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shermanny -> AAR Allies May 1944 (11/26/2014 7:11:59 PM)
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War in the East veterans Shermanny and Mike play the 1944 campaign for the upcoming War in the West (starting in May) . Shermanny prepared an in-depth AAR, showing you the Allied perspective of the campaign as he lays out his strategy and prepares to push the Germans back. At the start of the game, the Allies are pushing hard into Italy, while at the same time the preparations for the invasion of France were well underway.
I've got Allies. Opponent Mike has Axis. Mike is coming to this game with a lot of experience at WITE but WITW is a new experience for him. I've been looking at it as it developed, though I still have a lot to learn. We'll see how it goes.
For my first turn, I need to rearrange my air force, getting the planes where they will be needed and getting them tasked with the right missions. Also, invasions have to be planned. I think the Allies need to bring the biggest hammer they can get to the invasion. That means shifting fighter-bombers across from Corsica to England, and shifting air transport from Italy up to England. We'll need all the interdiction and airlift we can get.
I decided on a percentage basis which beaches I might want to invade, and then let a random number generator make my selection. One cannot wing it in these matters, especially if one plays repeatedly. A favorite beach is a beach that will be heavily defended. It's rock-scissors paper, but with a twist.
Perfect even-steven randomness is bad strategy. Invading in the Bay of Biscay, or South France, is almost surely wrong. Biscay is too far from air cover and there are too few decent ports. Your buildup will be slow and your shipping losses will be painful. [The Germans can try and bomb the invasion fleet, and absent Allied fighter cover, they'll do a lot of damage.]
South France is a bad idea because it's strategically barren. The Germans can contain a South France invasion for a couple of months without having to commit the kitchen sink to the effort. Nothing vital is close to the front, and the terrain is hilly or worse.
The Netherlands is another story. An invasion there, if it could get quickly off the beaches and out of the heavily intersected maze of rivers, would bring victory in short order. But the "if" here is a big "if". That river maze gives the defenders a lot of chances to contain the invasion. And there's another problem. The Germans, in this scenario, have a chance to rearrange their defenses, unless you want to invade immediately, with lower readiness and in sub-par weather. They will probably improve their coverage of the most dangerous beach areas. Unless they think you wouldn't dare. Wheels within wheels situation.
That leaves the Calais area, the Dieppe area, the Normandy area, and the Brittany area as attractive options. Here, in my opinion one must spread one's bets, weighted more heavily toward the beaches that will be easiest to hit and break out from, even if they're further from Germany.
The German player has his own decisions. But there are garrison rules. The player wears Ike's hat, or Rommel's. Not FDR's, or Churchill, or CarpetChewer's. And in Berlin, they don't understand the impact allied air power is going to have. They want armored divisions back a ways from the coast, where they can get to the invasion, wherever it is, without having to lose time extricating themselves from other beaches. The player can ignore this wish, to a point, but will pay a victory point penalty. (The Allied player, in turn, must pay more attention to casualties than they would if the only thing that mattered was getting to Berlin. If they don't, you guessed it,VP penalty.)
He can ignore the garrison penalty, take a guess at where you'll invade, and prepare to smash that invasion. That costs a bundle of VPs, but if he guesses right and stacks up high enough on your intended beaches, he may gain so much time before you can mount a second invasion that the VP cost is well worth it. Wearing the German hat, if I decided to take that gamble, I'd pick one of the attractive beaches at random and stack high on it, but weighting the odds toward the ones further East. Stacking up on Brittany is a bad idea because if the Allies hit anywhere else you've pretty much lost instantly, and because if they hit where you're waiting for them, you can't expect to stop a Brittany invasion cold anyhow. It's just too long a stretch of beaches, the terrain is too open, and it's at the end of a long supply line that will be too easy to interdict.
Out of all this, as the Allied player I chose to weight my odds at 40 percent Brittany, 20 percent Normandy, 20 percent Dieppe, and 20 percent Calais. My random number generator chose Normandy. At this point I have no idea what my opponent will do.
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