Europe Turn 28

[tweber]

November 1941

A couple of breakthroughs in the East. In the north, I am able to break the Luga line. My units are getting close to Leningrad. I also pounded the defenses near Smolensk but the line held.

[tweber]

In the South, I smash through Kiev and advance further into the Ukraine. The Kiev - Smolensk line is the last obstacle until I am near Moscow. If the Soviet do not have a decent line established further east, they could be in trouble.

[tweber]

The West has also re-captured Marseilles but it is more a raid that anything else.  4 strong units from Italy are moving to Southern France to throw the invaders back.
 
 

[seille]

Ok, i´m now at a point i can´t longer continue the fight.
My russians are beaten and the west is neutralized after the fall of the UK.

That game was already lost with the fall of England.
The economic advantage and the advantage in technology is too big.

Herewith i surrender and have to congratulate Tom for another great and very challenging game.
I hope it was this time more difficult.

AAR end.

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: seille

Ok, i´m now at a point i can´t longer continue the fight.
My russians are beaten and the west is neutralized after the fall of the UK.

That game was already lost with the fall of England.
The economic advantage and the advantage in technology is too big.

Herewith i surrender and have to congratulate Tom for another great and very challenging game.
I hope it was this time more difficult.

AAR end.

Tweber and Seille,

Thanks for this AAR. I've been following since you started it. It was one of the factors in my decision to jump in and pick this game up. I'm glad I did. So thanks to you both for the reports!

Rick

[Vic]

nooo... russia loses again to Tom Weber!
 
maybe it is time the roles are reversed!
 
thanks for a huge and great AAR guys!
 
kind regards,
vic
 

[seille]

Yes, Tom played very well without too many mistakes.
I had (too much) hope in my UK defense. Wanted to delay any german actions against Russia
as long as possible by giving the germans a hard fight in the UK.
I did a few smaller strategic mistakes, but overall my UK defense was very good this time.
 
I hope Tom will tell me how many subs he had already in the backhand or how many PP´s for buying subs
since i used a lot of PP´s to invest in my 80(!) DD´s.
And i would like to know the overall strength of his Luftwaffe. I had 10 fighters in the west and about 30 in Russia.

[Monkeys Brain]

ORIGINAL: seille

Ok, i´m now at a point i can´t longer continue the fight.
My russians are beaten and the west is neutralized after the fall of the UK.

That game was already lost with the fall of England.
The economic advantage and the advantage in technology is too big.

Herewith i surrender and have to congratulate Tom for another great and very challenging game.
I hope it was this time more difficult.

AAR end.

Great AAR guys. Salute! [:)]

[tweber]

Great game against a great opponent.

Here is my final oob. I purchased no subs and had no store of pp. Most of my income went into my army. I thought the defense of the UK was good. Only thing to think about differently is defending Plymouth more vigorously as it was the only port I could run supply through in the UK.

[seille]

Wow, that is less air power than expected. But ok, it was 1941.
End of 1942 you would have had much more.
Nice amount if Light Tank III and Artillery II.
 
Btw, you´re right with Portsmouth. I had about 15 Infantry there which is enough against a attempt
of naval invasion, but not enough against hard air attacks + landings.
Unfortunately you did  add the minefield option from "Great War" to make the channel impassable.
With such a option you would have a hard time to get control over the UK. A very hard time !
 
But however i´m willing to try again with the actual version. A few thing are still to improve on my side.
Looking forward to the next wonderful game [:)] 

[jjdenver]

I'd like to hear some more thoughts about lessons learned from you guys if there are any - such a great AAR - has to be a lot of thoughts about what could have been done differently?

Also I have some specific questions. To defend Plymouth I'd assume put some ground forces and AA guns there since the Luftwaffe is so overpowering. But would it be possible to use the Brit Navy there either by floating it at sea nearby (or would the Luftwaffe just sink it I guess?) - or by parking a fleet in Plymouth itself?

In France - would it make sense to try to evacuate more troops from France to England instead of holding out a little longer and losing them all when France surrenders?

Also - why abandon Malta - would it make sense to try to move in a ground unit and some subs to interdict Italian supply? Or is it better to just give it up?

Thanks for any thoughts!

P.S. I noticed that cruisers have attack and defense of 400 vs fighters and non-fighters.

Here is a comparison:
CA: 400/400 vs non fighter
DD: 40/40 vs non fighter
BB: 240/240
CV: 48/48
Flak: 60/60

I'm not sure that I can make sense of this. It seems that Flak guns are not very effective at all compared to Cruisers vs bombers while CV's and DD's have an extremely low value compared to cruisers - I thought that DD's were pretty manueverable and had decent AA capabilities vs bombers. Is my reading of this correct - fleets can effectively defend themselves very well vs bombers - i.e. one cruiser is worth about 7 flak units for air defense?

