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Oh man, what heartbreak. What a game. I had butterflies in my stomach for the both of you. To think the most beautiful out of control Sherman crush I have ever seen may have lost you this game had me clapping and yelling bravo. Ah, joyful; however, I think the loss could’ve been avoided strategically. I’ll get to that in a bit.
For starters Kholodny East is a realllly tough start. You did well to weather it out, especially considering the Wehrmacht’s starting frailties. The... in my opinion, early MG42 was really interesting. I expected you to have a plan with it and really put some pressure on, but really all it did was hop in a church. As a force multiplier in the early game, you really need to get it working, moving it around, suppressing instead of locking down ground, (unless it's really strategic like a Semois bridge, for instance) The MG was idle for a full minute, which is a lot considering how starved the Wehr is normally for early game territory. I feel this lack of a plan going in, stop me if I'm wrong, but not really knowing what you’re going to do with your units is your undoing in this game, but more on that later.
Given the way the early engagements were going, I really liked the flamer choice with your first spendable munitions. It showed a thoughtfulness about the battle, instead of simply following the state of the game.
Now, by the 6th minute mark grenades have effectively countered your MG which means it’s time for you to change your doctrine a little. I know it’s especially difficult on this map and this side, but I would of liked to of seen some more harassment on his fuel. The extent of your assaults was an out of place MG. It’s really important in my mind to hit back, even if you aren’t successful, it shows you mean business and are going to hit back, and hard, when they attack strategic places. I think he hit your fuel about four times without retaliation.
I mentioned the grenades, by this point, the usefulness of the MG42 is usually going shift it to become more of a defensive unit, behind your front line. Your grenadiers will engage and hopefully kite rifles back into it. When the MG is on the front without a spotter, as it was at the cut-off battle, it just gets instantly smoked and nullified.
I loved your timing on the PaK40, it was perfect for a standard USF build of Lt. possibly an M20 to Maj. et. all; however, the ambulance delayed it, and you may’ve been able to get another support team or something else if you’d of noticed the health of your opponents squads. Just a small nitpick, this is something I would never have noticed in the heat of battle.
I mentioned my suspicious of your lack of prior planning, and I feel the G43s may have also exposed this as such, you even mention it, “[you] did not realize they were that bad”. Someone more analytical could correct me on the numbers, but I feel they are best at long range and may even hinder a grenadier squad at close range. They need to be utilized in not such an aggressive manner.
This is where I really start to wonder about your mindset, you lose an expensive vetted squad, after some venting, we see a back tech to a PiV, which to me screams panic, delaying your Tiger which could have done some realll damage and won you this game earlier I think. You had such amazing timing with the field gun, but then it sat in your base, helpless for when the Sherman rolled through. By then you are scrambling and any strategic advantage there is duly squandered.
So, by this point, my main issue and I think the only real failing in your play in this case as I keep alluding to, is your lack of plan. You have a comparatively very strong army and all you have to do is make a coordinated assault, punch through their lines, force a rout, not even annihilate, reposition, setup, defend and this game is yours; however, your army was really disjointed, sort of all over the place without direction, some sort of floating over by the fuel, some... guarding? your north flank (including the Tiger) and then in the center your defensive line was headed by an ATG, maybe this is just late game micro exhaustion, but in reality your army was really quite weak due to being so out of position. Again, I feel as though, if you have a plan going forward this can be avoided. It was like watching a bunch of bees swarming a bear. Such a strong army made weak by just being disjointed and lacking direction. This was really evident in really the final battle around the 28th minute. The Maj and his fall back point was exposed, most of his armor is destroyed, I desperately wanted you to just crush through the hedgerows and end the game, but I’twas not to be, and then oh my goodness. I’m sorry my jaw hit the floor. You have 7 VP’s, you can sort of extrapolate that he does not have much left, and you swing your strongest section of your army north... which you already control... whilst he sneaks the game away from under you.
Tragic.
So, really I think a lot of your issues come with just a lack of direction, a concrete tactical idea of what you want to do, and how you’re going to accomplish that, I feel a lot of that and the planning comes from experience, recognizing analogous situations on similar maps, things you’ll recognize once you have seen them more often.
Thank you so much for the game, that was a joy to watch and I hope you have found my review helpful. Fantastic avatar by the way, where is it from?
-turbo
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Canada
United Kingdom
Relic Entertainment
cblanco ★ 
보드카 중대 
VonManteuffel 
Heartless Jäger 
