|
GamesaurusRex -> RE: Survived the Blizzard - Now What? (4/20/2018 2:35:59 AM)
|
Hi HardLuck :
The only agenda I have is trying to figure out the settings for a balanced game. I've played this game for five years now with Wheat. He is an expert Panzer Baller who has worked out what is a near perfect German opening series of moves and approach to the German side. The standard settings without extreme blizzard and 1-1=2-1 is a non-game for the Russians against this sort of German strategy. I have used every angle in Flavius' and Pelton's playbook and still not found a way to make 1941-42 anything other than "shooting fish in a barrell" for the German. It's just a cake walk for the German, if he knows what to do. Yes, you can pull a defense in the North to delay the fall of Leningrad long enough to get some of the industry out, but it will fall in the end. There is no holding Leningrad. Yes, you can defend Moskow to delay long enough to evacuate factories, but that will fall too... either in a pocket that may cost you the game or when you willingly surrender Moskow to avoid the pocket. There is no holding Moskow. All you can do is delay just enough for evacs and try to stay out of reach of the German Panzers until blizzard 41 (and it better be extreme with 1-1=2-1 or it's over). You must then attack in the extreme blizzard just long enough to gain morale and guards and destroy German troops and morale... then stop soon enough that you are not totally worn out when the Germans resume their attack in 42.
We started another game just after this latest patch was available. We used the mild winter and no 1-1=2=1 just to see what happens under this new patch (I had heard this patch was a Russian buff, it was not). We placed no house rule on Lvov, so that was allowed and we do not allow airdrops. I have tried a completely different approach in this game by simply retreating when possible, fighting only as needed to delay for factory evacuations. The one buff we gave the Russians was to turn up the AP allowance to 120 per turn (the idea here was to accelerate Russian Corps formation to try to get to combat CV without a Russian winter offensive). It's turn 54 in June '42 and the Germans are already at the Volga and have taken Gorky in the North and are pressing toward Baku in the South where the Russians are defending along the mountains. The one bright spot is the Crimea is still held by Russia, but I'm sure that is because he didn't try to take it.
Even with the added AP, this has been an ordeal... and under this patch the Russians seem to have lower CV than in previous games. I know some of this is due to the fact that I did not attack in '41 mild blizzard to conserve troops and dig in, but I am finding this is a poor trade off because I have gained only one Guard Division aside from the airborne Guards, and the Germans just run over it all and pocket it anyway (which Flavius and Pelton predicted long ago due to what they termed the "snowball effect" which results if the Russian doesn't attack in winter '41). So I'm just looking for a "game" in an otherwise non-contest... and still have not found it.
[Note: In all the games we've played in five years, the Russian side has only won ONCE... when Wheat played the Russians... but I had never played the German side before and had no clue about the mechanics of keeping the German Army at max morale levels like Wheat does. In that game under patch 1.07, interestingly enough, the Russian arrived in Berlin on May 3, 1945... an almost perfect historic result.]
|
|
|
|
