WiFFE Deluxe game
A Fascist Tide
"Tuesday Night campaign"
(Sorry, I have a poor
imagination... but maybe something will make this memorable later on.)
As a side note, I am writing this
from my memory up to November/December 1941, so the report may not be totally
accurate. But it's better that nothing, right?
Note
2: Click the pictures for higher resolution pics. But beware - they're pretty
big, up to 1.4 MB apiece.
Rules:
RAW
6.01 with all optionals, except
·
17. HQ movement
·
19. In the presence of
the enemy
·
43. 2-dice land combats
·
63. Intelligence
·
67. 2 Die 10 Land CRT
No house
rules, no Annual rules. This is a straight RAW game for once! 
(Plus Guards Banner Armies for Russia.)
Players:
Germany:
Juha Jansson (me), finally getting to the driver's seat after a long while :)
Italy:
Mika Launilahti, my trustworthy ally;
CW
& USA: Teemu
Juntunen, the old fox; and
USSR & France:
Jan-Jonas "Jankke" Filen, a fair and friendly opponent.
Setup
Italy sets up against France and Egypt,
Germany 90% against Poland. Russia sets up
a bit everywhere. Nothing spectacular about CW or France.
Sept/Oct 1939
Germany blasts through Poland; Russia
claims East Poland. German troops head West.
Nov/Dec 1939
Germany keeps moving
troops toward West, and send the navy out to play with CW in bad weather.
Suddenly the weather clears and three German cruisers are sunk!
Russia demands Finnish
borderlands. Germany, seeing
Russia
is only half-prepared, denies the claim. Finland
sets up so that they can keep the Russians out of Finland proper for one impulse,
axis pass and fail to roll the needed "3" to end the turn. Russia advances into Finland and turn ends.
Jan/Feb 1940
Germany
DOWs Denmark and races a self-propelled artillery into Fredrikshavn. CW invades
and attacks it, captures the port and sends cruisers to raid the Baltic, albeit
unsuccesfully. Russia
advances in Northern Finland and isolates Mannerheim in Petsamo, and maneuvers
units into place to attack Vyborg.
Germany DOWs Belgium on the last impulse (in rain) and manages to end
the turn with a "5".
Mar/Apr 1940
Axis
wins initiative and, thanks to double turn, manages to occupy all of Belgium without
giving the Allies a chance to react. CW again raids the Baltic with cruisers
from Fredrikshavn, and this time cuts the convoy line to Swedish resources. The
convoy line is repaired only two turns later. Russia
attacks Vyborg,
kills a militia but loses two units herself.
May/Jun 1940
Germany burns an offensive
chit on Rundstedt and blasts through the French lines (at something like
3:1+1 attacks). At the end of the turn Germany
has two hexes on Paris.
Russia captures Vyborg. Italy DOWs France
and CW DOWs Italy.
Italy lands in Syria and
starts transporting corps there.
Jul/Aug 1940
Germany takes Paris,
and France
starts making suicide attacks with the little troops the have left (the
French lines are like cheese - full of holes). At the end of the turn Germany has taken Rouen,
Paris, Nantes, Metz and Vichy.
No Vichy is
declared. Russia
musters troops to attack West of Vyborg. Turn ends before CW wakes up and
manages to move BEF out of near Lille and
towards Brest.
Sep/Oct 1940
Italy transports the two
remaining needed corps into Syria
and aligns Iraq.
France rails a unit into Toulouse where Germans
haven't advanced, because they have been too preoccupied with harassing CW at
sea (Hey, I have built all subs and Tirpitz and Graf Zeppelin. I'd better
use them too! As it is, I was considering a Gibraltar -41, Barbarossa -42
strategy if my gracious opponents would give me a good chance to pull it off -
getting to Spain easily
before declaring Vichy
was an essential part of the plan. It seems I kind of blew it.). Russia attacks
West of Vyborg; defenders are retreated to no Russian losses. Germany declares Vichy; only Equitorial Africa goes free.
Italians in Syria are
transported into Italian hexes in Palestine.
Nov/Dec 1940
Russia attacks NE of Helsinki and
retreats the defenders to NW of empty Helsinki.
One division steps up behind the line, first walks on the exhausted Russian
attackers, and then on to Helsinki,
overrunning two Finnish planes. The Finnish war is over. Germany starts
slowly moving units East. Italy
begins to evacuate their troops in Palestine.
Jan/Feb 1941
On a
whim of clear weather, Germany DOWs Yugoslavia and aligns Hungary. Yugoslavia sets up surrounding Zagreb;
Belgrade is
left for the wolves. Russia
realizes that if she wants to demand Bessarabia
she would have to do it now - but she doesn't have nearly enough troops, not
even a single HQ in the vicinity. As expected Germany
then aligns Rumania
before the turn ends. Zagreb
holds. A 1-1 partisan appears in Finland
and is placed in Oulu.
CW bases his cruisers out of Fredrikshavn - Germany has far too many naval
bombers and A2S factors nearby.
Mar/Apr 1941
Germany aligns Bulgaria, and starts moving towards the Russian
border and leaves the hedgehog-defended Zagreb
until later. Italians and Hungarians gather around it, along with three German
corps. Again turn ends very early, and Germany isn't nearly ready for
Barbarossa. Russia demands Baltic States and is a bit more ready, with a heavy commitment
in the North and two 3-sided forts on the spiral.
