Armchair General

LMAO Nice!

parsifal said:

folks, on behalf of the world gaming fraternity, I apologise. that is NOT how most of us act, I can assure you, oh except the guys that consistently lose, and they dont last long

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No worries, Parsifal....rest assured, most folks here judge people on their own merits, not based on a general classification. Yer good, bro!

Never knew all that about you, though...that's actually pretty frikkin cool!

Thanks for the compliment. I apologise for my reaction, but this guy was just being a little t*rd and bringing the hobby I love into disrepute. Ive seen that type so many times at gaming conventions....they really dont have any idea on the realities of war, and rely on rules obscurities usually to BS their way into a final.

I remember one year in particular, it was a micro armour competion.....there were a series of 12 separate scenarios that pitted the army you had picked against your opponents, in a series of engagements. You basically started with a number of points and "bought" your army from a given nationality. The scenarios were "modern" (from the '80s), and all the little snotty 12 year olds (sorry Harrison), raced off and bought their US or British or Germans, with their hugely expensive tanks and Infantry. generally they could afford a company of tanks, and a similar number of mech Infantry.

My friend and I had no national agenda. We studied the army lists, and the upcoming scenarios , and determined the best, most cost effective force was the Omani army. We fielded on average, two companies of tanks, Landrover borne motorised Infantry, a whole three companies of it, equipped with sagger AT missiles from memory, offboard artillery, and a light airstrike capability. Since nearly all of the scenarios involved an urban objective, our tactics were simple....send the Infantry off to occupy the objectives, and engage the heavy enemy armour with concentrated fire....we used the airstrikes and the off board artillery to engage the approach routes of the opposing Infantry, and our second rate tanks as mobile pillboxes and Infantry killers basically.

The 12 year old brigades got so angry at what we had done that they banded together and said we were cheating....somehow. There was one chap in particular that reminded me of our recently departed friend, so full of himself he would not listen and would not be told. Got beaten....screamed at us and then threw his army on the ground, and jumped allover it. Wanted to do the same with our army, until I told him if he did, it would be the last thing he did conscious....


Truth is that "kreigspiel" style gaming can be useful as a simulation to actually learn about campaigns. The Germans used it all the time to refined plans and trained officers on basic miliatary tactics. It is less well known in the western armies. It is essential though that you fed into the simulation as many of the known variables (and constants) as you can....if you stuff that bit up, your model is going to be innaccurate.


This guy was not modelling, he was entrapping. His starting assumptions were incorrect, plus he was going to feed in other unknowns that he omitted to tell us in the initial briefing.....I have seen this sort of Shite so many times.

parsifal said:

My friend and I had no national agenda. We studied the army lists, and the upcoming scenarios , and determined the best, most cost effective force was the Omani army...

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Well played! That would have been great to see first-hand!


My comments were more toward the online combat sim community than the board-gaming community, but they all have thier detractors. And this guy was no different than the typical "expert" I've encountered countless times in the places I used to haunt.

My personal experiences of the negative sort have been with the younger members and how they can't understand that after 20 minutes or so of bragging about thier awesome abilities and lording over the less experienced pilots, they get shot down inside of a minute and scream foul, cheat and anything else they can think of. Then thier minions (boot lickers) all jump in and say how it was obviously a cheat and start a witch hunt.

And in the end, it was nothing more than them being beat by better piloting and exploiting thier weaknesses...

I have heard of Generals having temper tantrums, but I've never heard of one holding his breath until he got his way

Anyway, there is a general question we could discuss, if people are interested....could LAH have defeated a division and a half in the latter half of 1944 with no significant air support, and against an allied force that appears to be dug in. Sounds very Ardennes ish to me.

Even though LAH is my favourite SS formation, and a very capable and powerful unit to boot, I think it would have a hard time overcoming such a strong defence. Especially true given the crappy start time....6am. Never heard of a start time for a major offensive that waited until everybody had had a nice breakfast. Also, the supposition that it would be cloudy is faulty....nobody can be sure about the following days weather.


If I were the german I would not be waiting for 6am, If I were the US I would be calling in the extensive corps level artillery formations that always supported the major units. Historically, 3rd Armoured had an additional armoured infantry formation attached, 3 TD battalians and two mechanized AA Bns attached. It had a special bridge building and armoured engineer (flails and other specialist armoure atached) more or less continuously attached from St Lo to the end of the war.

