nwg

Excuse me, DougieJ, with his last PM, put me in doubt about the battle first for Sunday 11pm then Monday and now Sunday again, following the Bookedbattles.

Would you comfirm we will play Sunday, please?

Sorry about the confusion GP
There are now NO battles for Sunday
DJ+GP, Sweden V M +Gunner, Russia is now Monday at 11AM GMT if that is OK with you GP ??

Of course it is ok for me.
Are M and G24 on the same wave length?

Perhaps the BookedBattles should be up to dated again.

Booked battles page now updated to show MON 1100GMT

BATTLE 11/01/09 at 10 GMT.

I can join, if nobody else wish.

Noted on the wiki page, Moopere now needs to pick either GP or g24 to help him defend.

Yikes! All this talk of Monday at 11am is scaring me.

So far as I know the Game4 battle between DougieJ and Moopere is happening at 1000am GMT Sunday the 11th. This is what it says on the wiki page for the campaign as well as the booked battles page.

Now, to business, I quote from my update to the campaign page:



Should be a good day.

Cheers, M.

The talk about MON was from early Dec, your right it is SUNDAY as GP says above and as reported on the wiki.

Battle will be :



I hope all agree that's correct but if I've made an error please report it asap..g24

Important note : This CAN NOT count towards the CB League, as I will be helping Team Austria to win, and GP would be helping team Prussia to win....it is a wiki campaign game ONLY.

Looks all correct to me
Gunner and i will have to be spot on to force a win here, should be great fun, see you guys at 10AM GMT

Hi Guys,

I've probably left it too late now, but I think there is an error in the florins for this mornings game.

D v M

40k+2K v 40K + 10%

= 12K +2k v 12k + 1.2k
= 14k v 13.2k

or 800f in Dougies favour.

Now we have to add the combined PR's for the 4 player game. They have changed as of a few days ago, but Gunner captured the numbers when the game was booked so we have:

Dougie = 0
Gunner = 200
GP = 3800
Moo = 1400

Team Dougie = +200
Team Moopere = +5200

Add the battle offset to Team Dougie of 800f = +1000
Difference = 5200 - 1000 = 4200 in Team Moo's favour
Divide this by 2 (for 2 players per team) = 2100 and balance onto 12000 =

Team Dougie: 10950k ea
Team Moopere: 13050 ea

Does that sounds right Gents?

Regards, M

Ops, yes,I "forgot" about the 800 florins in Dougie's favour BEFORE the PR was added.

It is now PR +5200-800 making +4400 total difference, 2200 difference EACH.

Florins will be 10,900 v 13,100 EACH.

AnkLrd suggest this SHOULD count towards the CB League, which is a fair point.

My only worry is IF you get UNbalanced games like say a 9k v 15k because of a BIG attack on the wiki, then it might put people off joining in that game as they won't want to lose with 9k for the CBL.......I would join in to try and help the 9k player win, but would not like to see it go down as alost battle for Team Britain, so then I'd have to NOT join that 2v2 game.

Please see other topic.

A good win by Dougie for the Swedes in the first CB321 encounter for wiki Game #4.



Replay here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/s6qg1l



Battle Synopsis - Russian CiC

In many ways is way a pretty standard full frontal but I enjoyed it immensely. A long barrage followed by a general advance, musket firefight and a retreat, pretty classic stuff.

Dougie had his artillery nicely placed behind the crest of both hills they sat on and shell did indeed make it possible to lob a couple of thought provokers over the hill and into the crew. Ultimately though I did feel that counter battery fire was a waste of ammunition, the first 30 minutes and 70% of all battery ammo was wasted in this effort and I'm pretty sure the Swedish guns were never silenced...they simply ran out of ammunition! Which leads to the next point.

Despite me making a mistake late at night and attacking with 10K too few florins (what the!!) I still felt this battle was winnable for the musket challenged Russians. I did the 'numbers' after the battle, Russians were on 0.71 kills / man, Swedes on 0.79 kills / man...this is not a huge margin. In watching these battles over time winning margins tend to look like 0.2 or 0.3 difference.

