Thread: AAR "Enjoy the War."
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Old May 7th, 2015, 08:33 PM
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Default Re: "Enjoy the War."

So I thought I'd recount the war journal for "SS-Germania" up till the Russian campaign.

We fought three battles in Poland, one at the Polish border, one outside Krakow and one inside the ancient city. Nothing especially noteworthy as I've done Poland countless times, but the city-fight in Krakow was the most interesting. I used one of the Warsaw maps prebuilt in the game, and it worked well for that task. We had fierce street fighting but as the Poles lacked time to entrench their defenses they could only delay us. One utility I discovered of the otherwise questionable level bombers was to use them as a kind of crude recce. At the start of the battle even if their bombs landed nowhere near the enemy, they often got a glimpse of enemy artillery and tank positions, which allowed us to more accurately suppress the enemy.

France was a series of six battles, consisting of Laon, the Seine River, a battle in Zeeland, one in Western France and curving back to Amiens and ending at Dunkirk. The French were intractable as usual, with my Skoda 38 and 35's being worse than useless against the majority. I had to engage with either 8.8 cm guns or close infantry assault which on most early war SS infantry are sorely lacking. The SS-Pioniers were the real saviors here, eliminating multiple heavy tanks with heavy losses. Most are now elite status because of France alone! The British were rough enough though, as their plethora of AT rifles (something the Poles also had much of) made life dangerous for my depleted Panzer battalion. But the true danger was in their artillery, which is always very heavy, frequent, and dangerously accurate. I loathe British artillery even more than Russian for those reasons. Zeeland was my sole battle against the Dutch and they surprised me with their tenacity despite lacking even medium machineguns in any appreciable number or any significant artillery. Their Anti-tank guns and marines made for tough foes as I attacked across flooded dikes and muddy fields, leaving me with a few embarrassing losses and nearly costing me the battle!

I will be very frank, the Balkan campaigns are pretty much a pushover, so much so that I edited most missions to be not more than 10-15 turns at most to keep the flow going. The Yugoslavs are probably the most pitiful army you'll fight in any Long Campaign, as they simply do not have the experience, morale or technology or even numbers to keep you from doing as you please. The Greeks put up a hard fight but until they receive British equipment in April they are not a serious threat either. Even then they fight hard but can do little to stop you. I found them dangerous mostly in their stubbornness, not out of any technical proficiency. The fights against the ANZAC and British forces were fairly easy for the most part, as they used the same equipment as in France. This time however, I had up-armored Skoda 38(t)'s to show for my efforts, and it made things easier.

Finally, we came to the end of that interminable campaign and launched into Russia with fresh reinforcements, new tanks and new leaders.
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