Greece

[lostnight]

I didn't plan to write an AAR, so I don't have any pictures or anything. I always try to wait to read other AARs until after I try it first. So when I got done with Greece, I couldn't find any AARs on it, so I thought I'd give a little informal one, at least it's something.

I play on Lt difficulty I think, with supply, weather and FOG turned on. I only got a marginal victory on Low Countries, but got a decisive victory on France. For France, I decided to name my units and organize them into 3 divisions, with each division having some armor, some infantry, and some artillery. I figured I needed some struture to help me keep track of my units, and feel more attached to them. One example of how I named a tank would be my most senior tank unit in 3rd division, I named it"3rd RegA Pnzr IIIF". My second most senior artillery unit in 2nd division is named,"2nd ArtB 10,5c leFH18". and so on. I didn't lose hardly any core units in France, but first division had only 1 tank unit, 1st RegA Pnzr IVD, it was the most experienced out of all the divisions, and it was stunningly destroyed. So 2/3rds of the way through France, I purchased two more Panzer IVDs and placed them in 1st Division. They swept up along the Northwest coast of France and back down, gaining a little experience.

to be continued, in progress, for some reason I can't type much more in the message body, it keeps kicking my cursor back up

[lostnight]

So my first Division looked like this, going into Greece:
1st ArtA 15C sFH18
1st ArtB 15c Nblwf41 (Nebelwerfer bought during Greece deployment phase)
1st RegA SE Gren (grenadiers)
1st RegB Wehr inf
1st RegC Gbrgsjgr (Gerbirgsjager mountain troops)
1st RegB Pnzr IVD
1st RegC Pnzr IVD

Greece only allows 12 core units, so I sent first division, because they have the mountain troops, which looked useul after scoping out the terrain. All of my core infantry (except the Gerbirgsjager) and towed artillery use halftracks in 1st Division. I also received an SE Pnzr IIIH, nice! I can't remember if that counted against the core units or not. So I used the remaining slots with either 2 or 3 Bf 109Es, and 1 Stuka Ju87B, and a Ju88A. I figured the Ju88 would be uuseful in the naval campaign, I had no idea how lage the Allied navy pesence would be.

Judging by the fairly large size of the Italian Navy at my disposal, I thought there would be a much larger sea battle. But it was nothing like Norway. The allies had only about 3 ships, a destoyer and a couple of cruisers I think. It took a little while to find them, they were hanging out near Athens. My bigger warships and Ju88 took care of them. Then my warships were free to pound the key coastal cities and defenses. The air war was also rather one sided, they had a couple Hurricane units max, so my overstrength fighters plus some fighter the Italians chipped in soon gave the Axis complete air superiority.

tbc..............same problem

[lostnight]

The ground war was much more of a slow grind. Battling those Greek mountain units around the fortifications south of Plodiv took me far too long. I should have spent less time there, and more time focused on objectives. The terrain was difficult to negotiate, every time there was a tight passage, I had to stop and fight an enemy that wasn't quick to die. I did finally capture a port city, and decided it might be quicker to deploy units on sea transports to capture the port cities my Naval forces were pounding. I was also too late sending my paratrooper unit I was given. I had bad experiences with paratroopers getting shot down in my previous 2 scenarios, so I may have been overly cautious here, given that the Allied air power appeared to be wiped out.

I needed to captured all objectives in 12 turns for a decisive victory, but it took me 15 turns, so I got the marginal victory. If I had it to do over again, I would purchase one or two more paratroopers unit in addition to the one they gave me, and send them south sooner. I would also try to wipe out the opposing airforce quicker so I wouldn't be afraid to deploy paratroopers. And maybe try to capture a port city quicker so I could deploy troops to other parts of the map with more time to spare. Greece was pretty fun, it was different.

[Xerkis]

So my first Division looked like this, going into Greece:
1st ArtA 15C sFH18
1st ArtB 15c Nblwf41 (Nebelwerfer bought during Greece deployment phase)
1st RegA SE Gren (grenadiers)
1st RegB Wehr inf
1st RegC Gbrgsjgr (Gerbirgsjager mountain troops)
1st RegB Pnzr IVD
1st RegC Pnzr IVD

That's about the same way I set up my Divisions too.... depending on what I want their main job to be.


I like this scenario too. It's fun to play it.

[lostnight]

Yes, Greece was fun, and it gave me a chance to give experience to my two new armored units going into Russia. I also assigned the SE Panzer III unit to 1st division, so they may actually be slightly over powered compared to 2nd and 3rd divisions. I'm not tied down to the idea of having 3 pronged strikes every scenario that allows it. Fot Barbarossa, I'm thinking the slightly OP 1st division can strike east along the northern edge. Then have 2nd and 3rd divisions combine and strike the southern edge with a bridging unit. Hmm, just thinking.