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Now that I'm done w/ the Olympic '45 scenario Steve Sill wants me to playtest his changes to the modified scenario Sicily to Brenner Pass.
And the first thing that impresses me is the size of the map. It's a large one. I had to crop it to get it to fit into this picture. Next I'm going
to look through the units and I'll let you know what I find.

The Island of Sicily is the relavant part of the map at first since the invasion of Sicily takes place early in the game.

The scenario starts w/ some Allied units already on the island of Sicily. I would have liked to have invaded Sicily but don't worry though I still have to invade Italy so there will be some invasion action. This scenario has 191 turns in it. So there's no appearant hurry I guess.

This is the list of airplanes the Allies get. I'll have to do one of these displays for the Axis to get a better idea what the Allies were up
against. Most of the bombers the Allies get are light and medium bombers. There ARE some Wellingtons but not very many.

Here's what the Allied air force was up against. These are the aircraft the Axis gets at the start. Kind of formidable. The air battles
might be epic in size given this air armada and the Allied one.

From the two previous pictures you have gathered the numbers of squadrons of each side, their condition, their location, their name, etc.
and from THIS picture you can get a grasp of the numbers of combatants. Notice the overwhelming number of P-40's. Cool. It might
behoove the Allied player to first attempt to get aerial superiority in the area of interest only, so that the numbers of planes can be
concentrated for more strength. Drive home any advantages the Allies might have in the air. I notice too that the strength of the
separate squadrons is lower for the Axis than the Allied squadrons. So the Axis planes are going to have to gang up on their target for
self protection and so on. That might be some kind of disadvantage that the Allies might be able to exploit somehow. Lemme think
about that.

In the airfield on the far left we have a typical P-40 squadron and you can see that in rounding down the strengths some of them were
rounded in such a way to disguise the fact that there's a tad more strength in the defense than there is in the offense but the actual
numbers themselves are close together when rounded by the game engine. That's my theory.

This is an Allied Spitfire squadron and as you can see the Spitfire is a nasty little knife fighter although the range is way too low to be of
use in every situation. Definately good for defense of local areas.

I just got a PM from Berto that I'd like to share with you guys because it's got some suggestions
for scenarios that I think are great ideas. Anybody else have a scenario that needs some
work?

Hey, Larry.

I appreciate your AARs, and the vital work you are doing on vetting older TOAW scenarios.

If possible, I'd appreciate if you could fit the

Burma Campaign 1942-1945
Papua-New Guinea 1942

especially into your busy schedule. I know that 3.4 broke the former's supply. It would be great if that could be fixed, which may just involve specifying the exact set of optional rules to recreate the conditions under which the scenario was originally designed.

Whatever, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Berto

I set the game to play itself for two turns just to get a feel for the "flow" of the battle and here's what it looked like afterward. There was
a lot of airstrikes on enemy airfields by both sides. And there was boucou German movement into the area. Lots of good
opportunity for INT to happen. This game might just be a great one.

It just occured to me that somebody else might like to play this thing as the AAR unfolds so I've attached the scenario to this
post. Just truncate the dot txt off the end of the file name and unzip it.

I've pulled up the German side just so I can take a picture of where everything German is before I start the game. I don't intend to do
this anymore besides this once, and only now because I'm simulating the intell that the Allies would have going into this battle. I don't
always win so I need the help I can get from this.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I was going to tell you my analysis of the situation. The German reinforcements in the upper left of the island need to
be trapped there for as long as possible so I intend to drop the bridges and have some INT missions set up. The supply point for the
Germans is in Messina so it makes sense to make that the objective. Once you have that the Germans are out of supply and they will
be easier to destroy that way. So the British will press north toward Messina and the Americans will provide the left flank cover force.
Once Messina is captured the rest of the island will be mopped up. That's the theory.

But before I do any bridge dropping or INT missions I need to deal w/ the Axis air force and I'm hoping I can hit most of the airfields on
the island of Sicily and drive the Axis planes into reorg so they won't fly during my half of the turns. So I'm going to spend a round of
combat just doing airfield attacks.

Oh and hey, I just discovered what kinds of stuff I'm going to get in T2: a whole boat-load of stuff.

I thought I'd get started moving the units. No attacking yet just moves. I'm discovering German units as I move. A small garrison on
the east coast should be no problem next turn and it looks like so far the way might be open to Messina. We'll see.

Here's the kind of results I'm getting from my airfield strikes. It's getting expensive but the good news is that the Allies might be able to
take the losses more gracefully than the Axis. There's prescious little in the pool but they are built fast.

I lost one of my bombers attacking that German stack ( there was an HQ unit on top previously ) but I got lots of good recon about
what's in that stack. Namely 10 leaders that need to be killed. More airstrikes are on order.

I found 5 more leaders to track down and kill. I like to hit the HQ units because sometimes the entire formation gets driven into reorg and
it's easy to kill them when they can't move.

EDIT: This wasn't the last attack of the combat phase but after the last attack of the combat phase there was 80% of the turn left.

Here's the airplane losses for both sides. The Allies lost more but I'm thinking that they can afford it better than the Axis can. So more
airfield attacks are set for round two.

EDIT: Does it change anything for you if I tell you that each category for both sides started w/ an on-hand number = 0.

I've set the missions and I'm ready to start the combat phase but first I wanted to show you how many airfield attacks I have planned and
notice the number of squadrons that are in reorg. I'm hopiing that that doesn't happen to the rest of the planes that fly in round two.
That would be a problem.