DAR - Sweeny Mark, the Demon Commander of Meet Street seeks revenge

[Colonel Talvela]

This DAR has been canceled because I am grumpy

You will have to look for ramblings somewhere else Ratzki

[Ratzki]

:hissy::hissy:Come on, you are always grumpy! I'm gonna hold my breath 'till you start your DAR again. It does not work for my kids but I think that they are just doing it wrong.:hissy::hissy:

[Colonel Talvela]

Cirmustances compel me to continue the first, and probably last, blitz-way musical. To refresh your memory, scene 1 had the vanquished Sweeny Mark returning to the land of the blitz that he hates to seek revenge on the vile ELO leader Judge T who crushed his precious green tanks.

Scene 2
Sweeney Mark roams the blitz looking for a way to get noticed by the brilliant Judge T or the ugly and stupid Beadleto Bamford. Sweeney seizes his opportunity by challenging the verbose and arrogant blowhard Sig-n!hirr! Petielli to a battle while having Beadleto Bamford judge the results.

Sweeney Mark was able to give the overconfident Sig-n!hirr! a surprising defeat. You can read all the details of the battle at another site, but below is a nice summary.

(The best way to read the below is to click on this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuHo3m8xWgM watch is once and then read along as the music plays)

Sig-n!hirr! Petielli (sung)

To conquer da map
Or even a part
Need-a more than just tanks
Require da heaaaart!
Not just-a da flash
It take-a panache
It take-a da passion for da art

To kill-a da men
To blow up da tanks
To make-a da Yankees
Start waving der hankies
Dis is from early infancy
Da talent give to me
By God

It take-a da tanks
It take-a da guns
It take-a da grilles
To inflict-a da pains
I love-a using
Deadly meat baaaaaaaaaaaaalllls!


Beadleto Bamford (spoken)

The winner ... is Sweeney.

Sweeney Mark beats the Sig-n!hirr! in a draw, and thus was allowed an audience, that is a battle, with the vile Judge T. Updates on that battle, possibly in prose, to follow soon.

[Ratzki]

:happy:There, I can breathe again.

[Colonel Talvela]

Turn 10 Orders

This game started out slow. I rushed all my units to where I wanted them, and waited for about another 5 turns to even spot Coil, despite the fact that he was able to snipe one of my M10s on turn 3 (I didnt ever spot the tank that shot me - I smoked out my approach to the far right, which I think gave away my path and Coil was able to get 4 vehicles in a keyhole and fire as the M10 was trying to sprint to cover).



At this point, things were ok, but not great. I couldnt get LOS behind the yellow line, so his units were safe. I knew he had 3 stugs, and 150SP, and a panther (I didnt spot the panther, I heard it fire at my M10). But I hadnt seen any units on my left, which was somewhat disturbing.

So at this point I was pushing forward on my left, trying to keep him off the flag in the middle, and waiting on the far right.

[Colonel Talvela]

Turn 13



Sweeney has a lone stug out chasing my Chaffees on the right. The stug is meters from LOS to my lead chaffee, so I have to do something. Brave or foolish on his part, I dont know, but I suspect a trap.

I see I have three options to deal with this stug:
1) Bring my three chaffees against it and dual frontally.
2) Bring my two chaffees near the flag up to flank it, a sure kill on the stug if they can get LOS
3) run with my chaffees on the right.

I choose option 3 for a few reasons. I dont like number 1 too much because it doesnt pass the "dont fight even fights test", despite the fact that I have three on 1 odds. Problem is those chaffees might take a few shots to KO the stug frontally, and I could lose a couple tanks really quickly.

I dont like number 2, because I suspect he has another stug and panther waiting for me to pop up with a chaffee to take the stug in the side.

And so I choose the safe route. Had my chaffees already exhausted their HE, I probably would have done something different, but I really need them to kill inf before I start dueling with tanks.

So I shoot some smoke and hide with my far right chaffees, and manage to get away without losing another tank.

[Colonel Talvela]

Turn 15 orders



I finally get a better idea of where Sweeney's force is on my right (still havent seen anything on the left, which bothers me).

I marked three stugs with red. You can also see a panther, which is just out of LOS of my gun on the right. And I am about to have a dual with his 150SP, which should go to my advantage unless the 150 can land a lucky HC shot.

I also decide to take advantage of my better map position. I am going to advance with my right inf platoon and try to take the scattered trees in the blue circle. If I can get tanks to those blue dots, I should have LOS to all his troops.

Turn 15 action

The turn starts bad. The "150SP" fire first, and KOs my chaffee with 1 shot. Only it isnt a 150SP, it is a stug. I hate those misIDs. Although I should have known since it was shooting smoke last turn, but I didnt pay real close attention. The fact is, their was a 150SP shooting the previous turn, but it is ID'd as a stug way in the back. arrggg.

Sweeney continues to smoke around the flag, trying to protect his tanks from flank shots I believe.

[Colonel Talvela]

Turn 18 Action

Really bad news.



I get a piece of information that makes the battle so far make more sense, and also really makes me have a bad feeling. those arent stugs I am facing, but crack hetzers. If Sweeney took a platoon of crack hetzers, a crack panther, and two companies of crack germans, I am really going to be in trouble. Normally I wouldnt advocate taking an entire crack force, but in this case it would really work out for him, because I am so spread out, my numbers advantage wont be able to help me.

so it looks like he has nothing on my left, but he can wipe me out on the right winning the inf battle and the tank battle. Then after my right side is toast, he can attack my left side and at least get a draw or a good victory.

So the first thing I decide is to get my two chaffees on my far left (not shown above) and bring them close to the left flag. To kill those hetzers I am going to have to have some flank shots.

In the picture above, you can see my chaffees on the far right finally found some targets to blast. yeah, kill those crack troops. My two M10s are at the top right of the screen still waiting for opportunity to engage. My chaffee by the flag is hiding as long as possible. Often having a tank alive is the only thing that prevents a position from falling.

Forgot to mention, the turn previous, my gun fired on the hetzer (shown as a stug) next to the panther and made a side contact, but it was a track hit with no damage. Frustrating.

[Colonel Talvela]

Note - this game ended today, but I have been meaning to post some shots for a while (and the above is posted how I remember it at the time).

At turn 18, I do think Coil had the advantage (at least on my right - I owned the left), but it went downhill for Mark pretty quickly after this.

mark, you care posting in here what your thoughts were at this point?

[The Coil]

Mark, you care posting in here what your thoughts were at this point?

"Dear Hapless Coil, would you mind posting in here some thoughts about how you threw another game away? -Love, CT" (my paraphrase).

Sure. At turn 18, I was thinking "It's turn 18, and I'm not dead yet - this is going waaay better than the last game. Maybe he'll bog some tanks and I can win by a draw."

Ok, seriously this time - you're right, by turn 18, I was feeling pretty good, thought I had a decent chance of winning. I then proceeded to make a couple of my initial tactical blunders even worse with some additional tactical blunders. I'll give you a full accounting of my mistakes (and how CT capitalized on them to smack me around - he's not a bad CM player, that CT), but it'll make a lot more sense with some screenshots, and I don't have time to do the screenshots right now, so you'll have to wait a bit...