Golden Delicious Plays Second Battle of Kharkov

[golden delicious]

OK well I may live to regret this but here's a first fifteen minute snippet of me talking about TOAW while playing TOAW. I only move about eight units in that time so it might be incredibly boring, but you (one of you) literally asked for it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clguEBnBpsc

I'd have done more but I really spent most of my time sorting out the technical stuff. Let me know what you think and I can do more or we can pretend like this never happened.

[Cpl GAC]

Thank you for that - it was enlightening. My thoughts as I watched;"Why leave the woods outside of Barvenkovo and go into open terrain when they have tanks?... Am I too free with holes in the line?.. Wait - Ignore Losses almost always? But in 1941 as the Russians in Russo-German War or TGW 1941-1945 I've been using Minimize unless entrenched or fortified trying to backpedal with some semblance of forces...I have so much to polish...ugh"

[golden delicious]

Well what you're doing isn't necessarily wrong as what I'm doing isn't necessarily right, but I do find that retreating from combat is normally really bad news for a unit, worse than sticking it out another couple of rounds in most cases. I always remember what I covered in my Ancient Warfare course (which I allude to in the video); a hoplite phalanx would typically only take perhaps 5-10% casualties in action, but if one side broke and ran the figure might rise to 20, 50 or 80%.

Maybe the holes in the line don't actually matter so much against the PO as it's not going to exploit them systematically the way that a human player would. However a continuous line does make it easier for units to be supported by their neighbours when the PO does advance.

With regard to coming out of the woods, I admit I wasn't even looking at the terrain here (though I do agonise about losing the entrenched status) and just thinking about how the division's position was exposed too far forward. In all likelihood I'll continue to pull in the salient away from Slavyansk over the next turn or two so these specific positions are not so critical anyway.

Anyway, glad you enjoyed it, I'll try to do another video tonight.

[StuccoFresco]

I played a different version of this battle. Following.

[golden delicious]

I played a different version of this battle. Following.

Thanks. Now that you mention it I do recall seeing some other scenario on the same battle, which is probably a better one than this to be honest. But I remember this fondly from the early early days of TOAW and I thought it would be a nice one to demonstrate as a lot of people have probably played it and more still will be familiar with the battle. Just as well as I gave no particular introduction in the first video.

[golden delicious]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gyl_zSNm3h0

Here you go. Another short one as I got interrupted.

Also I seem to do a lot of umming and erring in the video. I hope this isn't extremely annoying, it happens when I'm thinking.

[Graymane]

Thanks for doing these. They really are informative.

[Graymane]

Why aren't you a fan of interdiction?

[golden delicious]

Why aren't you a fan of interdiction?

It has its place, but really one has to ask, do you want your bombers hitting the enemy at the critical point where you've assigned them, or do you want them striking in the enemy rear more or less at random?

In a scenario like this one, there's going to be plenty of combat support work for the bombers to do, and never enough bombers that interdiction will be more than a mere annoyance for the Soviets. If we were in a West Front scenario 1944-5 then the Allies have a huge air force and often not enough to do with it, so then interdiction would definitely come into play rather than simply drenching the enemy front lines with even more firepower.

[Graymane]

Do you directly assign your artillery and CS or leave it to long-range supporting fire?

[golden delicious]

Do you directly assign your artillery and CS or leave it to long-range supporting fire?

I directly assign. Artillery, everything in range gets directly assigned provided it has enough MPs not to delay the battle and is not going to affect the co-operation level (obviously if there are multiple attacks in range then the artillery has to split, normally based on the strength of the defender but sometimes on how critical the battle is). I treat bombers as a topup for any battles where I don't feel like I have enough firepower from the artillery. I may have gone a bit nuts putting every bomber into support on this one attack against that poor cavalry division, but if I don't get the hex my own division really is going to be in trouble.

[Cpl GAC]

Again - thanks. You don't dig the infantry in after moving and on defense? I usually do, and, I put HQs and Art on Tactical Support so that they help everyone within range who gets attacked or participate at 1/2 strength offensively unless I really need more points. It's a lot of "move then press "D" or "T"" while on defense.

