Top Player Invitational

[KG_AGCent]

Congrats to Koz as he edged me out in our 2nd round mirrored battle.

I am writing this in the hopes that Koz will write his own perspective in this thread as well.

As Russians, Kozinski played a little fast and loose in the opening turns with his infantry and subsequently had his infantry force gutted early on. However he was able to nicely preserve his armored elements from too much exposure to my faust-laden troops giving him a nice destructive punch against defensive points which caused me to displace earlier than I wanted to in many places. Having to fall back to avoid being caught in exploding buildings gave up precious space needed to prevent a flank turning. In the end , he was able to turn my left flank and make an (unsuccessful) rush for a second of three rear-area VL's. This rush was quelled by a rapidly displacing 75mm PaK40.

In retrospect, I held the center of town uncontested after Kozinski's initial boondoggle. I was able to divert the pressure to the flanks and preserve the center of town which allowed freedom of movement to reinforce the flanks basically where needed. After a fierce and bloody fight for the (German) right hand factory complex I was forced to concede the VL but was able to prevent a breakout with another intrepid 75mm PaK40.

My two fatal flaws were that I held forces in the center for entirely too long fearing a feint at the flanks and a renewed attack where I had had success early on. If I had displaced more quickly to the rear are VL's I could had put more of a hurting on his flanking force than I did.

In the end Koz held 2 minor and 2 major VL's with 1 in contest. I held 4 major VL's giving the defender (Germans) a 56-44 minor victory.

As the Germans, Koz had success where I failed. He was able to displace infantry in strength enough to hold 2 rearmost VLs. Also he deployed in much greater depth than I did. I had hope to be able to draw him in and and cut him down in a building fight with flanking fire as he attempted to negotiate my obstacles. Koz seemed to opt for traditional defense-in-depth, stalling rather than trying to stop. I also helped his effort a great deal by allowing too many of my tanks to venture too closely to some buildings and he made me pay dearly for the mistake with 5 dead tanks, 4 of them in the same turn.

I, however, was able to successfully occupy both factory complexes. The factory on the (German) right Koz inexplicably abandoned and the factory on the (German) left was taken after a brutal firefight in which decimated remains of an SMG/Recon company slogged it out with almost 2 platoon of Panzergrenadiers. I was able to overcome his infantry by driving 5 tanks right up to the factory walls, push the snouts of my tanks in and collapsing 2 center sections fo the factory on top of his troops with direct area fire. This victory came too late in the game for me to be able to capitalize on it by sweeping into the center VL behind the (German) left hand factory complex. My men were too exhausted and brutalized themselves.

On offense, where Koz opted to drop buildings on the flanks to make space for the remainder of his troops to move into, I preferred to assault them each at a time. My thinking was that I wanted those same buildings to stack troops in to schwerepunkt the next objective. Also the dust created do nothing to help lines of sight and spotting of displacing or routed troops that can be cut down in the open.

As the Russians I was able to only pull out a minor loss 42-58 giving a 2 point margin of victory overall.

Good games, Koz. Well played.

[KG_Koz]

I thoroughly enjoyed both games and feel truly fortunate to have eeked out a slight overall advantage.

Comments from Russian perspective:

My initial thoughts were to push hard with the initial recon troops to ascertain if Rob was defending the edge of the setup zone in strength. Since I chose a layered defense, I kinda assumed that Rob would do the same and had a "feeling" that a strong push would overcome the initial opposition. I also planned to waste some the initial recon vehicles attempting to determine the location of Rob's AT gun net. My plan was to identify a weak point (or points) and subsequently smash through to the rear large VL's. My goal was not to capture the small VL's (although I certainly would have been happy to capture them).

The first 3 or 4 turns went fine. I identified approx AT gun locations in the center and on the right side. Then, I got embroiled into what Rob referred to as a boondoggle! After some of my lead elements were cut down advancing toward the large factory, I threw away platoon after platoon trying to get into the buildings on the edge of the factory. When the recon units failed, I decided that smg's would handle the job. Well...they didn't. Rob did a great job in his initial review of the map as he seemed to always be present in force where I didn't expect him and didn't setup in buildings where I did expect him. He kept inf back from the edge of the building where my covering units could not get a bead.

Many of you are aware that I frequently plot movements for troops and add delays so that the movements are immediate in the following turn. Typically I cancel the plots but this gives me a way to quickly exploit an opportunity. This works great until you forget to cancel the plots! Unfortunately, I sent two platoons to their death by forgetting to cancel the plotted movements and marching them straight at buildings where I know Rob was entrenched in strength.

By the time that The T34's and SU's started arriving, most of my initial recon and smg units were all dead. Realizing that I had seriously screwed myself, I started chucking HE at buildings in an attempt to minimize inf casualties and to create smoke/debris that would allow my armor to move forward. Since the center was proven to be strong, I decided to push toward each flank.

Rob's timely relocation of a pak40 caused me to lose lots of needed points and saved one of his large VL's.

As Rob noted, he kept too many units in the center. If I had not been hunting with my armor, I may have been able to get past that bothersome pak40 and take control of an additional large VL.

In the end, I was lucky to take only a minor defeat after such a miserable beginning. Rob definitely played a better game and would have had a stronger victory had he been a tad bit less conservative with his center inf in the last ten turns of the game.

Comments from German perspective:

Here, the game played out much as I originally hoped it would.

As Rob noted, my plan was for a defense in depth where I would be able to retain sufficient inf forces to protect the rear VL's. My AT guns were all setup in rear locations. I hoped to make use of shreck teams and fausts in the first 2/3 of the game, allowing my AT guns to remain hidden. Ultimately, I planned to not defend the rear left VL in favor of the rear center and right VL's.

Hoping that Rob would advance very cautiously after seeing what his entrenched inf did to me, i did decide to abandon the right factory early in the game. Good thing I did, that platoon is the platoon that successfully defended one of the rear VL's later on! My goal was never to retain that VL. I had already begun to abandon the center buildings and since my AT net was so far back I felt that Rob would easily be able to suppress the position with uncontested HE.

On the German left, my orderly retreat didn't go as orderly as I had hoped and Rob caught too many of my units in the open. I ended up retreating an entire co of pzgrs to the center of the large factory. Lucky for me, I pulled one platoon out so when Rob did his tank assault he only KO'd two platoons. The third platoon holed up in a building behind the factory. From that building, I hoped some faust shots could be made and that I could defend the adjacent small VL. It was costly to lose the two platoons in the factory, but worth it as it appeared to tie up lots of units and certainly slowed things down.

Rob and I both had one bad turn as the Russian in which multiple armored units were whacked. Had I not KO'd those four AFV's the game might easily have been very different.

Rob played very well in both games and easily could have had minor or tactical victories in both games had things gone a bit different. They were tough, brutal games with lots of action. Our different approaches to the German defense created an interesting contrast.

[KG_Swampfox]

Gents,

Great AARs....... nice work

Swamp

[KG_Soldier]

*&*%$#@@@#%*# cheating @#$ Rob!!!!!

Watch out for him. He's a sneaky one!

[KG_ThorsHammer]

anyone use the sewers?
I took a chance and sent some units through them on the German right and they popped up late to secure vls and hit Stus troops from behind. Turns out they saved my ass as the battle was very close.