Plaid (axis) vs Vokt (allies) GS 3.0 beta AAR

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I think all the depleted Russian land and air units will save the day for you. The Russians can't crush enough units to sprint to Berlin yet.

I predict that Berlin will fall before the game ends, but not Hamburg. If you can also hold Rome you will win the game. If Rome falls the game will end in a stale mate.

Trying to prevent the Allies from outflanking Rome is maybe the most important task now. I can't see how the Allies can take Hamburg unless they get ashore in Denmark this turn and rush towards Hamburg. However, it should be possible to delay the Allies with just a few Axis units north of Hamburg. It's quite narrow up there.

[Plaid]

Soviets enter Bucharest and force Romania to surrender, this meaning Sevastopol is now also liberated.





And some good news - we got muddy may turn as a compensation for fair during all the February.



In the East Russians enter Prague, so they are now in good position to outflank fortifications and rush to Berlin itself. Last availiable heavy units will be likely used next turn to halt this advance.



In the West allies land in Holland, though now they will have problems expanding beachhead because of mud. Hausser's HQ mech launch counterattack against British armour halving its strength.

Troops in Belgium under Von Bock's command ready to face allied attacks.



And in Italy Gustav line finally breached with Schoerner's corps destroyed. Not sure if allies have enough time to capture Rome though...

[Plaid]

Guaranted fair weather turns started.

Rommel launches small counterattack south of Berlin, destroying 2 soviet mech units and driving frontline further from the capital.
No attacks in the West - only repairs.



Also only repairs in Italy.



Got 2 German partisans this turn.



And Kriegsmarine still keep attacking allied convoys. Not like it is very useful, but its like psychological pressure - "we don't panic and keep doing what we usually do".

[Cybvep]

Rail some units to the Hamburg region! The Allies may breach the Siegfriend Line - who cares? It's important to halt their advance near Hamburg.

[Morris]

Rail some units to the Hamburg region! The Allies may breach the Siegfriend Line - who cares? It's important to halt their advance near Hamburg.

maybe Axis has no enough rail points & also run out of pp ! Plaid ,did you sell all your labs ? They are useless at all .

[Plaid]

Combat goes on, we deploy our last reserves to halt allied advance for a couple of turns.



Volksturn garrisons near Kiel supposed to delay allied mechs. No matter how much stronger they are, one unit have only one attack and they will not land those attacks on Hamburg this turn.

I am clueless about Russian front. I expect anything from Soviets entering Berlin very this turn to they failing even to breach outer perimeter of defense. Its really tricky situation with all this Wehrmacht still sitting in forts and creating ZoCs.

In Italy Rome going to surrender next turn. End of this long campaign...



And we keep sinking convoys, regardless.

[Morris]

a tigerking in Berlin will take Allies at least one turn .

[Morris]

I submit just after your latest . it looks Allies is difficult to take Humburg next turn . May I congratulate to your victory ?

[Plaid]

Last axis turn.

Bulgaria surrenders and Turkey joins allies.





So now I have only Germany and Finland onboard. Finland is good by the way - will hold longer then Germany for sure.



Pre-turn situation in Germany :



Hamburg area is reinforced by availiable units. It does not look like allied troops in Holland (both landed and marched there overland) can take part in attacks on Hamburg this turn, so probably city will hold.



Situation near Berlin - small German counterattack destroys soviet mech and provide supply to cut northern group. Repaired French SS infantry back to 10 steps, but quality and survivability suffer, thanks to 3rd MP penalty.



Situation at Berlin is unpredictable - I expect anything now. Red Army can totally overrun my defenses, capture Berlin and rush to Hamburg or they can fail to breach even outer perimeter of Berlin defenses. Who knows.

Our subs keep patrolling Atlantic and perform the last convoy attacks in this game.





We did not lose already. Draw or mV are both OK.

[Plaid]

a tigerking in Berlin will take Allies at least one turn .

I don't think so. When I deployed armour with defensive leader (Model) to hold Prague, it was reduced to 2 steps with only 2 TACs and 1 ARM attacks.
German tanks suffer from low surivability (only level 4 armour tech + MP penalties) in this game.

About labs - I sold them all back at turn 99 - you can check final research progress there aswell.

[Plaid]

I submit just after your latest . it looks Allies is difficult to take Humburg next turn . May I congratulate to your victory ?

I didn't won yet. Only secured "non-defeat". You can congratulate me on this, if you want.

[Plaid]

Game is over with last allied turn!







Red Army enters Berlin.



This meaning we have a stalemate over here :



I think this is the first AARed stalemate so far, so sort of achievment here

Casualties screen :



Thats quite interesting situation - out of 4 games we played with Victor so far 3 were stalemates. Probably our playing style just fits each other well and game is really perfectly balanced in this case.
It was pretty interesting game with more or less default strategies implimented so outcome depended mostly on execution skills of both players.
Even though both of us committed enough of small mistakes and suboptimal choices (mostly on tactical level), there was no critical mistakes on both ends (e.g. huge pockets of isolated troops or totally unexpected operations).

