1914 Valour - FWWC Tournament Round 6

[SvenDuuva]

Thanks for everyone for another nice tournament, and especially Patric for running it!

[Almskaar]

ComradeP, please do explain your wizardry

[Steel God]

Patric - thank you for taking the time and effort to organize the Tournament and run it.  It is an almost thankless task, so from the bottom of my heart - THANK YOU, seriously.

To my opponents and other participants with whom I didn't get to play against, but played with, thank you all for making time in your gaming schedules to participate.  

To those who have extended congratulations - thank you, I am humbled by the kind words.  In all honesty after my round 2 game was terminated early, and well short of the points I thought I would have earned, I stopped thinking I had any chance at winning and was just playing the rounds for the fun of it. Just goes to show you that you never know and should keep plugging away.  A mere 2 points is essentially an artillery strike on a Field Gun unit with a good result.  Amazing when you think about it.

It was fun - and that's what matters.

Good Luck & Good Gaming to everyone.

[ComradeP]

ComradeP, please do explain your wizardry

Though it might seem like an ambitious strategy, I'd say it was a conservative one.

I thought the chance of forcing a breakthrough through a frontal attack was small for four reasons: Staggered releases of Bulgarian units, the terrain preventing moving and assaulting, the numerous Irish MG's and visibility dropping to 1 or 2 hexes on day 2 and 3 which would make my own MG's and field guns largely useless.

The Irish deployment makes them vulnerable to being outflanked using the trail from Belasica Planina across the stream to Kara Bail. I thought the Irish would not be able to both cover the objectives and the supply sources, and ideally wanted to prevent British reinforcements. 

The Trakiyska Division spent the first day moving south, with the aim of cutting off Entente supplies somewhere during day 2 in a part of the map where moving and assaulting would be possible. The part of the division that is initially Fixed would follow on day 2 and would try to take the Causli objective. Together with casualty points from the Irish line being stretched thin and vulnerable to assault, I hoped it would carry the day with limited losses.

The brigade from the Rilska Division would keep the Irish honest in the north, but even against Isolated units the assault made limited progress.

It worked more or less like I hoped it would, with my opponent able to prevent isolation for a while but losing units in the process. Entente reinforcements couldn't arrive due to Bulgarian units moving to their arrival hexes just in time. Due to the units required, that didn't feel gamey as I used about a regiment to counter the arrival of a regiment+another battalion, engineers and field guns in the area.

The indirect approach did mean only 1 objective was secured, but the Irish lost 5 battalions, several engineer companies, 3 or so MG units and the cyclist company.

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I forgot to thank Patric in my post earlier. Thank you, again, for organizing the tournaments Patric.

Some scenarios were quite rough for the Entente, my compliments to the players on the other team for keeping the turns coming.