Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Krieg

Well thank you to all who posted comments and gave me some great advice. After reading the posts, some AARs and playing some test scenarios using Smolensk 10 yurn game I finally got the hang of encircling. To help those who are still finding it difficult here are the key take aways I found:

1) Securing terrain in order to isolate the enemy is key. I found that by having manuever forces "cutting" across rail lines and therby breaking the supply line to the encircled forces this allowed units to become isolated the next turn.

2) Select the option to view your hexes under control, pending hexes, and enemy as well. This allows you to see when the enemy's supply lines have been cut.

3) This next piece Depends on your technique and style. I found by creating as many pending hexes behind the enemy line was the most succesul in halting the enemy from breaking out, if they surmised they were being encircled. This took the most getting used to because of my exp with other games in which supply was not modeled nearly as complete and therefore you only needed to have your untis in every other hex to gain ZOC. A wide (deep) band of pending hexes beind the enemey will allow you to not have to place units every other hex or break Divs down to fill the gaps. I am sure there are other ways aswell to accomplish the same thing but I liked this one most of all. The enemy is very very good at pulling back to avoid the encirclement, so as many techniques you can throw at them to have them expend MPs to get out the better. Terrain, units, and depth of converting enemy control hexes to pending are all some of the methods I found.

4) Read the section on suppy in the manual a couple of times to help understand how the game uses supply. It took me some time to fully understand it and get my arms around what the manual was trying to say, but once I did it made a huge difference in how I played. I also took some test games out wiht a human - human opponent so I could check on how my movement affected the enemy and how it affected their ability to break out.

5) The second turn attack, whcih so many people suggested, was key. Once I waited only one turn to allow the supply and isolation affects to kick in, units were surrendering by the droves once I started my attack.

Again thanks the help on this one. I think the next area I may look at the air side of things, but ill leave that for a different post.

Cheers!