Players 1943 1944 1945

Hello This is a very late update on our ongoing game played in the great city of Gothenburg in Sweden. First I would like to start off by correcting a mistake I did in the first part of this game report. I made a lot of references to "the Marianas" when it should have been "the Marshalls". Anyway, here follows the rest of the game. This report may seem a bit confusing and it is definitely not chronological, and this is because of me mixing up events (I don't keep notes).

John Huntington playing the Japanese had to surrender his post to Matti Werner (playing all of the Axis now) because of schoolwork (he's studying art).

The players:

CW,US,NC – Me – Fredrik Hansson

RU,CC,FR – Jesper Pehrson

JA,GE,IT – Matti Werner

1943

As we left off the US had won a great naval battle against the Japanese navy and the allies had liberated Denmark. A lot of allied troops mass in Denmark and plans are on their way for liberating Norway.

In J/F the allies successfully carpetbombs the defender of Oslo and a paratrooper is dispatched for an assault of the city. However the RAF had been less successful in cutting German supply to Norway and the attack fails. The paratroopers are dead on arrival and Norway must accept the German occupancy. The Italian navy is raiding the seas around the UK and the Royal Navy is having trouble against this enemy force reinforced by captured French ships. The Chinese crusade against the Japanese invader continues and are now helped by Russians looking to liberate occupied Russian territory including Vladivostok. All quiet on the western front. Indian troops are amassing against the Burmese border in order to recapture all lost British territory. The Communist Chinese take back Shanghai and has now cut the Japanese forces in China in two. An entire American taskforce (no CV's) is annihilated in the Atlantic. The Italian seapower is on the it's peak. In M/A the western allies make an combined invasion in Portugal. The whole Iberian peninsula is almost vacant of axis troops because of the situation in Denmark. The attack is a stunning success and the Germans are taken off their guard. However they manage to rail a lot of blocking troops to the mountains around the road to Madrid, and soon the allies are halted by a wall of Germans and Italians. The Germans feel that now is the time to strike back against these pesky Angloamericans and roll into Denmark in a Blitz that supersedes anything we have seen as yet. The allies proceeds to evacuate as many troops from Denmark as is possible as they are better needed in the south of Europe. The Italian navy sorties against the invasion fleet in the Bay of Biscay and manages to surprise four transports only guarded by fighters. A surface action is chosen and two transports are sunk with their cargo, and two more are damaged. The Royal Navy, however isn't far off. The next round they surprises the Italians and a lot of il Duce's fine ships are sent to the bottom. The Italians wisely realises that they have had their day as a mighty seapower and aborts the combat. Another great battle is taking place in the China Sea. The remnants of the Japanese navy is supporting assaults on the Chinese mainland. Pressured by this sudden shift of focus the Communist Chinese pleads for help to the US Navy (He actually called me Eurocentred…me). The Americans are swift to respond and a great battle commences right outside the Japanese home islands. The battle quickly turns in favour of the Americans, and 3 more Japanese CV's are sent to the bottom, along with several battleships and cruisers, and 2 more are damaged (I am not sure about the actual numbers) to no American losses. This is the second time the US Navy has defeated the Japanese in a grand sea battle, and almost the entire Japanese CV fleet is now sunk. The Americans also manages to find the eight convoys sailing through this sea supplying the Japanese groundforces around the Pacific. These are quickly disposed of, and all Japanese not in the homecountry is OOS. The Royal Navy is also responsible for a carnage on Japanese convoys in the South China Sea. Seeing the Japanese Navy shot to smithereens the US starts to think about the possibility of an operation Olympic. The Russians are having a hard time driving back the German forces. Every time a Russian attack succeeds the Germans gang up on the breakthrough and wipes them out. This is frustrating the western allies as well and they decide that if any progress is to be made a second invasion in France is necessary. This force will have the dual task of tying down reinforcements to the other theatres of operation as well as cutting supply to a well defended Spain. As 1943 finishes preparations are begun in England and the US.