According to Stantons exhaustive work on the US army formations in the war, 3rd armoured breached the westwall fortifications between Roetgen and Rott with CCA pushing on through the AT obstacles at Nutheim. CCB then leap frogged on to the second belt of westwall defences at AAchen, where heavy losses were sustained in the battle Of Geisberg Hill, against SS formations (but rememeber it was the US formation attacking here). CCB won that battle and also took, but was forced out of the town of Mausbach by strong german counterattack....and so it goes on.....our friend knows that a formation the size of 3rd Armoured was much bigger than he had stated, pretty much the size (or even bigger) of a German Corps at that time. It would have been a very tall order for the german formation to take out the US formation isf both formations were at full strength, and the US Div was on the defensive

That's a good question and there is a possability that the Germans could have done it *IF* they moved quickly, in a "blitz" fashion. And the panzer units were no strangers to moving in the darkness, so why wait 'till 6 when they could have started a push at 3 a.m. or earlier?

Now I'm far from being an expert, but it seems to me that the Allied units had difficulties in responding to a fast counter-offensive. I'm not sure if this was because they weren't used to it, or simply not expecting it. But I beleive that if the LAH were to react swiftly, and in concert (constant and accurate communications would be the key here), they would have a chance to break up the Allied defenders and gain ground before defensive artillery could range in on them.

Just an observation

The proposed scenario is much a 'Kursk-like' one: the Germans are attacking entrenched Allied positions. So they need a 3:1 advantage to achieve success*, while they have only parity. Plus, US forces posses a high ground, so their artillery would have a holiday.
The only piece of kit giving an edge to the Germans are those 12 Tigers - far to low a number to make a difference.

So even if we scratch air power, the defender would win the battle.


*assuming equipment men are of equal quality

Oh cr*p, I can't believe that I missed out yet again!!!

Well one thing I want to know here is that besides not having to deal with Allied airpower will the German force have enough fuel to carry out what'ever type attack they please without being in danger of running dry? If so I can think of a few ways in which the Germans are almost sure to win this one.

Thats actually a very good point Soren....the supply state of both forces. Also not stated was the training and serviceability states of both forces. If the battle was taking place prior to Falaise, LAH would have exceptionally well trained manpower at its disposal, whilst 3rd Armoured would be lacking in some experience, and not have as many special attachments to the parent formation.

However if the battle is set to occur late in '44, as part of the Ardennes offensive, or slightly before that, in the clearing of the Westwall defences (and in clear weather), the SS formation had suffered grievous losses by then, and had in fact lost a large part of its trained manpower. It never recovered all of its esprit de Corps after Falaise

I guess if we assume a battle in France '44, we have to accept the German supply system is under severe strain at any time. It was probably under slightly less strain during the Ardennes offensive, but nevertheless was far from satisfactory, as the LAHs attempts to take Stavelot in that offensive clearly demonstrate

The supply situation of German forces during the Ardenne offensive was abysmal Parsifal, German vehicles having to use captured Allied fuel in order to keep going. Peiper's panzers litterally went hunting for fuel, trying to capture as much Allied fuel as possible.

Yes, thats true, but its still arguable whether the situation was not worse in the normandy Battles. I have read that even the frontline formations were restricted to no more than 12 rounds of artillery ammunition per gun per day, and that despite suffering in excess of 200000 casualties to the end of September, the Group West of armies only received (note....received) less than 10% of the required replacements.

Truth is that after the capture of Ploesti, and the systematic pounding of the oil industry under the control of the Reich, as well as the slightly later pounding of the Axis transport network, there was no recovery for the german supply network. All German operations were affected by this all pervading effect, and combat performance was downgraded significantly as aresult. It was perhaps the major effect of the Russian offensives (along of course with the manpower and material losses), and also the major effect of the strategic bomber offensives

ahhhh, but if you stick to dopey's game parameters, he said no air support which in my mind, would mean more fuel reserves for tanks, etc.?

Njaco said:

ahhhh, but if you stick to dopey's game parameters, he said no air support which in my mind, would mean more fuel reserves for tanks, etc.?

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In Normandy, perhaps, but not so by the time the Ardennesw comes around. As I recall there was virtually no tactical Air support in the days leading up to the German Attack into the Ardennes.