May/Jun 1941
Thanks
to a very long turn, Germany
manages to move all little grey pieces into their places in the East. Germany cuts the CW supply in North Sea (with
NAVs in North Sea) and flips both units in
Fredikshavn right before the turn ends (with the Stukas left in the West
just for this purpose).
Jul/Aug 1941
Axis
gets initiative and Barbarossa begins! Germany starts out by killing speed
bumps and taking the OOS Fredrikshavn from CW on impulse one, and continues by
attacking fortified Kiev on impulse 3, taking it but flipping. Rundstedt
reorganises some attackers. Attack halts in the North (under the leadeship
of von Leeb) on the gates of Minsk and Vitebsk, but in the South (HQs Rundstedt, Rommel and
von Bock) Russia is
heavily undermanned - Germany
crosses Dniepr without an attack. Odessa is
surrounded, undefended Kursk, Kharkov
and Voronezh
are taken. Stalino, defended by a face-down reserve MECH, is also taken by
circling around Dnepropetrovsk.
On the impulse before the last Pskov (with
one face-down corps), Minsk, Rostov and fortified Dnepropetrovsk
are taken, and all the attackers are disrupted (except in Minsk). Rommel reorganises three corps.
On the last impulse Sevastopol
is taken in a heroic 2:1 +2 attack, and the last of the German army is flipped.
In the
North two lone corps capture Novgorod and
isolate Leningrad.
Kharkov, Kursk
and one Moscow factory were railed into the
safety of Siberia. Factories in Odessa, Kiev, Dnepropetrovsk (2) and
Stalino (2) were destroyed.
CW
strategically bombs Germany
for three production points. Some minor clashes in the Med - resulting in a
couple of damaged cruisers on both sides, and two sunk battleships on CW. Oh,
and Italy ground strikes Zagreb and flips one corps - and Germany decides to
try her luck and captures it, flipping in the process.
(As
Germany I can hardly
complain - all my attacks against Russia were successes, even though not
one of them was a sure thing. Both attacks against forts were something like
50-50 deals and I made them both - and the rest of the city-taking attcks
weren't much better. OTOH, my search rolls have been awful - I have sunk a
total of 6 CW convoy point until the end of this turn, and all of them during
one sub battle where I got lucky. That just plain sucks.)
Sep/Oct 1941
German
steamroller continues to advance - half the time in decent weather, half the
time in poor weather. Bryansk, Ryazan,
Krasnodar and Stavropol
are taken without opposition; Tula and Odessa are attacked and
taken. Russia has formed a
ring around Moscow, and a weaker one around Stalingrad (with Zhukov in it). Smolensk,
Vitebsk and Gomel are also occupied.
At the
end of the turn a huge pocket between Smolensk, Vitebsk and Gomel
is formed - with both Russian HQ-I's (Yeremenko flipped) and a tank, and
two flipped planes in it. Russians try to open a route to oil from it by
attacking a German infantry corps, but the plan fails - it is only retreated
and hence still retains a ZOC that blocks a supply path. Russia has to leave a lone gun into the hex and
hope turn ends - but it doesn't, and Germany slaughters it and ensures
the oil-dependant units won't flip back.
CW
strategically bombs Germany
for 5 production points. (Naughty, naughty Teemu... but what can you expect
when, as you see, there are too few German fighters facing him? 
) CW also port strikes Brest, and sinks the pride of Kriegsmarine - Graf
Zeppelin.
Moscow, Vitebsk and Kalinin factories were
railed to safety. Krasnodar and Tula were lost to advancing German hordes, and
Leningrad and now also Stalingrad were cut off from the resources (two
German corps managed to get next to the rail line to Stalingrad - that's one
less militia or garrison unit I'll have to worry about).
Left:
Mika showing his traditional eating at our boys' evening. Right: Jankke looking
at the inevitable grey wave flooding further into Mother Russia. Units in
cities won't stop them, forts won't stop them, even bad weather won't stop
them... what will?
Nov/Dec 1941
Winter
arrives and snow falls. Germany
closes the ring around Smolensk, Gomel and Vitebsk, strikes
Timoshenko and the tank in Smolensk face down,
isolates Vitebsk from the rest of the pocket,
and advances towards Stalingrad (and this
time there aren't large Russian reserves on the flanks facing troops consisting
almost only of weak Hungarians and Rumanians!). Russia
weakens Gomel by rushing two units North to keep
a face-down garrison in supply between Vitebsk
and Gomel, and attacks a stack of German
infantries at the gates of Moscow,
blitzing them to oblivion and getting her first Banner unit (a 10-3
infantry).
Left: Germany
put up a couple of fighters to protect against CW raids 
. Right: Teemu and Jankke are trying to figure out
what to do to stop the German steamroller.
Below,
on the left: Teemu trying to figure out what to do to those German subs, ships
- and fighters guarding the factories. Right: Jankke, still thinking.
Impulse
2 coming up, probably being played on the Tuesday after New Year (7.1. 2003).
Check back!
