DLC '45 West #11: Ruhr Pocket

[VPaulus]

Please post here your comments about this scenario.

[Kerensky]

Note: This scenario not available with BETA1.

[Kamerer]

10) Ruhr Pocket/Remagen – beta 2

Level: Field Marshal, stock/game corps
Prestige - Begin: 1,975. End: 1,450. Net: -325
Result: DV 15/23

(Believe this is scenario #10, not #11 as indicated)

Problems:

• • None noted.

General impressions/comments:

• • Another interesting scenario with unique challenges. The a/t guns and infantry make it a real thicket.
  • The addition of tac bombers and V weapons helped, but never gave the “magic bullet” to win. For example, before using the Arado’s, I sent a fighter to “troll for guns” near the bridge. Glad I did, found them and the bombers would have been shattered.
  • I shunned getting the air shot up, and I used the V-weapons to diminish hard amour in my path. It may have been cheaper to throw all of that at the center span and end it that way. I took the near span with combined arms but I’m guessing other strategies would have worked, perhaps quicker and more cheaply.

[ThvN]

Ruhr Pocket, beta2

Colonel, Imported Core, DV 9/23

Prestige before/after deployment: 10335/9076
Prestige on last turn/incl. victory bonus: 8848/11148

Nice scenario, the push towards the bridge was tough but at Cologne pretty much nothing happened after the first air wave and the loss of the fort. This is partly due to an exploit I used (I only needed five ground units to keep Cologne, and two of those never fired a shot).

On the start of turn 7 I got a message that the 1st Allied unit was off board. I managed a DV on turn 9 after destroying only the Bridge Engineer at Erpel (28,29) and then capturing the VHex. Which I found a bit puzzling, as I was under the impression I needed to take out all three units/sections?

I reloaded to replay the last turn, instead this time I did not take Erpel but concentrated on taking out the other two Bridge Engineers first, this caused the Bridge sections to lose their golden border. The three V2's are not able to reliably take out a single span, which I thought was nice, and the railroad gun is very handy. Then I destroyed the last Bridge Engineer, and waited to see what happened, got the message to say I needed to take out the remaining Allied units on the East bank, and no more Allied units crossed the bridge from that point on. So that seems to work fine. Then I took the last VHex (Erpel) and got another DV.

Is it intended that destroying all the Bridge engineers isn't necessary for a DV? You have to take Erpel anyway for a DV, so destroying the Bridge Engineers only causes the Allied troops to stop crossing the bridge to prevent the player from losing the scenario it seems. Which works fine and it is a very neat mechanism, but to me it seems way easier to throw everything at Erpel, instead of wasting all that auxiliary firepower to take out the other Bridge engineers. It's a bit of a shame considering all the attention given to the triggers etc., to just smash your way into Erpel. Maybe I need to play it at a higher difficulty next time. But nevertheless a very nice scenario, very good immersion.

[zappel]

Beta2 - Colonel level - Imported core - DV at turn 11

This is a very interresting scenario: defend a city against a massive attack and simultaneously attack massive entrenched forces in wooden area. Similiar to Budapest45 but much more variuos. Those entrenched AT-guns in the southern area (Westerwald) are bothersome and in combination with the Long-Tom-Artillery really a challenge.
I got a lot of messages, so all triggers work?

Messages

Messages.png (229.73 KiB) Viewed 1437 times

Only the winnig conditiones were surprisingly: I got the DV by eliminating only one of the three special marked bridge enginieers. Also I had only captured one winning hex of the bridge in this moment.
I like the scenario.