AAR - PBEM Game "Akula"

[MButtazoni]

Yes Oleg, Japan is quite fun to play. i probably won't survive to 1946 but many WA will die before i am taken out! [:D]

another great reason to play Japan: very little map scrolling, my South East Asia sandbox is all i need.

[paullus99]

Soviet Union - Fall 1943

Not a whole lot happening on our side of things. We repaired some of our rail lines, transferred the bulk of our forces forward & liberated Bulgaria & Greece from the Germans.

[Oleg Mastruko]

My subs are slowly coming into play. Destroyed IJN transport fleet, damaged light fleet.

Using the fact we're trying to shift naval assets to bear vs. the Japanese, German BB Tirpitz sortied to North Atlantic, but was damaged by our land based air from UK.

We invaded Danemark, because it seemed like a fun thing to do, and went back the same turn. Did some other things as well, but they're really minor...

Picture: as you see IJN moved most of its assets westward. There was a lone DD fleet protecting the eastern flank, it was damaged, and then my other sub entered to attack the transports in Yellow Sea. We will be preparing offensives in the Pacific in the future, but first we must clear 75% of IJN sub fleet patrolling of my West Coast!

Oleg

[MButtazoni]

Winter 43 - Japan

Chinese troops came into contact so i bombed them from the air again; 1 Militia Dead, 3 Inf damaged

I sent my new and improved sub hunting tactical bombers after the US sub that encroached into the Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere; CINCPAC will not be hearing from that sub anymore. I consolidated my position in India and took care of a Transport that was lurking around Australia. A Sub that was getting too close in the Central Pacific was also destroyed.

Here is the Strategic picture at the end of the JA turn in Wi44:

[paullus99]

Soviet Union - Winter 1943/1944

Supply production reached an all-time high last season....Stalin is pleased. We were able to finally repair our rail links across the frontier & start moving the bulk of the Red Army up to the current front lines.

Our troops once against liberated Czechoslovakia & we prepare for the final offensive.

[Oleg Mastruko]

What we learned from Dirty Harry movies? Always count your bullets...

Maurice bottled up my entire West Coast using two flotillas of his MegaDeath Black Magic undestructible alien artifact technology IJN subs, but...

He forgot to reload their torpedos!!! [:D][:D]

Thats right, even the experts make mistakes. My transports are able to "walk" right over his torpedo-less sea monsters and deliver supplies and reinforcements to Hawaii. No OpFire, nothing. Subs are harmless as little kittens (only not as cute). Up to now I never even knew this is possible.

Unfortunatelly I have no time right now to finish my turn (its 5 AM here) and don't want to make an oversight like my Japanese buddy [:D]

Though one can never be sure with cunning Japanese, maybe this is just a part of some bigger IJN plan? [&:]

O.

[Oleg Mastruko]

Allright finally I played my turn. There were some issues we had to discuss on the beta board in the meantime...

Again a very busy turn for WA. I reinforced Hawaii, but further amphib operations in Pacific will have to wait till we accumulate more transports. Hawaii is proper Fortress Pacific right now.

I attacked and sunk one IJN transport fleet, cutting his transport "chain" to India, at least for the time being.

We managed to get enough supply to Middle East (Jordan and Iraq) via extremely long route over Atlantic and Mediterannean (luckily - German Atlantic subs mostly run out of torpedos like IJN ones!). This enabled us to move some British and US infantry in contact with dreadful Japanese in Afghanistan and (future) Pakistan. See screenshot. We guess Japanese stop here. (Who was complaining we only ever fight in Europe?)

In an interesting sideshow we sunk German DD fleet in North Sea using landbased, CV-less CV group from Britain.

Further sorties of combined Brit and US Med fleets via Red Sea into Indian Ocean won't be piecemeal, but en masse, so we started buildup in the Alexandria. Again I babble too much ruining my security, but I'd really love to see IJN doing the Pearl Harbor thing in Alexandria! [&o]

O.

[]FO[Samurai]

GO JAPAN GO if u cant do it no one can....cause germany is screwd, but i liked the german stategy this game, stop the US as long as u can in the atlantic...worked for me in axis and allies for a while.....viva la resistance

so what i can grasp so far that supply routes are just as important as actual fighting units..and germany needs 2 try a new route of attack earlier on...idk just guessing from what i can read and see

[MButtazoni]

so what i can grasp so far that supply routes are just as important as actual fighting units..

supply routes are 10 TIMES more important than actual fighting units.

one could argue "infintely more important" since no supply = no move, no attack.

[j campbell]

yes.

supply is critical. my biggest mistake was not making AGC the strongest grouping -i was depriving my enemy of his supply and resource areas in the north and south and allowed agc to become weakend-that was where all my supply came thru as well as my repaired rail lines. when it fell i had no way of correcting the situation as i could not get any supply to those units-a massive stalingrad if u will somewhere in the Ukraine.

however, Fortress Germany still stands .... thanks in part to supreme efforts from our u-boat crews

we wait for the Reds to rain down on us.

Next time the Soviets will not find me in such a weakened state of preparedness.
Maurice is doing a fine job with the Japanese i must say.

[MButtazoni]

Spring 1944 - Japan

US Losses this turn: 3 Destroyed Transports, 1 Damaged Transport, 3 Damaged Subs, 1 Destroyed Light Fleet, 1 Damaged Tac Air.

