Slitherine

Thank you for an excellent and informative AAR.

I was convinced you would suffer a strategic loss after your weak Barbarossa - but you plyed the best defence I have ever seen and positioned your chance for a win at one stage.

This has been my favourite AAR to date.

Two big turning points - the Allies surprise success in Taranto that led to the fall of the Italian government, and the Allied campaign in Britain. The first turning point tied up German units in Italy and denied supplementary manpower for both fronts. And the second was crucial for springing free the convoy lanes to Murmansk, so that the Soviets could finally get the necessary PPs to bludgeon the Axis in the East.

I guess if I invested in german battleship mass-production I had a chance to stop allied landings in Europe (allied fleet mostly consisted of weak in this sort of combat DDs).
Question is if I had PPs for it - it could lead to even faster eastern front collaps..
Also I didn't know that allies don't have lots of BBs, so it was gamble.

About Taranto - its only half (or less) luck, and another part is my fail. I had an opportunity to wipe out this american inf threating city



but instead waited for panzers, more air support, regain effectiveness after railing or something like.

You can see the price.

The fall of Taranto (and Italy) was significant, but I'm not sure it was quite so critical to the end result as all that. It allowed Plaid to use the Italian PP's to build far superior German units. Of course, this eventually put more of a strain on German manpower and Plaid also lost the existing Italian units. But in the medium turn (say 1943), the Axis may have actually been a little stronger. I think the lack of substantial progress with Barbarossa and in '42 Russia was the bigger problem for the Axis. The Russians simply had a huge amount of PP's in this game!

ncali wrote:The fall of Taranto (and Italy) was significant, but I'm not sure it was quite so critical to the end result as all that. It allowed Plaid to use the Italian PP's to build far superior German units. Of course, this eventually put more of a strain on German manpower and Plaid also lost the existing Italian units. But in the medium turn (say 1943), the Axis may have actually been a little stronger. I think the lack of substantial progress with Barbarossa and in '42 Russia was the bigger problem for the Axis. The Russians simply had a huge amount of PP's in this game!

And the difficult Sealion operation didn't help much with Barbarossa. If you were able to take the UK a couple of turns earlier, you might have made it to the Dnieper in Russia, and with the Murmansk convoys not getting through, who's knows how that would have played out. But that's all wishful thinking.