DV vs Sillyflower/Belphagor (Game Over - Open Thread)

[carlkay58]

Posh, a mere child! I just turned 56. [:)]

[hfarrish]

ORIGINAL: Disgruntled Veteran

ORIGINAL: sillyflower


We were slightly worried by his references to going back to school in case we were beating up on a 12 year old who was merely the embittered veteran of Springfield Elementary. One can never tell on the internet.

Haha...thats cute.

No I changed careers and my new job has several years of school in the evenings. I'm a well seasoned 33.

Man, and I thought I was the baby around here at 36...

[HITMAN202]

But we are older gentlemen (I'm 59 and one of THEPROS is right behind) playing "games." I'll never grow up. Ask my six kids and wife.

[sillyflower]

There has to be something HITMAN is ahead of The Pros on, even if by only a whisker. I'm 59 too.

[charlie0311]

Hi guys,

67, going on 8, still have the fuel drop record..

Trying to find a greater shame than gaming...difficult..

[sillyflower]

Back to the game, I thought I should share the ways we approached '41.
As DV surmised, we don't strip the south in the way that I would were I playing solo, because that would not be fair on Sean. This does, in practice, make it impossible to hold onto L'grad. At least, we never have. I don't actually care as long as I tie up AGN for long enough. My priorities are always to keep Moscow and to have the Red army in tip top condition to have a very strong blizzard O. We were playing fixed weather + standard 1st winter rules. DV did well to get v close to L'grad more quickly than I would have liked, but I focussed on avoiding being pocketed up there and succeeded on that measure. Sean did the bulk of reinforcements in the late summer because it looked like he had a chance to hold the Donbass cities, which he in fact did. This was a big success for us because it meant that he was able to recapture D and Z towns in the winter. DV did not recapture them in '42 which deprived DV of a lot of later running room.

Credit to DV too for his pocketing skills. He is a skilful herder of small and medium sized pockets. These are usually much more productive than tryingfor the grand gesture as his AAR showed. I think we had higher losses (?85 inf divs before the blizzard started which I think has been our highest loss level in any game. This, and his skilful tactical retreats led to few German unit losses in the 1st blizzard though a lot of his units got a good pounding.

[sillyflower]

Didn't finish the last post before my bedtime.

The result of the position at the end of the 1st blizzard was a German army with limited (but real offensive capability. He had some early success as the Russians in the south were a bit over-extended (I think Sean had reached Kiev. This capacity was ground down in the spring furball pictured in the AAR above. Neither side got much done in the summer after that, but that suited us as our priority was building up the Red Army v2.0.This means avoiding the AP crunch so the Soviets can start rolling west in winter '42/3.

THe most successful part of DV's game was his use of the LW so the soviet a/f didn't get air supremacy until late '44 when the LW just disappereared fro some reason. This was a relief as we were losing about 500+ fighters and fighter bombers per turn in the summer to be working for me in my game against Manstein 63 tho' that's still early days (Jan '42)

[Disgruntled Veteran]

ORIGINAL: sillyflower

Didn't finish the last post before my bedtime.

The result of the position at the end of the 1st blizzard was a German army with limited (but real offensive capability. He had some early success as the Russians in the south were a bit over-extended (I think Sean had reached Kiev. This capacity was ground down in the spring furball pictured in the AAR above. Neither side got much done in the summer after that, but that suited us as our priority was building up the Red Army v2.0.This means avoiding the AP crunch so the Soviets can start rolling west in winter '42/3.

THe most successful part of DV's game was his use of the LW so the soviet a/f didn't get air supremacy until late '44 when the LW just disappereared fro some reason. This was a relief as we were losing about 500+ fighters and fighter bombers per turn in the summer to be working for me in my game against Manstein 63 tho' that's still early days (Jan '42)

I disbanded the Luftwaffe Bombers to conserve Armaments. Given that its not even proven that Bombers aid combat, I took my chances and kept my top 10-12 fighter squadrons, my air transport fleet, and nothing else past mid 44.

I agree with your assessment. I think had I either closed and held the big pocket in the South during late 42 or had we used mild blizzard I stood a strong chance of reaching historical fall date. Both of those incidents beat the snot out of my Wehrmacht.

[sillyflower]

It was the disappearance of your fighters that surprised me, leaving me happy to send bombers in without escorts.

I won't concede the pockets were that crucial but it would have got you closer to the historic date. We had arms points and men and APs in excess after a while and would have built back up quickly. Red army was bigger than we needed anyway - it can be all too easy to suffer logjams as the Soviet in the late war especially as the front shortens.