MarkShot
Posts: 7089
Joined: 3/29/2003 Status: offline
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Alright, let's flip the scenario and look at it from the Allied player's perspective. I am not going to do another AAR, but I will sketch in broad strokes a successful plan: You cannot mass any place as the Allies, even at Tempe. It's not a question of "if the Germans will make it across the river, but more like when and in what condition". So, you have to spread your forces very thin. You will have two arty batteries and near the end platoon of armor will show up at Larissa to help out. Your entire force of three battalions is on foot. You are in a hasty defense situation. You have to hustle individual companies to defensive positions immediately. They have to get to cover, halt, and dig-in before the Germans are upon them. Otherwise, what happened to the Allies in my AAR will happen to your men. If they can get dug-in, they will fair much better. To the North, a well placed company in the woods along the road can tie up the German column of tanks and trucks for an extended period. You will only want to place a scattering of companies along the river and hold half back in reserve and to exit. You should set your HQ units significantly back from the action so that they don't get overrun. If HQ units should happen to be in a retreating or routing state, then they will be incapable of relaying any orders to their subordinates. Your arty should be towards the South well clear of being overrun. They can sit on some objectives for you and also be close to Larissa when the time comes to bug out. At Tempe, you have some good defensive terrain and it is quite feasible to blow a bridge or two if it comes to that. (The AI does this automatically if it feels it can no longer hold the crossing. This happens when you give the a deny crossing order to your units.) To the South, there isn't any good defensive terrain around the crossings. The good terrain there is too far set back from the crossings to be effective at night. The best terrain in a couple of cases is, in fact, on the far bank. So, you are going to have to place a couple of companies over on the West Bank. A suicide mission you say. The situation here for the Allies is that not everyone is coming home and they know it. If you set up your defense well, then Pz 3 Regt is going to get stuck for a long time. By night fall, you can still have the Germans shooting it out with you at the river crossings. If a defending company breaks, you can try placing a blind slow barrage on the crossing point to slow the Germans up. Eventually, the Germans will regroup and come at you hard and force the issue. As the sun begins to set, it is time to order unengaged units away from the fighting to Larissa to exit. They will get moving at night fall. It's going to take the remainder of the clock to reach Larissa. Those units engaged along the river must stay and hold to the last man. If the river to the South is crossed by the Germans, then you can set up an understrength battalion on the high ground to the West to protect the route South and your artillery. You can use your late arriving armor platoon to move up the road and delay the Germans at various blocking positions if Pz 3 Regt has broken through. This plan is good for a marginal victory. I don't know if a decisive victory is possible. In my opinion, the scenario is possibly 6-12 hours too short for the Allies to make it to Larissa to withdraw. They have a lot of ground to cover and start off pretty fatigued to begin with, and, of course, they are being shot at. However, you may find yourself much more proficient at this game than I am. So, let me know if you suceed in getting a decisive victory as the Allies!
< Message edited by MarkShot -- 11/3/2005 4:01:04 PM >
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(於 11/13/21 台北,台灣,中國退休)
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