I had 3 Light Fleet damaged this turn attaking the 3 US Subs. The Light Fleets are doing the "cheap transit home" tactic. I supply the Light Fleet to strike out at a long range, they have no hope of being supplied next turn to get them home (i'm not gonna string transports into the central pacific to fuel them), but i know there is a 99% chance will be damaged by the US subs and they get a "free" return to base to a JA factory. Yes, they are back in the production queue for 3 turns but i like the exchange rate.

I found out where his strike force was hiding (it sunk a JA Transport last turn) it was in a northern Australian port. i sent 3 carriers to air strike the force. thats where 1 light fleet and 1 transport were destroyed and 1 Tac Air was damaged.

Here is my blockade of the US West Coast (his main Pac Fleet is in Pearl with hardly any supply, and i want to keep it that way); under normal circumstances i would never do this, but the absence of US Light Fleets in the Pacific gives me a good reason to try it.

[MButtazoni]

here's a Force Pool summary at the end of the Spr 1944 JA turn (IMO, this is the most important screen in the game)

To the Naval Commanders at Vladivostok, don't think i can't see what you are building under those camoflauge nets... [:-]

[paullus99]

Soviet Union - Spring 1944

We launched a massive attack against German positions in Eastern Germany. Although we were unsuccessful, we did damage or destroy a significant number of his units. We repaired some more rail & resources this time around & should be in excellent position to hit him again in the Summer.

[Oleg Mastruko]

Another busy turn for WA... I enjoy playing the WA - so much stuff, so many things to do, move, produce, liberate and destroy [:D]

I seriously don't understand why is Axis so successful in DD vs. sub battles. My DDs have antisub rating of 3 (same as IJN, all other nations have 1). My DDs have evasion rating of mighty 5 (IJN and most of others 4). My subs have torpedo rating 4 (IJN subs and all others 3) and evasion 3 (same as IJN). Yet, JA kills my subs almost any time they try, while I struggle to damage any of his (both GE and JA). Axis must be lucky in their die rolls.

Our SU allies asked us to do something about GE production capability so as to ease the final stages of Russo-German war. We did short but energetic strategic bombing campaign vs. German infrastructure, damaging two West German factories and one resource center. See picture. I'm a bit puzzled as to why German medium bomber (upper right) was involved (and destroyed) in this battle. Beta buddies, anyone knows why? It was strictly attack vs. infrastructure.

In the Atlantic - attacked and damaged couple of (torpedo-less) GE subs. Formed two conwoy routes over Atlantic, and brought lotsa supplies to UK, Europe, Med, and Middle East. These supplies enabled us to start liberating India from Japanese militarists - we damaged all three JA INF units in India, with no losses to our victorious forces.

There were two unescorted JA transport fleets in Bay of Bengal. *Normally* I would not accept exchange DD fleet for transport fleet, but we have enormous production, and we want to hurt the Japanese as much as we can. So, I sent one BB and one DD fleet from Alexandria to destroy those two transport fleets. My BB and DD fleets are undamaged for now, but are within range of JA ship-killing medium bomber LBA, and CVs, so I don't think they'll survive. Anyway - whatever ties JA's limited resources and supply is good, so I accept this, in normal circumstances unfavorable exchange.

There are now 2 CV, 2 BB, 4 DD fleets concentrated in Alexanrdia, and 6 DD fleets are in Panama canal area awaiting transfer to Pacific.

Oleg

[Oleg Mastruko]

The board would not let me post pictures with previous message, let me try now... now seems to be OK.

This is aerial Battle for Germany....

Oleg

[Oleg Mastruko]

And this is situation in India and Bay of Bengal.

Oleg

[MButtazoni]

Yet, JA kills my subs almost any time they try, while I struggle to damage any of his (both GE and JA). Axis must be lucky in their die rolls.

well not kill, i damaged 3 US subs last turn; i think i got lucky on 2 of them (needed a 9 on 2 dice, i think?) and the third took 2 tries. the second attack now benefits from any previous attacks in the turn (-1 to evasion) so that is helping the wave attack tactic

EDIT no it wasn't luck i forgot my Light Fleets had a research breakthrough on ASW so i only need a 9 on 3 dice. avg of 3 dice is 10.5

[MButtazoni]

Summer 1944 - Japan

nothing much to report, sunk 1 US Heavy ship and damaged a Heavy and Light Fleet. Air units and a Light Fleet were damaged for me though. (Hvy Fleets have some impressive AA)

other than that just consolidated my forces for some and awaiting some "opportunities".

[]FO[Samurai]

Hang in there Axis i have faith in you...Japan Save the Day

[Oleg Mastruko]

4K00L4 L1V3Z!

The game was temporarily on hold, because one of the team was travellin' but we're back in action.

WA finished liberation of India from Japanese occupators. All in all, I don't think Japan's Indian adventure was very profitable for him, and I don't think we'll see many JA invasions of India in WAW unless WA is heavily engaged in Europe and on seas. He lost some (for JA - that translates into "many") INF units damaged, two or three transport fleets lost and some other losses as well. Yes he did tie down some of my forces, but I have forces to spare, so I don't think it's something JA should be proud of.

We *finally* cleared some IJN subs off of our West Coast (picture below), after we brought half a dozen DD fleets from Atlantic via Panama Canal: 1 sub flotilla destroyed, 2 damaged, conwoy route to Hawaii temporarily cleared.

From French bases we conducted bombing campaign vs German infrastructure using medium bombers, damaging two factories and one resource. We also put some French factories into production - mainly supplies to haul to Middle East. Hope to eat some fine French cheese and wine and stuff...

O.