1944

The US takes an undefended and OOS Rabaul from an increasingly frustrated Japanese player. In M/A the allies notices that the Japanese home islands are undefended and immediately goes in to action. A supercombined is called burning an OC in the progress, and an invasion fleet sails to the China sea. Osaka is invaded by US marines in a 7:1 +1, but a bad roll of the dice disrupts the attackers. The invaders are reinforced by divisions capturing the neighbouring hexes and troops are debarked in the vicinity of Tokyo. An invasion fleet is also dispatched to the Bay of Biscay where the British have discovered an undefended and OOS hex on witch an invasion would be easy. The only flaw in this plan is that a harbour would have to be captured soon in order to continue the advance and reinforcing the invaders. Bordeaux is a perfect target and an assault is mounted. Extremely bad rolling seem to be the fate of the allied forces around the world right now. The attack fails. In the mean time the axis are starting to mount a serious defence around the captured hexes. Progress for the allies seem impossible. Gort, debarked in France, reorganizes the attackers and the next assault is a success. However it seems it will be difficult to get inland from this relatively small bridgehead. Another invasion is mounted on a minor port in the north of France. A paradrop on the hex next to the invasion site is also attempted, but as the Germans manages to abort half of the attacking paratroopers, the attack fails. The bridgehead is quickly contained and the Allies seem to be getting no were in Europe. This however is not the case in the Pacific. All around the allies are advancing. Rangoon is recaptured and Singapore seems to be within reach for the Indian tummies. The Nationalist Chinese capture Hanoi. The Communist Chinese take Port Arthur and the Russians liberates Vladivostok. The American troops on the Japanese mainland captures all factories in the south of Japan and only one remains: On the virtually inaccessible and well defended northern island. Suddenly the allies realises what a break it would be if Italy was put out of the game. A major operation begins involving American, British, Indian, Canadian, Australian and French units. They are all transported through Suez and situated on striking distance from a poorly defended Italian home country. TF 16 is dispatched from the Pacific to assist in the operation, as well as Force Z.

In J/A the invasion begins in Naples. The next impulse Rome is taken with an OC and a defence line is created in the mountains. The rest of the turn is spent in gathering as much garrison ratio as possible. The turn eventually ends and Italy is incompletely conquered. The new home country for Italy is Albania. The next turn begins with allied invasions in Tirana, Malta and Libya two hexes from Tripoli. The axis can only sit and watch as the allies bring Italy out of the game. Tripoli is taken in an Australian operation involving an OC on Blamey. The Italians make a lot of suicide attacks in the end of the turn. They manage to destroy a CW ARM-unit in France. The Russians are very inspired by the western Allies effectivity in taking out Italy (It took two turns from preparations to complete conquest) and aim at taking out Rumania. A paradrop is made outside Bucharest and Russian paratroopers take the city. The Russians pray for the turn to end, but it doesn't and German forces can take the town from the OOS Russians. The rest of this report is to be taken with a pinch of salt, because it is written about two months (realtime lol)after the game ended. Here is how I remember it anyway:

1945

In Spain the situation dramatically changes after the fall of Italy. Many hexes are now defended by only one unit, and some are not defended at all. The western allies air superiority is now unquestioned since all the Italian aircraft surrendered their planes and pilot goggles. In France it is the same thing and the Germans begin a retreat to shorter lines. The retreat is not total and the US and CW forces have a hard time fighting the heavy stacks left behind. Spain soon falls to the might of US forces and some German units is trapped in Spain OOS. Some time in the spring of 1945 the two armygroups from Spain and France link up and begin driving northwards. The pacific theatre sees very little action for the remainder of the game with on or two exceptions. CW forces take Singapore and begin preparations for an assault on Batavia. Russian forces keep hitting the German lines in a desperate attempt to gain a breakthrough. Every time they succeed, however, the Nazis just hit them back and re-establishes the lines. Stalin begins to be very frustrated over the lack of momentum he feels he should have by this time. The Germans establishes defence lines in northern Italy and France and the Allies are getting nowhere. The Luftwaffe begins transferring all aircraft to the eastern front as they feel they have no chance over the combined US and CW airforces. They leave only a token force in France and Germany to prevent +1 DRM on carpet bombing and strategic attacks. This proves to be an effective strategy as the Russian planes are dropping like flies and Germany soon has complete air supremacy over the Russian skies. Thus the Russian forces are held at bay with lots of effective groundstrikes on the attack- stacks. Stalin pulls his hair. The last few months of the game sees heavy but static fighting on all European theatres. The allied advance goes far to slow and the truth reveals itself: The Germans are going to win the game for the Axis. In desperate attempts to take key victory locations the Allies launches several attacks at various odds-levels – needless to say they all failed (even at odds of 3-1 +3 and re-roll). Many OC:s are burnt the last two turns but to little or no effect.

After a short J/A-45 turn the game ends to a Axis victory by 4 objectives. The Allies were speechless and couldn't understand what went wrong. In retrospect I believe that an earlier invasion of Italy (by whatever force) could have been to our advantage, but I fail to see how we could have accomplished that. The Russians fought bravely but couldn't get through (among other reasons because of extremely poor die-rolling). I also think that I should have put more emphasis on strategic bombardment as the German player had way to many buildpoints to distribute even at the end of the game. There are probably many more reasons to the embarrassing Axis victory, but I won't contemplate them here and now. That's all for now, but tune in this summer as another game starts – The Allies Strike Back! Best wishes Fredrik (CW,US,NC)

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