Their supply problems by then were being generated by the loss of the Rumanian oilfields, the destruction of their sysntheic oil supplies, and the near total collapse of their rail network. The petro-chemical industry was an essential part of munitions production, as well as synthetic rubber production so the germans were short of munitions and many lubricants, and rubber, as well as a whole host of other strategic material. The front line units were being starved of supplies for different reasons by late '44, not so much due to the activities of the tactical air forces. There may have been some small improvement ihn supply with tactical air completely removed, but in my opinion not enough to affect objectives and capabilities significantly.

There are very sound reasons why Rundstedt and Model describe the offensive as the "Battle without hope"

I believe they were also hoarding a few supplies for Bodenplatte, which, if in this scenario, airpower is not used, might help - alittle?

Ok, I did not know that. However, I can only say that if LAH were given unlimited supplies with which to undertake this attack, ther would be extremely serious, strategic effects against the Germans elswhere on the line. By December '44, the whole German line was just a house of cards, and that was mostly due to their terrible supply situation.

oh I agree. Just thinking within this scenario. I also question the fighting make-up of the German units as I believe at this late stage, there were a few foreign conscripted units whose fighting health might not be favorable. German side that is.

So, if I can be so bold as to assert this scenario is just too biased against the germans, the facts are that at time the Germans could undertake limited counterattacks very successfully. Their ability to mount ad hoc counterattacks, with just a handful of tanks and a few men scraped together showed time and again the continuing fighting prowess of the Wehrmacht. Their theoretical squad level tactics seem to me to be superior to the equivalent Allied ideas, although the RCT concept utilized in the US Army were demonstrating signs of an improved flexibility in US small unit tactics. German small unit leadership was still superior, but beginning to fall away. Allied fire control and artillery support was in my view equal or superior to that which existed in the German Army, though there will be many who disagree with that. I think that the standard of recruit training was by this stage clearly in favour of the allies....the Germans had lost so many men and were combing out their training schools in desperation. The average crew training for their Tank crews was a mere 3 weeks by this stage, and most of the Infantry were just Volksgrenadiers, with very little training past basic.

By comparison 3rd Armoured was a very experienced and battle hardened formation. It had been together since April'41, and had fought in Normandy and across france since 23 June 1944. It had fought in a number of battles with great distinction, and more to the point, had not suffered the crippling losses that now plagued even the most elite formations in the German Army, including LAH. 3rd Armoured had only suffered 1200 fatalities since Normandy (and total casualties of about 4500),so as a unit was still more or less intact. The same cannot be said for LAH, which had been nearly destroyed at Falaise, and had only weeks to absorb fillers for more than 80% of its manpowerat a

If the supply situation in this scenario is as bad as it was in reality around the time of Ardenne offensive then I don't see success right around the corner. Progress would be swift initially and then suddenly grind to a halt as fuel runs out.

With adequate supplies however the odds are actually in favour of the Germans on this one. They have some equipment which alone can tie up massive amounts of the Allied force whilst at the same constituting only a small part of the German force. I am ofcourse talking about the 12 Tiger tanks made available. If fuel and spare parts werent gonna be an issue then these 12 tanks could cause the Allied force a lot grief, that is ofcourse unless they are foolishly thrown into attack first and become sitting ducks for Allied artillery.

As for the 170 other tanks available, we really need to know what types are included and their numbers. Obviously I would prefer to have 170 Panthers, but a more realistic figure would probably be 60 Panthers, 80 Pz.IV G, H's and a mixture of Pz.III's II's. There are also 45 StuGs (My guess type IV's). On top of that hundreds of trucks, cars, halftracks, AT guns, artillery pieces and SPG's.

So the German force has:
12 Tiger tanks (What type though?)
60 Panther tanks
80 Pz.IV's
30 Pz.II III's (Mixed types)
45 StuG.IV's
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In total = 227 AFV's

As for the SPG's, well how many do we have exactly? 100?

I mean I can quickly construct a 20,000 man strong German Division which will be able to defeat a 50,000+ man strong Allied division if I get to choose the equipment I want without the fear of running out of fuel or being attacked by Allied a/c. But by 1944 onwards German generals never had the luxury of being able to construct their Divs according to what they wanted most, and they were always left without adequate fuel reserves and spare parts for their equipment. And allied a/c proved a major nuisance to any German mechanized movements.