B41 mod v.5.6 Brian Axis Larry Soviet

[larryfulkerson]

WITP-AE is a wonderful game for suffers of OCD, those players that are
exceptionally anal retentive about following up details, about checking things
that were just checked last turn, about thinking out of the box but with
constraints. And it requires a lOT of patience because it's such a long
running game with over a thousand turns if you're playing one day per turn
which is what I usually played. Sometimes I just simply didn't have enough
patience to face my game right now and needed a quick fix of fun, something
that lasted about an hour or less and of course that meant the east front with
the Axis side doing their slash and dash between and among the Soviet soldiers
as they run for their lives. And the Axis forces get to the river before the
Soviets do and stop up all the crossings, trapping the Soviets on the wrong
side of the river where they are all eventually destroyed. You know, fun.
So I worked on a mod of Barbarosa '41, actually several versions, and
I have something that I go to when I need a quick fix of fun.

Brian is in a special situation, enough said, and he needs a quick fix of fun
so I've created a challenge for us in which he's going to be the Axis player
and I'm going to playest the Soviet side. It should be fun.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's some of the begin-the-game kinds of info that you may find not at
all entertaining. Well, maybe a little entertaining. Speaking of
entertaining....do you know how you circumscize a whale? You send down
foreskin divers.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's some of the numbers of the Soviet equipment. Nothing fancy here and
it's obvious that the emphasis is on numbers and not quality and most of it
is going to be destroyed at some point in the game. This battle is about the
finest army in the world fighting the largest army in the world and we fight
with what we have at the time.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what the aircraft units are looking like currently. Note that most
of them are red, most of them are in reorg, and none of them has a strength
worth deploying them as a fighting unit. Nobody is combat ready. Those
that will fly need to be flown to a safe spot where they can rest and refit.
It would be a good idea to stand them down anyway because of the very large
advantage the Axis has...their air shock is 150 and mine is 35 so I shouldn't
fight them right now. I'm thinking of flying them all to the east edge of the
map and parking them for about a month or so.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the entire map and you can see that there's no off-map areas to
move units to in order to "save" them and I've played this scenario at
least twice before where I've swept the map of Soviet units. Also, locations
are telescoped laterally and longitudinally a lot because it makes for a shorter
game. Russia is vast, this scenario is not. Something else I need to fix
is the shortage of airfields. There's not enough of them. They are
approx. where they should be but I think there's more that could be placed
yet. Twenty five Km per hex and half-week turns is the same as D21 so
I feel right at home playing it. I'll see if I can't put together a movie of
the front lines moving from left to right as the game progresses.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the expected reinforcements for the next few turns. All the NKVD units
are involuntarily inducted into the Soviet navy and are assigned duty as skin
divers. And they are assigned as teams of four. So everytime the Soviet navy
has to circumsize a whale they send down four skin divers.

[larryfulkerson]

Brian ( Axis ) hit the ground running and got in a lot of good hlts and is
well on his way now. I'll see what kind of movie I can put together for
his moves.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a list of my formations and as you can see there's a lot of them that
are still in reorg or in garrison mode. So there's not a whole lot I need
to do except dig in everybody that can't move and set them at three-dots and
THEN move the free movers. Espescially those aircraft that aren't in reorg
and can move, the three or four of them. And of those planes that can't move
I need to set them to a single-dot and that's about it for this turn. I'll
be done in about half an hour.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the losses I incurred during Brian's first turn. The numbers won't be
this big every turn just the first 8 or so turns.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the moves of Brian during turn 1:

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what it looks like in T3. Brian is makeing good progress. Most of
my units are still in garrison mode and can't be moved. So there's very
little for the Soviet player to do so far.

[larryfulkerson]

It's turn four and that means that those units that died on turn one are being
respawn into the game and I'll need to move them somewhere to rest for a while
to become combat ready again, usually somewhere near Moscow since it's a
location near the middle of the map and is relatively safe. I expect more
such reissue of units next turn and the turns after until about turn 15 or so
when the number of units being respawn decreases slightly as fewer Soviet units
are being killed as time passes. It's events like this that make the Soviet
side worth playing.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T4 front lines as I was ending my turn.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T5 front lines as I was ending my turn.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a shot of the spot where most of the action is taking place and the fighting is fierce with no quarter given. I left the "no borders" switch on when starting the game so I have no border between my units and his and I don't know where the threats are and this is a good game and I'm having a blast.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the area around Riga currently. Brian has driven almost up to the river and is no doubt going to leap it with the aid of engineers and I'm not ready for him to be able to do that. I've got MLR's to finish building. Brian is coming at me too fast.

[larryfulkerson]

Hey you guys....Brian and I have talked it over ( via emails ) and we've decided that this game is too boring to
play and we want to do the Coral Sea scenario from WITP-AE with me as the Allies and Brian as the Japs.
He's going to be out of pocket for about two weeks from now so it looks like this AAR is going to be abandoned.
Thanks for reading this far and <waving hands> I bless you with my wargammers blessing that all your games will
be good ones. < sudden cloud of smoke slowly clears >