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

[The Coil]

Ok, here's my little "Anatomy of a Catastrophe," a little look at how a mediocre player can take a decent tactical advantage and turn it into a total loss to a really good player.

As CT notes, at turn 18, I was feeling decent. I had popped a TD and a Chafee, hadn't sustained any real losses myself, had infantry moving on the left flag, and had a 150 IG targeted up on the right flag. Here's where it stood:



Red circles are my Hetzers, blue is the Panther, yellow my Grille. CT had me well flanked down my left side, but my Hetzer in the back was keeping him from coming all the way around. Had another Hetzer facing left in the middle, the Panther and the third Hetzer overwatching my last Hetzer, which had moved up to the flag to cover my infantry advance on the flag and chase down another Chafee which had a sight line to the flag. This Hetzer is a bit too far forward and getting close to some of CT's infantry, but my infantry is close behind, and the Hetzer is tucked in close to a building shielding his flank from fire on his right.

I was feeling ok at this point, CT's flankers were covered by my 2 Hetzers, had a Panther and 2 Hetzers to clear the flag and swing toward the middle. I knew I had to move quick (here's why I start falling apart) because CT is bringing some armor to bear from the right side of the map, and I don't want to get caught between two flanking moves.

Turn 19, things start going wrong - my forward Hetzer gets popped from the right. Had him tucked behind a building, but his rear end is hanging out, and CT whacks him from the far right. At about the same time, he nails my Grille with an as yet unseen gun.

I start feeling the pressure, knowing I need to clear out the flag on my left soon if I want to have enough time to challenge the other one, and knowing I need to kill some of the flankers before Dave can pincer me. Somebody (I forget who, but whoever it was was very wise) once said soemthing like, "Whenever I'm not sure what to do, I just don't move for a couple turns, and generally my opponent does something to throw the game my way." It's surprising how true this is, and it's exactly what I proceed to do. Got impatient, got nervous when I lost the first Hetzer, and made some dumb mistakes.

I move the Panther and the Hetzer forward, smoking their right flank. The Hetzer moves to take out the Chafee in front of the flag, the Panther covers him. They are, I can't emphasize enough, well protected by a little rise on their left and copious amounts of smoke on their right. They proceed to wax the Chafee, roughly according to plan.

Also, in order to keep CT moving one group of flanking tanks up on my Panther/Hetzer team, I move another Hetzer toward the flankers, weaving cleverly through the trees to protect his flanks. Not real worried about a frontal shot killing him, and it'd be great to peg a flanking tank. I end him in decent position to take on some armor at the end of the turn. Then I realize I've also left him in decent position to be shot by one of CT's flankers at the back of the map, if CT would move his tank over about 5m. The next turn, I try to back him out of there, but sure enough, he gets whacked. Should've just sit tight with him.

Now, my Panther and Hetzer are cozily protected by the rise on their left and the smoke on their right. They've cleared out the flag. Unfortunately, CT has cleared out the Hetzer that was keeping CTs armor off their left flank. And, umm, that smoke is going to clear in a turn or so, exposing my right flank to CTs armor coming from the right. And I've got no safe places to run to. Hint: a great position created by temporary cover is only a great position for a little while. Then it's a really bad position.

I forget the exact sequence, but my Panther and Hetzer turn to engage the flankers on the left, hopefully to clear them out before the smoke clears. The Panther gets taken out frontally by a TD, the Hetzer lives another turn or two, but gets it in the back when the smoke dissapates.

My final Hetzer, way in the back, makes his way around to the right and forward, and nails another Chafee before being overwhelmed by CTs remaining armor.

Here's what I would've done differently, in retrospect:

Been a bit more patient with my armor, played the Hetzers a little less aggressively. Of course, if I'd done that, I might have gotten pincered...

So maybe I should've worked harder to clear out CTs flanking positions right away, instead of just stalemating them. But that would've taken a long time, and CT would've had his infantry on both the flags, and it would've been durn near impossible to weed him out of there anyway...

So I think I should've recognized he'd go for that position and set up to deny it to him right from the start. But I suck at reading maps, and probably could've looked at it all day and not realized how critical that position was...

So I think maybe my mistake was playing CT in the first place. He's too good to expect to beat in a draw EVERY game. If you're ever in a situation where someone is picking the name of your next opponent out of a hat, and you might get me and you might get CT, just pray you get me...