MAIN EVENT VII! Ratzki vs Joonny....

[Ratzki]

Boy, I can't wait to see how this one ends.;)

Seeing as how it is officially over, I will start to read the posts, My lips are sealed though as to the winner.

[Der Kuenstler]

Tne battle ends here at the end of minute 35. We can see that Joonny's Germans managed to hold off the Russian hordes from getting to the church, even though they were all low on ammo.



To the North, Ratzki's Russians were able to clear the seaside heavy building of Germans. The central flags are all neutralized because both Russians and Germans were fighting in the vicinity - except for the circled 100 point flag. It is neutral because no one was near it.



And here we have the final screen - Ratzki gets a minor loss...



We can see the flag points are dead even, so the results are judged by who inflicted the most damage. Joonny was able to to this by killing all of Ratzki's T34s and a lot of his infantry with HE. Joonny was also successful in getting to the flags first, which enabled his men to fight from from fixed positions and thus inflict greater casualties on the approaching Russians. All and all an interesting and entertaining battle. Thanks to Joonny and Ratzki for their efforts!



In addition to both players getting a Main Event badge, Joonny will get 100 bonus ladder points as winner and Ratzki will get 50 bonus points. Now we'd all be interested in reading Joonny and Ratzki's comments on the battle....

[Joonny]

Well, Just read all of that : )

First of all thanks to DK for the fantastic as allways DAR. Apologies for not putting in as much comments in as ratzki.

When I was 7 or 8 turns in with 100% morale lets just say that might have got me a tad overconfident, from then on things started going downhill apart from a few lucky moments.

I'll break things down;

No shreks?

To be honest, If i lost all that heavy german armour I don't think a few shreks would have saved me ;), in the end they would have just been a waste of points.

No Anti-Tanks guns? You'd think 2 ATGs could have had quite a party up in those cliffs.

Not mobile enough really, besides ATGs make nice targets for mortars.

At least one FO with fast (1 minute) call down time would have been a must for me - an FO here could see across the whole valley and delay and confuse the Russian advance.

I would have liked some heavy arty, to bring down buildings etc but it was just too expensive.

Good call going with vet armor - good for long range shooting. (Although I'd have mixed some regulars in there for building demolition)

Yes, I think a plt of reg StuHs instead of one of the StuGs would have been a good idea.

I think that the SMG and Jager choice is not wise as even if they have some decent firepower still they cant match the Russian SMG teams and their limited ammo load will be a serius disadvantage in a 30+ turns battle.

They might not be able to match the russian SMG FP, but i thought i'd be coming up against plenty of them so i thought I should go for the best I had. The other thing to keep in mind is the german companies generally come with a lot of stuff that you don't really need on a map like this so that influenced my choice somewhat.

Yes, for 3000 points he doesn't seem to have got a lot.

That was exactly my thought when I first loaded up the map after purchasing my forces lol.

Overall I like this setup - except I would have put riders on the vehicles headed for town - he's going to lose valuable time getting them all there on foot.

The original plan was to hold the armour back until my inf had entered the town, but after seeing jeeps racing for the town I mini panicked and raced them ahead anyway.

Joonny chooses to run his troops the entire first minute towards the woods by the seatown. That is usually no problem, except they had to run uphill part of the ways, which is more tiring

Yup, totally missed the hills that were there lol.

But on the south side above the seawall, Joonny has neglected his men - he keeps them running the entire second minute. Now all of them are tired and could soon be pushed to exhaustion, making them almost worthless until they've rested....

Troops that have a fast order who become tired immediately switch to move, AFAIK they will not go past tired like this, you need to crawl them everywhere to exhaust them.

It certainly looks like it's going that way. Here in minute seven Joonny decides to have his AFVs blow down the church. This was actually a mistake, IMHO.

Reading the DAR i agree, i thought I spotted some MG teams in there but obviously didn't, in the end it took more HE shells than I was expecting and I was sorely missing those by the end of the match.

