A very sketchy Torch to Tunisia AAR

[JWW]

Playing as the Allies on normal settings, I won a very minor victory on the very last move of the very last turn of the scenario. That made things very enjoyable.

I play the game in a lazy sort of way, especially with the air war. I let the AI set the air directives, for example, and then modify them if I see a need to, usually only changing the target and area, and occasionally setting up a new directive. I let the computer manage air units and bases. I know I lost an awfully large number of airplanes, probably due to my reliance on the AI.

I don't usually look deeply into the ground units and just keep an eye on supply status usually by just looking at the unit panels as they come up on the righthand side of the screen. I rarely make changes such as command changes, though I did bring in Patton. And I did manually attach some support units to divisions. For the most part, though, I just go with the flow and hope the AI helps me.

For this game, however, I did have to watch supply more than usual. The British 8th Army trek across the desert can be difficult. A couple of times I found stray units stranded in the desert out of fuel. That was embarrassing.

In the end, though I was able to get 8th Army across the desert and break the Axis line at Gabes. From then on I just pushed forward as fast as I could in a hectic series of battles to the end of the scenario, taking Sfax, one of the objectives, and ending up threatening Sousse, another objective. On the last turn everything was chaotic with Axis and Allied units intermingled.

As for the Americans, they did just enough to help me win the scenario. It was very frustrating playing them. But they did break through at Kasserine and capture the objective at Sdid Bouzid and lose it and recapture it a turn before the last turn. And they linked up with 8th Army, cutting off several Axis units.

The French held their portion of the line, and I kept launching attacks with them. I just felt it necessary to launch attacks to try to pin some Axis units. Whether I really needed to do that or not, I'm not sure.

The decisive move, however, took place at the very end on the far north with V and IX British Corps. I brought in the IX Corps HQs when it appeared, and gave the units in the far north to IX Corps. That was where I made my major push at the end. Bizerte changed hands several times during the game, but near the end the Axis appears to have pulled some units out of the line in the north when I broke through at Gabes and kept pushing forward. I was hoping they would. I was finally able to push forward all along the northern front and reach the outskirts of Tunis as the Axis line in the north appeared to weaken.

I played my game from south to north, that is, the order of moving my units, so the last thing left on my last turn of the scenario was an attack by 78th Infantry Division and 6th Armoured Division on Tunis. Tunis was held only by the 5th Luftwaffe Jaeger Bde. The 78th was at about 1/3 strength and probably useless, but the 6th was at nearly 100% strength. I had attacked Tunis the turn before, and it had been defended by three units. In looking at the final map, the Axis were rushing units to the south to defend against my reckless attacks from the south. So they left Tunis only lightly defended on the last turn On the other hand, if the scenario had continued, I would have been in trouble in the south with several units cut off and just about used up.

So I made that last attack, chased the Germans out of Tunis, and had enough movement points for 6th Armoured to roll in. That gave me the narrow win.

Though I am sure I am a terrible player, it was a lot of fun, and I did learn a lot about the logistical side of the game in trying to keep my forces supplied and trying to use and build up the captured ports and airfields.

I will mention to new players that it is quite possible to play and enjoy the game without getting in to all the micro management that is available, or without even understanding a lot of what goes on. You can play and learn and learn and play.

[Helpless]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

I was saying before that Torch is my favorite scenario in the whole WITx series.

I don't let AI to manage my air assets, but there is not many of them initially and once I setup starting basic ADs they stay for the whole game. I'm just setting basic parameters for them, like on/off, target hex, radius, etc. It is more than enough to have very enjoyable game against AI.