Barbarossa / Max-moriss

[supermax]

Well, here we are. I have been wanting to show all how i would try to beat Moriss Barbarossa. I think i can reasonnably blunt it seriously while inflicton crippling crippling losses.

One fact remains on how Morriss plays. Offensive, and ALWAYS ovvereach himself. I let him advance too much till barbarossa and waited for the kill...

[Cybvep]

Looks good so far, it will be interesting to see what Morris does next. IMO he will focus on the Eastern Front and ignore other theatres for now.

[supermax]

Looks good so far, it will be interesting to see what Morris does next. IMO he will focus on the Eastern Front and ignore other theatres for now.

yep. Also0 his only logical option will be to retreat he doesnt have enough troops and if he stays on the offenisve i will overwhelm him.

Also i will invest all of my army into this counter-offensive.

[supermax]

[Cybvep]

It looks like Morris will have to create a new uber-Barbarossa strategy to defeat you .

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I think this proves that player skill is much more important than any tweaks we can do to the game balance.

Some said Morris was not possible to beat and now Morris is going down in flames. He risks losing Berlin as early as 1943 and he didn't perform worse in this game than in the others he dominated. So it just shows that his strategy has flaws.

That means we don't need to worry too much if we see one player dominating for awhile with a strategy. He will dominate until someone else finds a better strategy.

I guess Morris will now get back to the drawing board and find an even better strategy with the Axis. He won't give up because his strategy was proven to have flaws.

Kudos to Supermax for showing the rest of us how one can deal with Morris'es strategy. What I like to see now is Supermax trying a strategy with the Germans with an offensive 1941 Barbarossa just to see that the German fortress strategy is not the only way the Axis can have a good chance of winning. I have a feeling Supermax would not let his Axis forces be so susceptible to counter attacks and Morris'es were.

I'm a bit surprised how fast Morris went down in flames, but I guess it's because he didn't recover from the initial setback and continued instead of retreating to a safe position. It seems that Russians building quite a bit of armor can be deadly if used right.

Morris likes armor and mech units over tactical bombers. We now see the weakness in that strategy. The Luftwaffe can as early in Barbarossa hit the Russian armor very hard and then they can't inflict much damage. Without a strong Luftwaffe the Russian armor can make a lot of problems.

I wonder how Supermax managed to get so many armor units for Russia. Was it at the expense of labs, leaders or corps unit?

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Just a comment to those of you saying that you can't make encircling moves in GS. Just look at how Supermax plays. Encircling enemy units is something he thinks of every turn and he manages to so it all the time, with both sides. OK, it's not so easy to do, but when you have the skills to do it you can certainly succeed. Just look at the number of units that he managed to cut supply to against Morris. Not puny garrison units, but armor, mech and air units.

[kaigab73]

did you get lucky dice rolls? cause seeing russians killing german armors and mechs in august of '41 seems quite weird expecially given the fact morris had early barbarossa and focused on it (basically this is the strongest barbarossa a player can do).

morris may have run forward too fast but still he had in south 6 mechs and 6 armor, his elite troops. seeing russians easily killing them means that maybe 2.1 has made something wrong.

[Cybvep]

Just a comment to those of you saying that you can't make encircling moves in GS. Just look at how Supermax plays. Encircling enemy units is something he thinks of every turn and he manages to so it all the time, with both sides. OK, it's not so easy to do, but when you have the skills to do it you can certainly succeed. Just look at the number of units that he managed to cut supply to against Morris. Not puny garrison units, but armor, mech and air units.

This is not how it looks like in most games with average players on both sides. Elite players regularly do things which average players cannot do.

[supermax]

Hey guys

I will try to respond

1- how did i managed to have so many tanks? Well my first 3 or 4 labs were concentrated in armor and air units. I have 7 labs. So to put it simply, i only produced zhukov, 7 labs and 7 or 8 armors plus 3 mech i think. I would not do this in a game with a regular player, but against moriss you have to play his own, that is playing in extreme. So, he wants to concentrate all in a quick armor trust? Then lets kill fire with fire.

2- how did i manage to hit the germans so hard? Well realize that at supply 3 and lots of mouvements and attacks does tend to drop efficiency. All my tank reinforcement were and scheduled to be placed 1 turn of june thus were not affected by the effectiveness drop. Secondly, well things tend to go your way offensively(in terms of tactical objective not saving troop) this rendering great things to be possible on the battlefield. I notice over time that most player are of the same category, that is saving troop.

So, simply said how i did it by simply concentrating the whole russian army in a "bowl shape" so i could counter attack from 3 sides. Most axis units were thus attacked by 4 units. In doing this i also accepted tha the first 2 the odds would be terrible. Bit generally on the third attack units tend to be softer...

3- another thing that most of you missed. Moriss is offensive, but careless. This means that he will advance blindly to go as fast as posible. He does it the same way as i do and can realize great things, but compared to most offensive player he will run into a wall even if he knows it will happen. His minset is offensive , and most player are very careful against him. Well, that is not my case, because the remedy is to try to hit him as much as possible. You need to punish him wherever you can. Its easy because he always concentrate where needed but most of the time he always overdoes it.