After a couple of forgettable minutes, Ratzki gets one of his T34/85s in great position for a shot on the German overwatch bullies from the North side of town. What a job positioning this tank!

Yes that was amazing tank skills, don't know if it was intentional or not but it was still brilliant.

In this shot from Joonny's view, we see the German infantry defense is not going so well. His lead squad with the cover arc can't see anything due to smoke from the fallen building - they just sit there. His platoon HQ also sits there. The squad that can see is being overwhelmed by russian fire. The tank hunter team in the rubble is down to one pinned man after the building fell on them.

yes this was pretty poor defensive positioning on my part.

More than the enemy forces, time is a much more potent enemy at the moment. Jonny has chosen to sit in the defence, not something that I would have done. If he would have came all the way forward, my move into the town would have been ruined.

Perhaps this was the case, but all those russian contact markers scared me into keeping still and not exposing myself to any more enemy fire.

I bet Jonny wishes that he had bought some more regular infantry instead of those SMG squads.

Actually a plt less of StuGs and a few more plts of SMG might have done the trick.

We'll start off with a shot to the Southern woods. Joonny has pulled his men up in a line here. They are all low on ammo and haven't made a move towards the Russian star icons in the woods at all.

I was actually just resting them, I was planning on sending them after the remnants of the force that I had just blunted, but by the time I got round to moving them again Ratzki had launched his counterattack and they were wiped out.

But for some odd reason the vet Panther picked up the approaching T34, even though it was buttoned and facing the other way, and was able to get his turret around. Consequently the crack T34/85 only gets a ricochet off of the front turret.

When i saw this turn, I thought my panther was screwed.

I think the reasons it got the T-34 are as followed.

Stationary vehicles have better spotting abilities than moving ones.

Higher quality crew

The Panther has a cupola which greatly increases all round visibility.

It certainly wasn't due to any order I gave.



So all in all I really enjoyed this game, and certainly was interesting to be on the other side of the glass so to speak having done a main event myself.

I certainly have sympathy for Ratzki as ive been in the same situation many a time before.

[Der Kuenstler]

But on the south side above the seawall, Joonny has neglected his men - he keeps them running the entire second minute. Now all of them are tired and could soon be pushed to exhaustion, making them almost worthless until they've rested....

Troops that have a fast order who become tired immediately switch to move, AFAIK they will not go past tired like this, you need to crawl them everywhere to exhaust them.

Hmmmff - now that I didn't know - I was wondering why they never got exhausted...

Also very interesting to read how the Panther in town reacted to the threat and prevailed without your orders.

[Ratzki]

Now a look at Ratzki's setup. The big surprise is he's put NOTHING up above the seacliffs. He has basically given all that area up to Joonny without a fight. Looks like he plans to avoid any roads with his T34s and head straight for town. They are all loaded with troops. His ISU 152 has no one on it and will probably hang back to use its HE later. His IS-2 has no riders either - he's alone on the dirt road to the South. He has two jeeps positioned to tow his 45mm ATGs to town quickly. All of his troops are spread out fairly evenly on the red start line.

It seems that neither commander has done the obvious and put an ATG gun or two in those cliffs. Perhaps that's why - it was too obvious. It will be interesting to see how this plays out...

I had done quite a bit of spotting before the game started and I knew that the German side would have the advantage on the hill. When I was informed that I was gonna play my beloved Russian forces, the options were to place a mobile force on the hill which due to the extreme ranges would have been wiped out by superior German optics and guns, or to place a non-mobile force up there. The latter seemed to be a waste as well as the Russians really have nothing that can penetrate German frontal armor from those ranges, plus from the Russian vantage point there was really a limited amount that could be accomplished due to poor LOS. After I worked myself into a lather, I just decided to let the AI pick my forces, and I would deal with what I got.

From Ratzki's side. we can see his T34/85s are flying along on "fast", still not responding to the threat on the seacliffs. An impact from one of the shells of the German AFVs can be seen landing in the grass dangerously near one of the Russian beasts. These Ruskies may be better off to keep going as fast as they can to the cover of town and not try to stop to fire from this disadvantaged position.