[seille]

Portsmouth.
Imho it´s not to defend against a great player like Tom. No time to move a lot of flak in.
 
In case i would have done this:
 
1. I would have had less flak for Manchester area which has highest priority as arrival hex
2. German player could have used paratroops to cut portsmouth off
3. German player could switch to other ports to invade (edinburgh for example)
 
Moving the fleet in:
 
Yes, nice protection, but i used the fleet in the first turns to protect London against air attacks (ship flak)
and later to protect Manchester against these threat. Splitting the ships....bad idea. I would lose them
against superior german Luftwaffe. Only together they can survive the german attacks.
 
Evacuating France is impossible since the west has only 2 cargoships and not much time.
He has to delay the german as good as possible to win some time. West has to survive the time until
US entry (1943) and that´s a long way to go. The more time the west wins in France the less time the Germans
have to do nasty things with the UK or Russia before the western income increases.
 
Malta was for me and my strategy simply useless. I prefer to get a PP payback instead of losing the HQ for nothing.
Malta is in range of italian airfields and any subs there (or whatever) would not have had any chance to survive.
They would have died one or two turns after doing the first AS damage. Trying to be offensive in such a situation is
imho not the right way. Against a good player you have to be careful and avoid any risky things. 
And the Med has in my strategy not the highest priority. At least not in the start.
 
And yes, a cruiser is a very powerful AA platform.
But don´t forget i had Flak III with increased range and 33% more firepower
 
I hope i answerred all and did not forget any questions [:)]

[tweber]

The way the map is layed out, Portsmouth is an extremely attractive port for the German player since it is in range of a airfield that you could construct in France.  Edinburgh is too far north to support directly.  London will bring in the Soviets. 
 
In the early turns, the West has a couple of priorities:
 
- Evacuate infantry out of Marseilles (send them north or too Egypt), Algiers, and Malta.  You need to build a ring around Alexandria since this is your fall back position if you lose the UK.
- Get to 30 DD's by the fall of France, 50 DD's before the Axis minors join.  If you don't, the German player can dramatically out build you in subs and your income will be completely surpressed.
- Make sure every unit in France is either lost in combat or evacuated to the UK.  I think it is worth it to try to hold out until June.  This limits what the Germans can do before the end of the year in the UK.
- I am personally not big on flak upgrades as flak is a one dimensional unit.  I like fighters a bit more.
- Be very careful in your fleet and fighter positioning / engagements.
- Know when (and if) the UK is lost and be able to get most of your fleet to the med. 
- Play close attention to German upgrades as this is a good indicator of the German intentions.

[jjdenver]

Tom wrote:

"Evacuate infantry out of Marseilles (send them north or too Egypt)" and also
"I think it is worth it to try to hold out until June."

Q: How many units would you try to evacuate from France to Britain? And if you are taking troops out of France how can you hold until June? Are you playing more troops into France via cards?

"Be very careful in your fleet and fighter positioning / engagements. "

Q: What does this mean? It seems like your fleet has enough AA to be positioned in ports like Portsmouth, Manchester, and London as AA defense at least until the city seems like it might fall. Is this too dangerous? Also for fighter positioning do you just count 5 or 6 (with fighter upgrade I guess ranges increase by +1) away from possible German airfields and then position your fighters so that their 5 or 6 intercept range falls outside of the German radius? Is there anything else important to consider?

Thanks

[seille]

I´ll answer the fighter/ship question.
 
Tom wanted to say that if you split the ships between different ports/locations you´ll probably lose
them one after the other by hard air attacks. They can only fight together. Move them out of London to protect
Portsmouth and the german player will knock out London by strategic bombardments. And that´s a thing i had to avoid,
so i kept my whole navy as long as possible in London. That made air attacks nearly impossible.
Plane handling. Keeping the planes out of range of the germans ? NO, that´s not enough.
The only thing you can do here is too move them out of range AND set intercept to "don´t". Good to place the planes
in a hex with some heavy flak protection.
 
You should not overestimate the ship flak btw [;)]
This is only a question of numbers. Can good remember i build a trap near Oslo. Complete Allied fleet came to capture Oslo
after spring 1940. And i had about 70 planes in range including a lot of divebomber II. Attacked the ships and destroyed 60 or 70%
of these 3 taskforces and lost only 8 planes. The number and XP of the planes made it.
But i was very plane focussed here and to knock out the fleet was a first step to invade England.