Serbia shall live! Serbia '14 4th Invasion AAR - Central Powers conceded turn 150

[Mr Grumpy]

It's not always clear how objectives were captured at a certain time, the objectives on the Danube I Division and Drina I Division front are difficult to secure for the Central Powers unless they get excellent Disruption rolls against the defenders in the bunkers.

The Semendria objective is a "maybe" if the Central Powers player is aware of the gap between the Danube I and Frontier Guard companies, but it's still difficult to capture. My opponent made no push towards the objective, preferring to breakthrough towards the south between the Danube I Division and Drina I Division. I think that's a better move.

I'm not really sure how Pozarevac can realistically be captured before it expires. The Drina I Division quality is good to great, there's a solid bunker line and rivers at the flank.

Similarly, the timetables for capturing the secondary and tertiary line Beograd objectives are also a bit optimistic I'd say, whereas the timetable for capturing Kalemegdan fortress and Konak Palace is very generous.

I try to save as many units as I can as well, but the withdrawal of the border guard companies makes it less of an issue to sacrifice them if you have to make a choice between them or a permanently present unit.

The second border guard unit I lost east of the Drina I Division was also Fixed until the Germans isolated it, as it couldn't spot anyone due to the low visibility and the surrounding visibility-blocking terrain.

Aside from the British Royal Marine detachment which heroically assaulted a bunker and was wiped out immediately, the torpedo boats in Beograd, the naval guns in Kalemegdan fortress and (soon) 3 border guard companies, I haven't lost any units yet. That was a bit of a surprise, some of my field gun units were exposed in T-mode for at least 1 turn but survived. Though I've lost 43 guns thus far, I'm only 10 guns short compared to the starting strength (or 3 field guns, as 7 losses were the naval guns in Beograd) as several units start understrength in Macedonia in particular and even at 1% recovery, given enough time units will regain strength.

I dislike leaving field gun units at the front, preferring to keep them 2 hexes away from the enemy. That's why the visibility of 1 hex complicated operations for a few days.

The only infrastructure damage I'll cause is cutting the rail line to Nis so Bulgarian reinforcements can't drive straight into Serbia from Sofia. I asked Volcano Man about Serbian infrastructure damage in the Serbia '14 thread and it seems to have been uncommon for Serbian troops to damage bridges, so I'll leave the bridges intact.

The Rudnik Chetniks from Arandjelovac were split between Beograd and the 3rd Army sector. Incidentally, the Chetniks are useful for holding bunkers together with a battalion, unintended as that might be.

As losses scale with stack size, it's advisable to keep a battalion and MG's, cavalry or some other small unit in a bunker hex instead of multiple battalions (I tried that a few times and Central Powers artillery hurt the stacks in a way that wasn't going to work for prolonged periods). The main advantage of Chetniks is that they're B and can move without having to switch to T-mode like field guns or MG's.

What are the losses like in your team game? My opponent sometimes keeps two battalions in one hex if he feels an assault is possible when my defenders Disrups, but I've yet to see him make big mistakes in terms of unit placement. He did just lose a regiment of 107. Infanterie Division that was stuck on the other side of the Mlava due to the storm, but that was more an unfortunate move that couldn't be corrected due to the weather than a mistake.

As far as I am aware the turns all the objectives expire are the actual historical dates the CP side took those locations, as far as Beograd is concerned I know that Ed played that scenario out many times to check that capturing them was achievable, it will be interesting to see which objectives are/are not taken in time, I am sure if you make a note he would be interested to learn how it went in your game?

As far as Pozarevac is concerned I have a concern that a clever CP player will cross the river higher up and outflank the bunker line, this also has the added bonus that it threatens the Danube I LOC and so cannot be ignored, there is no way the Branicevo can resist a push south down the river line to prevent this IMO. I know hindsight makes everyone a military genius but even without the storm trapping the 107 ID units on the river bank I think your opponent made a misjudgement trying a river crossing that far north as it just plays into the Serbian defenders hands where the river defences are strongest and looking at you image I can't see that you have any forces watching the river further south so as the CP player that would be my prefered move.
Anyway that is in the future in our game, lets see where my CP opponent try's to cross the Mlawa river?

I will ask Ed about destroying bridges, normally if a designer does not want this to happen employs the "wired bridges" feature so he has control over which bridges can be destroyed (or none at all), if this feature is not enabled then I will damage as many bridges as I can as this can seriously delay your opponents advance rate.

Losses in our game have been quite heavy in the Beograd area as the AH side has somewhat struggled to make progress, other than that losses have been "normal" as most players are experienced with the FWWC system and rarely overstack a hex.

Look forward to your next set of images, obviously the storm and mud will slow the game in the short term.