I knew right off the rattle, I was in for an uphill fight, can't go head to head with German armor, and very limited movement without being shot at by tanks on both hills positioned in the German setup zone meant that I had to make sure that all was perfect every step of the way or this game would be over real fast. This would burn up valuable time getting everyone into position to enter the town, I would only have one chance at it.

It's not looking good for Comrade Ratzki. At this rate I can see a major victory for Joony.

Nothing like jumping ship right away guys. I mean really, predicting a major victory at about turn 5... I think that I was there as well, just could not see this going well for me even at this point. Still it would come down to me getting all my force into position and then advancing into the town.

Too bad Ratzki didn't put two or three crack 57mm L/73 guns up in his cliffs at the start of the match - that would have given those German thugs on overwatch something to worry about...

Not a chance, at 1000m,and the shots were in fact longer, this 57mm Zis gun could only penetrate 38mm of armor at 60 deg. The Panther's lowest armor value is 63mm at 55deg, I would have needed a miracle to get anything other then wasted points as the Germans blew the crap outta my useless guns. I wasn't gonna be forced to fight a head to head tank battle with no chance of winning. I had to come up with another game plan.

It certainly looks like it's going that way. Here in minute seven Joonny decides to have his AFVs blow down the church. This was actually a mistake, IMHO. The church was empty for one thing, so bringing it down did not kill any Russians. Secondly, it is a heavy building so the smoke will hang there a long time, blocking Joonny's view and allowing Ratzki to run his Russians in there. What I like to do in this situation is shoot the building until it is ALMOST going to fall, then let it sit there. That way the other guy will be afraid to run his troops in, because another shell or two would bring it down.

Blowing that church up was great for me, I needed smoke and what better then a downed building. I was not planning to use the church anyhow.

After a couple of forgettable minutes, Ratzki gets one of his T34/85s in great position for a shot on the German overwatch bullies from the North side of town. What a job positioning this tank! Only the one stug has LOS to it because of the house - the other two AFVs are left out of the picture. An exchange of shells ensues...

I would like to take more credit for the shot then is due. I knew that shooting through a building was a possibility, but I could not have planned it this perfect.

This is one of those minutes where the whole battle can change within a few fateful seconds. In this first shot we can see Ratzki is charging one of Joonny's vet Panthers in town with one of his Pioneer squads. The squad has two satchel charges which would be deadly if thrown at the buttoned Panther. A rifle platoon is already in the building nearby with grenades to throw.

There were just two turns that I would like to have had over again, this was one of them. The Panther blows it's stack and releases Mr happy (nahverteidigungswaffe), and then a series of random events takes over that changes the whole game. The panther retreats into LOS of two of my t34's, I get off a couple shots, ring the bell but no KO and the panther takes out two of my tanks. A short distance away, another t34 puts one into a Stug but again, I do not get a kill, but the Stug kills my t34 on the following shot.
Realistically this was the nail in the coffin.


I think that I have answered any/all the questions that might be out there. Jonny played a good game, very challenging from my end.
Thanks to Der K and Jonny for the parts they played, a good DAR and a good opponent.
Thanks for the one member that supported me all the way, he did remain silent throughout the battle, never posting but I could feel the support that he was sending me every turn that I played.;)
If anyone gets asked to do this in the future, take it, the pressure to play well is pretty intense and if the enemy player is at all skilled, it makes for a great game and atmosphere. I could not wait to get each and every turn back.

[Ken F. (FGM)]

Many thanks to the brave opponents and Der K for these very entertaining DAR's. Sometimes I am so busy with work, life, etc. that I don't have time for much Combat Mission, but I can still come to this excellent site and get my fix...!

Best regards,
Ken

[willow]

:happy: sorry about the lack of confidence ratzki! I should have know you could almost turn it around! :bow:

[Ratzki]

Well, I would not go that far. It was a good event, tough opponent.:)