the John S. Wilder Youth Development Center? I remember reports of a disturbance back in September i think.
ORIGINAL: MakeeLearn
Thanks for asking, Tennessee now. Sitting here watching the snow fall.
The past year I've been with Level 3 juvenile detentions. The institution was just as messed up as the boys. After a 6 hour off and on riot, that I caused[:D],
No. I would rather not say where. I just got too mad at the entire situation. Mediocrity, apathy and denial. It's a money making machine for some people. In was a insight to our society
This epic struggle comes to an end and already you guys are changing the subject to Twain? [:)]
Congratulations to both of you gentlemen for a game well played! You have offered insights on late game play not seen anywhere else (that I know of).
One thing I found very interesting is how CR went after resources as the easiest way to rack up VPs from the northern vector and how that actually had a negative effect on Obvert. Since I was reading both AARs I saved my commentary until now.
I can't wait to see what comes next from both of you gents.
Hi Dan (and all). Just having my first peek in here. It'll be fun to disect certain parts now with the help of seeing the other side's thinking!
Congrats to Dan on such a well played middle to late game. Starting in early 44 in a game where the Japanese had a sizeable VP lead is not easy, and he came up with a good plan and implemented it well. That was some fun gameplay up around the Kuriles and Sakhalin.
We've both learned a lot from this one and I think need some downtime. In the words of Mr Twain:
[font="Trebuchet MS"]In America, we hurry--which is well; but when the day's work is done, we go on thinking of losses and gains, we plan for the morrow, we even carry our business cares to bed with us, and toss and worry over them when we ought to be restoring our racked bodies and brains with sleep ... What a robust people, what a nation of thinkers we might be, if we would only lay ourselves on the shelf occasionally and renew our edges![/font]
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill
Here is the text of another email to Erik. This is the second of three planned summarizes (the first is posted above). The third will discuss the one decision I regret, to some extent, plus the House Rules. But first, email number two:
Erik,
I’m enjoyed this back-and-forth emails. Thanks for indulging.
When we started the game, I made several important decisions that had outsized impacts on how the game developed, from my point of view.
First, I decided to honor your original House Rule requiring Chinese units to remain in China (unless PPs paid, but most units are permanent restricted). That meant sending them back into China. I knew they’d be useless there, in the Himalayas, without supply and the ability to upgrade. But it seemed important to do that from a sportsmanship standpoint, as opposed to building then and using them in Burma. It took awhile to get everything back home. Then they just had to sit. The few probing attacks I tried showed there was no way to get through your MLR. In effect, that took China out of the war until it could be relieved from the east, by the Western Allies.
For some reason (probably weariness, inattentiveness, laziness, etc.) my predecessor had all his Burma armies inland, on trails, poorly supplied, and not upgraded. The Brits and Indians and Americans had ’41 squads! I couldn’t get enough supply inland to upgrade, so those units had to come to the coast to do that. That took a lot of time and helped persuade me that I’d just bide my time until I could land in Malaya or Sumatra.
In the Pacific, Joseph had everything in the world centered in SWPac, around Rabaul, New Guinea, Luganville, etc. He had done a masterful job of concentrating every asset he had there. The problem was the you knew it, and you were prepared for an advance along that vector. Or, so I felt.
I needed some way to get at your economy, which mean striking quick at someplace like the DEI, the Philippines, Taiwan. Those places would permit interdiction. The other alternative was NoPac, where the Allies could begin Strat Bombing immediately.
Of course, you knew all of those possibilities and I knew you knew, and you knew that I knew you knew, ad infinitum. But I chose NoPac and hoped that overwhelming force might be sufficient. It turned out there was enough of a window to get ashore in strength, and then all heck broke loose and we fought like crazy for half a year. That was fun! Especially August, September, October, and November of ’44 – very tense.
But I soon discovered that I couldn’t compete in the air. My bomber and fighter pools were too thin to stand up under sustained campaigning. They got in a few early raids, but you quickly adjusted. Your flak and fighters made that a no-go.
By the end of ’44, I realized I had a problem. I had achieved my goal in NoPac….but now the Allied schwerpunkt was off in a corner, unable to effectively strat bomb, and unable to get my Burma folks into the game. That’s when I made the decision to land in China. Before I could do that, I needed to police the balance of the Kuriles, because I couldn’t take a chance on you counterattacking Sikhalin Island while I had all my ships around China.
You know how it developed form there – how I eventually elected to focus on China until it was re-taken, as opposed to landing at Honshu or Kyushu.
The right call? I’ll never know. But I gave it a lot of thought and felt like it offered a more sure route to 2:1 than did the alternative. The path I chose was less risky, more sure, but slower.
There was no way I could conceive of achieving victory prior to 9/1/45, under any circumstances. And if the Allies don’t make it by then, the next “victory level” remains good through 3/1/46. So the victory conditions were the same whether 2:1 came on, say, 10/5/45 or 2/19/46. That gave me the latitude to relax bit, get to work, and to see if you might “come out and play.”
I’ll write next time about the one major thing I did that didn’t feel right, while I was doing it and later.
Dan
"Rats set fire to Mr. Cooper’s store in Fort Valley. No damage done." Columbus (Ga) Enquirer-Sun, October 2, 1880.
; Julia Child