4- as to barbarossas , well thisis the perfect example of why i say the russians are invincibles. It is simple with them. You build a strong mobile force, put it far in the viscinity of rostov- stalingrad, and most sensible player will just have to stop in dnepropetrovsk or else risk his army annhiilation. If you guys remember, this is what i did in my las game with moriss. If you stop, you simply will not win. If yuo go forward, then you risk loosing your army as it is the case with moriss in this game. I already destroyed like 5-6 armor and many more units.

No strategy can beat time, and in this case time is too short for the germans. Even with all his skills and planning, moriss would never beat this. Its rather simple, if you want to survive, you HAVE to stop BEFORE rostov ( against a player tha knows his trade) or concentrate the whole german army in the south thsu mpeding any serious advance in te north. And my strategy is simple! If the germans are concentrating in the south( by the way this will be the next modification of moriss strategy) then you concentrate in the north and make him pay for his offensive's imbalance.

Its rather simple, really. When playing against Moriss, before the game start think offensively, so your production reflects it, and when the time comes in 41, you can use Russia-England to devastating effect.

[Schnurri]

BTW - what is going on for the Leningrad, Moscow fronts?

[supermax]

Just a comment to those of you saying that you can't make encircling moves in GS. Just look at how Supermax plays. Encircling enemy units is something he thinks of every turn and he manages to so it all the time, with both sides. OK, it's not so easy to do, but when you have the skills to do it you can certainly succeed. Just look at the number of units that he managed to cut supply to against Morris. Not puny garrison units, but armor, mech and air units.

As you said Borger, when i starty my turn this is the first thing i look for. Sometimes it doesnt work, but most players dont even realize that i tried since i guess they do not see that was i was trying.

[supermax]

BTW - what is going on for the Leningrad, Moscow fronts?

hehehe nothing, nothing...

[supermax]

did you get lucky dice rolls? cause seeing russians killing german armors and mechs in august of '41 seems quite weird expecially given the fact morris had early barbarossa and focused on it (basically this is the strongest barbarossa a player can do).

morris may have run forward too fast but still he had in south 6 mechs and 6 armor, his elite troops. seeing russians easily killing them means that maybe 2.1 has made something wrong.

No one is invincible. Lets just say that i did not look at my losses.

[supermax]

I'm a bit surprised how fast Morris went down in flames, but I guess it's because he didn't recover from the initial setback and continued instead of retreating to a safe position. It seems that Russians building quite a bit of armor can be deadly if used right.

Well you are right there. He should have accepted the reality of his position and run back to Stalino and beyond. What he did is what Moriss always does. Continuying the offensive till there is nothing left. Remember in our last AAR, i basically eliminated the whole Russian army in 1943... With a humongus encirclement and counter attacks. At one point it was more than obvious he would get into trouble, but he choose to lose it all in hoping i would break.

moriss is a very good player on the strategic, but i think his manoeuring capability (tactiical) still has to reach top level. Most of the time he wins because he plays against defensive-cautious players, which work well within his style. As for me, only the defensive players can achieve anything against me, because they denie me the offensive way of playing that i excel in.
Offense against offense means that the better tactical pleyer should regularily wins, because its not offensive that win wars, but finely timed counter-offensive.

So do not build defensive lines against him unless it is clear that he doesnt have enough forces. You are better to plan, time and execute a mcounter-offensive when he is at truck supply and no rail for a while. This cannot fail.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

did you get lucky dice rolls? cause seeing russians killing german armors and mechs in august of '41 seems quite weird expecially given the fact morris had early barbarossa and focused on it (basically this is the strongest barbarossa a player can do).

morris may have run forward too fast but still he had in south 6 mechs and 6 armor, his elite troops. seeing russians easily killing them means that maybe 2.1 has made something wrong.

I don't think we can make such a conclusion. Morris was reckless in his attacks and got punished for it. He will improve his strategy and be a little more careful next time. The Germans are still pretty strong in 1941. It's actually good that this game shows the Germans can not put full steam ahead and not look back. They have to have a sound strategy and protect their flanks etc.

We should not panic because of a single game and conclude the balance is off. Just a few weeks ago people complained the Axis were too strong and not possible to stop.

My point is that the player quality is much more important than the tweaks we make to the game balance. The data we have received so far is that the game is pretty much balanced. So we will release GS v2.1 with this balance. If you lose your game then you try to improve your strategy to the next game. At least the Germans have a lot of potential in GS v2.1 and they will have fun playing for a long time. In GS v2.0 many Axis players felt they got into trouble too early and then had to fight for their life until the end. In v2.1 you can hope to keep the initiative a bit longer.

[gchristie]

That means we don't need to worry too much if we see one player dominating for awhile with a strategy. He will dominate until someone else finds a better strategy.

Whew, that's a relief!

Looking forward to Slitherine readying the 2.1 installer.

[richardsd]

7 ARM is a lot of Russian armour!

great job by Max, but I suggest it wouldn't work so well a second time

[supermax]

7 ARM is a lot of Russian armour!

great job by Max, but I suggest it wouldn't work so well a second time

Especially against a different player

[gchristie]

7 ARM is a lot of Russian armour!

great job by Max, but I suggest it wouldn't work so well a second time

Especially against a different player

The interesting thing about a Max/Morris matchup: Max rarely appears to do anything the same way twice, and Morris seems to pick a strategy and sticks with it. Two very skilled players with such different play styles. Lucky us.