Dougie took a static defence, which worked really well. The ground was very interesting at his front lines, with many low but high gradient hills and a horrible patch of mud (the brown stuff??) in front which slowed units down to a crawl. Some good artillery placements and decent cover for the front line units. The Russians also had a good position for defence and slightly higher ground as the map gently climbs back to the attackers position. Some decent ditches for the infantry to sit in allowed a long running bombardment to continue for quite some time with both sides infantry suffering only a few casualties - a classic map for shell use and shell was used throughout.

So, I took the view that the first order of the day was to take out the enemy artillery. 12lb guns are still a frightening prospect to have to face even with no canister ability. The plan was pretty standard I guess, silence the enemy guns then bring what remains of your own into the front line for canister work. Artillery batteries are a particularly difficult unit to hit with shell though and roundshot just wasn't working due to the hills. This was big Russian mistake #1. I should have used the ammunition for weakening the Swedish line. With a full frontal assault imminent and Russian line being what it is musket wise I really needed to do something about evening the odds for the coming duel.

So, 20-25 minutes later, the Swedish guns are still barking at me and my ammo is well below 50% for all batteries. I switched to firing at the enemy infantry at this point (too late) and ordered the general advance. Militia in front, Grenadiers to the rear covering no-mans land went pretty well. As the infantry slogged through the mud at the front of Dougies position he withdraw to the next line of hills and then proceeded to shoot the hell out of the Russian militia with Finland Jaegers. These are nasty buggers actually and I must say I'm pretty happy with how the light troops work, particularly in open order. At the receiving end you simply -have- to do something about these guys as they stay out of your line's musket range and poke away at you. The 6lb cannon and 20lb Unicorn were being drawn up for their canister role at this time but the lay of the land was not as fortunate for the Russians as it could have been. Both infantry lines were shooting at each other across a valley at pretty much maximum range, canister has a longer effective range then muskets, even light muskets, but not by a big margin, and it shoots straight, hills get in the way..... Still, a couple of volleys of canister from both the 6lb and the unicorn saw Dougie quite correctly reform his line behind the crests of the low hills forcing the Russians into the valley and up the other side in order to remain engaged, which meant dragging the artillery down the valley and up the other side as well....perilously close now to the enemy line, they were never really effective from here on.

This was big Russian mistake #2, being too eager to engage. I very often don't take my own advice in these situations. When playing Russian its always really important to play to your strength and not get duped into playing the enemy at -his- strength (which is always musketry). The Swedish line was essentially intact at this point, way way too early to consider the famous Russian melee. Should have used the 3 batteries I still had operational to pound the Swedish position and weaken his infantry. With the possibility of canister to the immediate front and shell coming from the position battery to the rear as well as the unicorn and with the Swedes compressing somewhat behind the hills at lot could probably have been achieved.

Anyway, I didn't do that Instead the Russians follow the Swedes up and onto the crest of the hills and there was musketry right along the line. After a few minutes of this I thought that Dougies left flank might have thinned enough to succomb to a charge by the Dragoon brigade. I was already noticing that the musket fight was definitely not going my way, the militia had mostly been shot to pieces and/or routed away. The Grenadiers and musketeers would do better here but probably still not good enough and the numbers were working against me with the loss of the militia (about 50% of my infantry force). So, the Dragoons went in and here we arrive at big Russian mistake #3

The enemy was not really softened enough for the cavalry charge to be a success and you could see this right from the outset. But I was committed, the infantry of my left flank had rushed forward to assist the Dragoons and it was not going to end well. So, I committed the Chevaliers Guard and then later the Cossacks, and some more infantry. Quite a melee of the type that most who have played me will be familiar with - but also a pretty familiar outcome. The Swedish right did succumb in the end, but it was a helluva fight and a battle loser for the Russians. So many Russian troops got chewed up in the mincer that the army never really recovered.

Dougie saw this I'm sure as his Guard was then committed and the whole Swedish infantry force rose up and over the hills to press back hard against the remaining Russian army. Whilst the battle continued for a few more minutes with some backwards and forwards, particularly on my left, the result now was never in doubt. A good solid win for Sweden and hopefully another lesson learned for the Russian CiC.

Moopere


Regards, M