Bulge 16.01s alt

[Plain Ian]

Forgot to mention it last time, but great AAR indeed.

Its getting there. Need a bit more work on presentation. I will also try to improve my grammar and make things easier to read, especially for readers who might not speak English as their first language.

Because my opponent has been playing a very measured game, it has also been fairly easy to report it and hopefully keep it going.

In campaign games, with time to rest your units, losing whole units is more painful than suffering reasonably high losses. As long as a unit doesn't die, it can refit and be used again after all.

Still, you don't seem to lose entire divisions worth of quality troops so when more reinforcements show up and the weather improves, you should have a good chance of pushing him back.

Yes losing an element/company of a broken down Battalion effectively makes that Battalion a liability, even if it later combines. The 4th Division has quite a few Battalions which are short of companies and this means that Fatigue goes up very quickly when they are hit. It means they cannot hold ground.

My opponent has written that he is still keen to cut off and kill if possible. The attack in the south almost pocketed the 4th/10th Armoured against the map edge, and at Bastogne he is still trying to pocket the armour units there.

As you wrote, the Germans don't have a lot of divisions and they're vulnerable to attrition.

Yes when you look at the 2 'over view' maps, there really isn't a lot of German units showing is there? And of course in most cases he usually has ALL of that Division on the front line, with no reserves behind it. When I think about it, the only German unit from his 'start up' forces that I haven't see so far is the 62nd VGD? I wonder where it is?

Achieving attrition is difficult in this game. I can only think of a few times when I have hurt him badly.

1. I used 2 full strength Tank Battalions against a Panzer Lehr StuG X unit and wiped it out.
2. At Mersch he moved units over the River into the town, but because it was Rubbled they were stuck in T-mode. I clobbered them with artillery and tank fire.

But there is a small drip drip of losses. I'm amazed that he has lost 12,000+ men?

However it is tanks that worry me. I wish that this scenario used the special breakdown option, so that certain models of tanks were more likely to breakdown. eg Panthers/Tigers/King Tigers.

I also wish that US troops had similar hard attack value to the VG units so that German tanks took a steady drain of losses.

I also wish that US artillery was made a bit more lethal. I realise that the artillery stats for both sides are based on McNamarra and can't be changed, but maybe increasing US artillery to A morale would give them an edge?
The use of the proximity fuze and T.O.T. is sometimes cited as the reason why the Germans were held at Elsenborn. Perhaps this is an exaggeration but it was certainly a contributing factor which is difficult to achieve in this scenario....unless I'm playing it wrong.

Until then I wait for good weather and air to start whittling down the Germans.

Sorry for havering.

Ian