Also, I tend to try and hold favorable terrain and will even set some up as breakwaters (maybe I play as the Soviets too much...).

Your perspective on ceding land at the west end of the bulge is something I never thought about. ¡Ole!

[Curtis Lemay]

Pretty "Upper Crust" accent there, Ben.

[golden delicious]

Again - thanks. You don't dig the infantry in after moving and on defense? I usually do, and, I put HQs and Art on Tactical Support so that they help everyone within range who gets attacked or participate at 1/2 strength offensively unless I really need more points. It's a lot of "move then press "D" or "T"" while on defense.

I do, always, dig in the infantry and indeed any other unit when I'm done moving and fighting with it. In the video, there are several cases where I have a unit on "retreated" status, and these can't dig in. The same is true of units with zero move, but I normally prefer to dig a unit in rather than move that one extra hex.

It might be an old habit- but I tend to dig in artillery and HQs rather than leaving them on tac reserve, unless I know that I will want them to fire later (or, again, if they have no MPs left)

Also, I tend to try and hold favorable terrain and will even set some up as breakwaters (maybe I play as the Soviets too much...).

I guess there's (very roughly) three types of operation that might take place when you're on the strategic defensive.
1) headlong retreat. You want everyone to get as far away as possible right away, but you also want the other guy to be held up pursuing you. This is where you're most likely to leave behind some blocking units. I find it best to drop these in difficult terrain adjacent to the road, as the other guy will probably find them more difficult to clear and it will slow him down just as much.
2) fighting withdrawal. You want to get out- but you're confident you can keep things together and avoid excessive losses on the way. This is what's going on here, and as such a lot of the units that are pulling back and then digging in will only be in those positions for a turn. What's important in this case isn't that the units are in the right hex, but that the line as a whole isn't going to be compromised on the enemy's next turn.
3) drawing up a new main line. This is the culmination of both 1 and 2, excepting where you're able to reverse course and go over to the offensive. At this point, yes, I would look for good terrain to defend along, but there are a lot of factors here, and keeping the line short (and following one of the six cardinal map axes where possible) is as if not more important than good terrain

Your perspective on ceding land at the west end of the bulge is something I never thought about. ¡Ole!

I just looked at the west of the bulge and thought "I don't have enough pieces to cover that". Something along the lines of "He who attempts to hold everything holds nothing".

[golden delicious]

Pretty "Upper Crust" accent there, Ben.

Thankyou- though I'm really very middle class. There are plenty of people around who have what we call "received pronounciation", and I'm not one of them.

[Curtis Lemay]

Pretty "Upper Crust" accent there, Ben.

Thankyou- though I'm really very middle class. There are plenty of people around who have what we call "received pronounciation", and I'm not one of them.

it's possible I don't have the best ear for it, but I listened to the ones on this site and the RP one sounded most like yours:

https://accentbiasbritain.org/accents-in-britain/

[golden delicious]

it's possible I don't have the best ear for it, but I listened to the ones on this site and the RP one sounded most like yours:

https://accentbiasbritain.org/accents-in-britain/

OK well I'd say I'm a shade towards Estuary English from the guy who's down as RP there- but I wouldn't describe that as RP.

RP is what the people in Yes Minister speak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVYqB0uTKlE

[golden delicious]

Turn 1 Part 3 (and a little bit of turn 2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2LQ1dKUrJg

I got a little bit more of a run before running out of time today, enjoy.

[Curtis Lemay]

OK well I'd say I'm a shade towards Estuary English from the guy who's down as RP there- but I wouldn't describe that as RP.

RP is what the people in Yes Minister speak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVYqB0uTKlE

Right. Eliza Dolittle after she "got it". I'd still say you're within the standard deviation.

[Graymane]

Pretty "Upper Crust" accent there, Ben.

Thankyou- though I'm really very middle class. There are plenty of people around who have what we call "received pronounciation", and I'm not one of them.

Afraid my wife agrees, she called your accent "posh" But then, she is from the east end