There were lots of things, which both of us could do better, but it always happens like this. It is much easier to analyze now, in retrospective, than "in the field".

1944 campaign was impressive - I changed my own mind who will win at least 4 times since May 1944 to May 1945. Even at the very last turn it was not obvious, if Berlin will hold or no.

Since the very start game did not progress very good in Russia - Germans retreated across the Dnepr in the first SW and never crossed it again. It is quite dangerous position with Soviets need to cover much less ground to Berlin, then they usually do. I am happy that despite this fact and not very productive 1942 summer campaign game lasted into 1945 and ended with a draw.

Thanks to my opponent for playing this game! And thanks to everyone reading for following and your advice!

[Plaid]

And some interesting data, as I tracked German sub performance during the game :





*casualties when operating against convoys means various damage subs suffered when seaching for convoys or attacking them (e.g. escort retaliation, airforce harassment or being swept when patroling convoy ways).
**casualties total includes intentional attacks against warships to the above.

As you can see German subs sunk more then 1000 (most of them Soviet and UK) allied PPs, even though last few attacks were made in spring 1945 and meant no difference.

Detailed sub performenace turn-by-turn spreadsheet, if anyone want to check it. (If you have trouble understanding some symbols used, let me know - I will explain).

http://www.filedropper.com/subs_1

[Cybvep]

Great AAR . I thought that you would win, but a stalemate is ok as well. I would like to hear Vokt's comments on all this. He must be itching to enter this thread .

[Peter Stauffenberg]

A very interesting AAR to follow and a great end result where neither player lost. A good job indeed both from Plaid and Vokt.

Since this was run on GS v3.0 that will be released soon I wonder if you can comment on how you feel the game balance is now in GS v3.0 compared to GS v2.1. Did the changes to the sub warfare work as we hoped? Etc.

[pk867]

Yes I would be interested also with the small changes we made to Research and Map changes.

[Morris]

A very interesting AAR to follow and a great end result where neither player lost. A good job indeed both from Plaid and Vokt.

Since this was run on GS v3.0 that will be released soon I wonder if you can comment on how you feel the game balance is now in GS v3.0 compared to GS v2.1. Did the changes to the sub warfare work as we hoped? Etc.

It is just like a wonderful advertisement of 3.0's game balance ! Well done !

It seems 3.0 has no problem to launch !

Looking forward to it !

[Plaid]

I can't say that I found major differences. Yes, research tree is different. But I didn't feel major impact of this change - if you want some units perform better you invest into certain tech branch, as usual. I noticed that techs are more evenly spread over levels - less "big bonus" and "small bonus" tech levels.

About map - in our previous game, when I played allies, axis managed to mount effective defense on Albert Canal with just some garrisons and corps, halting large allied offensive for up to 5 turns (though part of them was bad weather). New position of Antwerp fort helps axis here, but it is not major difference.

I did not fully explore sub evasion feature because Vokt heavily invested into ASW both with USA and UK and I didn't want to take any chances with his high tech DDs. I avoided escorted convoys all the time. Same happened when I played allies previous time.

Probably evasion will be great vs. someone, who puts low priority on ASW, but impact on normal games is minimal.

I think balance is fine for traditional strategy. Didn't try something heterodox yet, so you should ask someone else about it.

[Cybvep]

Convoy raiding stats are interesting. The Axis sunk over 1000 PPs (1180, but some of that was useless, because it happened during the last few turns) and lost 46 sub steps during convoy hunting, which equals to ~150 PPs (assuming that Plaid repaired all damage!). Plaid built 4 subs, which cost 220 PPs (100% certainty). Additionally, Vokt invested heavily into DDs, which are only good against subs. As a bonus, many of the destroyed PPs were Soviet PPs. I'm sure that Vokt would love to use them for repairing air units .

I say that it was worth it.

[Plaid]

Convoy raiding stats are interesting. The Axis sunk over 1000 PPs (1180, but some of that was useless, because it happened during the last few turns) and lost 46 sub steps during convoy hunting, which equals to ~150 PPs (assuming that Plaid repaired all damage!). Plaid built 4 subs, which cost 220 PPs (100% certainty). Additionally, Vokt invested heavily into DDs, which are only good against subs. As a bonus, many of the destroyed PPs were Soviet PPs. I'm sure that Vokt would love to use them for repairing air units .

I say that it was worth it.

I built 5 more subs in fact. UF 3 was unlucky enough to be sunk 2 times (sunk also means no need to repair steps for obvious reasons ).
+ surface ships sunk 35 more soviet PPs - its not counted in the chart posted (but counted in full excel spreadsheet availiable for download).