82ndtrooper
Posts: 1083
Joined: 12/19/2008
From: tennessee
Status: offline
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This is a game I started a few weeks back with some new players and we have mostly just been talking back and forth in emails. But for me playing as the west something new and different has happened in this game and I wanted to start a thread about it to show you guys whats going on.
Both sides can post here if they wish I wont be revealing anything that the Axis doesn't already know.
For those that don't know me let me explain a little bit about how i approach strategy games.
I am as competitive as anyone but I don't mind losing,there are other aspects of these games I enjoy as much as winning. Like I really enjoy trying out new strategies and solving strategic problems and every game I play I do something new and different, this causes me to lose more than I would sometimes but if I don't then I get in a rut and get bored with any strategy game I play. (this is also why I make a good test game partner for Explorer2 I find a lot of bugs and since I do things different every time, I have been directly responsible for many of the changes in his scenario, even if he has absolutely destroyed me the last two games we have played)
This is one of the reasons I enjoy playing against new players, not because they are easy to beat but because they approach the game differently then veteran players in that they haven't yet found out what tactics and strategies work best for them so they are full of new ideas and different approaches to the game. I always learn something new every time I play with them. I also play against them differently because of this, I still try to win and I play my absolute best but rather than try and force the game in a direction I want it to go I sit back and let them take it in any direction they want, to see what ideas they come up with. Then I try my best to counter it.
I really enjoy this type of game play and it allows new players a chance to flex their minds and try out their ideas, so its a win, win situation. Especially when you realize that i am a better defensive player than I am offensive and in "AT" I am better with naval forces than I am with land forces. I really enjoy the naval aspect of this game and because of that I like playing the West and Japan the most and I feel like I am pretty good at it.
Which brings us to this game.
I am the west and its now just Nov 22,1940.
Players:
Axis: DRommel
Western Allies: 82ndtrooper
Soviet Union / China: ehzorg
Japan: Von Dudert
I started the game expecting to try something new as usual and I was going to play the action cards that allow me to defend France (which I have never tried) so I had been saving up all my PP. When it came time to play them I realized that if I did that it would delay the others from being able to get started in the game so I decided not to do it since they are all new players and I knew they would be eager to get going and playing their regimes.
Boy talk about a stroke of luck on my part. In any other game I would have already spent that PP on FT II and INF II etc... I would not have had that much PP saved up, this literally saved me.
you see Drommel as the axis player came at the War in the Atlantic with a little bit different strategy and the desire to win it. From the second turn of the game I was fighting the most intense battle in the Atlantic I have ever fought. It was so intense that I had moved my med fleets out of the med and to the Atlantic before Italy had even came into the game. I have never had to do that before I have always been able to defend the Atlantic and leave my Med fleets in the Med.
I wish I had been taking screen shots from the start but we had decided not to bother with a AAR. I went back and opened some old turns though and discovered that he was on average easily destroying over 2000 supply a turn and on one turn he destroyed over 4000.
If you have ever played the west you will understand that's a huge part of England's supply so early in the game.
I found myself feeling exactly like England must have felt in WWII during the winter of 39-40. I was very low on supply I could barely keep my fleets in fuel and I wasn't able to produce anything but supply and there where U-Boats everywhere. I was literally starving in England.
By around April of 1940 I was down to only 4 active destroyers in the Atlantic and they where new, I also had my starting fleets but by this time in the game I would normally have a dozen or more destroyers working the Atlantic. It was so bad I couldn't even keep the channel open to salvage units from France, I had to move what I could from Marseilles to North Africa instead. I only got one unit moved to England.
For the first time, I was losing the war for the Atlantic.
Now this is where that stroke of luck came into play. Remember all that PP I had been saving ? Well in the spring or early summer of 1940 sometime I had enough to buy Carrier III and I began producing carrier air III as fast as I could and getting them on too my carriers, this and the arrival of my Med fleets at exactly the right time is all that saved me.
Around the end of summer or early fall of 40, we had a big naval battle at the southern end of the Channel just as my med fleets arrived and that coupled with the carrier air III allowed me to pull off a victory that without both I most likely would have lost. To understand how big it was I sank 11 subs in that fight. Sheer luck on my part that I had saved up that PP and then decided not to spend it.
After this battle which was only 3 or 4 turns ago the pressure in the Atlantic eased up and I wondered where his subs had went. More about that in a few minutes.
So here it is Nov of 1940 and I have carrier III !!! not because I wanted to have it but because I was forced to get it or starve. This has absolutely changed everything for me strategic wise in this game. My normal Tech tree is a shambles and it will take me months to tech up units that I need too, and everything that I would have normally planned to do is thrown out the window,My production of units is also so far behind in England that its impossible for me to even consider any type of invasion at this point. so my standard way of playing the basics of the game is gone for this game.
BUT....
Having carrier III this early has opened up unlimited new possibilities that I am eagerly looking forward to exploring. Out with the old and in with the new 
for example this is my new Sub Killer fleet that I have come up with. I can show you this because that sneaky DRommel just found my fleets I had waiting to pounce on him this last turn so he has already discovered them.
Expect to see these little fleets all over like fleas on a dog.
I think it looks pretty good on paper so to speak and I can make a lot of them which trust me I am doing as fast as I can. We will have to see how they work out in combat.
Compared to a regular CV-II which holds 7 planes I can make three of these which will hold 6 planes and will cost me 2000 more production, but I don't have to wait for the Hulls to pop.
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< Message edited by 82ndtrooper -- 8/7/2010 7:39:17 PM >
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HHC 302nd Engineer Battalion
82nd Airborne Division
Honorably Discharged Jul/80
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YAWAWRG (yet another waw revised game) - 
Masterfully executed move in Greece by your opponent.... a new player you say? 
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