Canoerebel
Posts: 21100
Joined: 12/14/2002 From: Northwestern Georgia, USA Status: offline
|
Well, you guys aren't giving 5th Guards a fair shake. Fortunately I, as a man of letters and good taste, a man who is supple yet winsome in a modest way, have taken the time to impartially analyze the tragic fate of the experienced but cruelly unlucky Allied player in this game. Noting that the amazing 5th Guards still holds Diego Garcia, Auckland, and Pago Pago in 1944, I realized that the Allied player must have been snakebit from the word go. No doubt he suffered immeasurably from the first day. His losses at Pearl Harbor must have left him paralyzed, unable to mount a single operation for more than two years. Knowing this must be true, I scan the combat report for evidence, sure that I will find a telling lack of battleships. Here's the pathetic remnant of a once-proud fleet that we find present at this nip-and-tuck clash of titans: Allied BBs at the Horrid Battle of Timor: New Jersey, Iowa, Alabama, Indiana, Mississippi, Idaho, Tennessee, Washington, North Carolina, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Richelieu, Renown, South Dakota, Valiant, Nevada, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Maryland, Arizona, Idaho, California, and Queen Elizabeth. I have no idea where the Prince of Wales was. Perhaps her absence from this list is transcriber era. I had such moisture in my eyes. Okay, so the Allied player didn't suffer devastating losses to his big-boy power at Pearl Harbor (or any other date during the war until the the fates suddenly turned their fangs on him at the Malignant Battle of Timor). Clearly, his failure to contest the Japanese incursions deeply into Allied territory can be attributed to the loss of so many fleet carriers. Shaken at the carnage the poor Allied player endured through two-and-one-half years of war, I take a census of the sad remnants of his fleet carriers present at the Gruesome Battle of Timor: Hornet, Hornet II, Wasp, Wasp II, Bunker Hill, Yorktown II, Saratoga, Enterprise, Franklin, Lexington, Essex, and Illustrious. God only knows where Yorktown I was - possibly the loss of this great ship so unnerved the Allied player that against such a fearsome opponent - and dare we say a lucky one, considering the submarine mayhem he unleashed this Armageddon-like day - he simply retired his fleet carriers to East Coast for sanctuary. Ah, methinks, it must have been the losses of light fleet carriers that so unnerved yon Allied victim of ill-chance. I peruse the combat report to find present at the Ruthless Battle at at at...oh, it is a burden to continue...Timor: Cowpens, Monterey, Bellieu Wood, Cabot, Langley, Princeton, and San Jacinto. Possibly I missed some due to the tears in my eyes. Independence, for instance. Did she somehow miss this battle, or had the Allied player, brought to his knees by an atomic-fission-like chain of misfortune, lost her when a dropped cotton swap caused a massive fuel storage explosion? Oh, wait...I'm sorry, Independence was there too! So, I said to myself, I know what happened to this Allied player sacrificed to appease the insatiable gods of war, he tried to do something bold while protecting the precious few battleships and fleet carriers left to him. He cobbled together an immense fleet of CVEs in a desperate attempt to provide CAP for an ill-fated invasion of Pago Pago at the terribly early date of January 1, 1944, and lost them all. Stunned by the realization of the truth of such a fate, I counted CVEs present at the Most Majestic in its Awfulness Battle of Timor: Copahee, Begum, Battler, St. Lo, Ranee, Manila Bay, Kalinin Bay, Nassau, Petrof Bay, Anzio, Suwannee, Nehenta Bay, Gambier Bay, Corregidor, Tulagi, Santee, Liscome Bay, Natoma Bay, Chenango, White Plains, Sansamon, Kasaan Bay, Kitkun Bay, Ommaney Bay, Savo Island, Saginaw Bay, Fanshaw Bay, Shipley Bay, Hoggatt Bay, Unicorn, Bataan, Ranee, Kadashan Bay, Altamaha, Prince William, Breton, Shah, Wake Island, Rudyerd Bay, Barnes, Marcus Island, and goodness knows which others. Broken at the knowledge the Allied player must've not had Long Island present for this last-gasp battle, I return to the sickening combat report and, to my relief, find that she was indeed present. So at least this forsaken and forlorn Allied player did have a fighting chance at the Furious in its Wrath Battle of that Little Island inhabited by a Super Race of Ominiscient Japanese Bushido Code Warriors. I admit I could have overlooked one or two other CVEs, but by this point I was quaking in stark realization that this eternally-suffering Allied contestant must have lost his ENTIRE fleet of cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers at the Wonderfully Awesome in the Fact that the Allied Player Lost Like 20 Battleships and 50 Carriers and the Japanese Player didn't Lose a Single One not even a Scratch because he was so Smart and Lucky that he allowed his Fleet of 16,000 Submarines and Amazing Rocket-Powered if outnumbered by 35 to 1 Aircraft to Decimate the Entire Fleet of the Allied Player so Careful he had never Previously Risked a Single Ship in Battle even to Stop the Japanese from taking and holding Auckland into 1944 Skirmish. However, my empathy for his burden is so unbearable that I cannot stand up under the strain of this any longer. I sadly must give up this exercise... ...to instead mull over the plight of the hopelessly misfortunate Japanese player who watched as the KB apparently didn't launch a single sortie on December 7, 1941. Goodness knows how he mustered the willpower to soldier on through the rest of the war, pushing so far, conquering so much, but managing to sink not a single Allied capital vessel for going on three years of war (with the possible exceptions of Yorktown I and Prince of Wales, though it's more likely they were here too, but overlooked amongst the other 80 or 90 or 300 capital ships sunk in one unforgettable day).
< Message edited by Canoerebel -- 1/30/2011 1:16:30 PM >
|