MG'44 (alt Scen from Scheldt)

[ChrisAd]

18-Sep-1944 as of 11:00 before any moves

Arnhem

After relatively quiet morning the Krauts started some raucous on EN of our positions. The lads stood the ground and gave them Jerries a good old British medicine. However, to our concern, we have discovered elements of SS Panzer Division.

Nijmegen

The moment the boys set foot on the bridge approach them Jerries blown the eastern lane. But them Brits seems to have send a party to hit the northern end of the bridge which they splendidly did after short but intense combat. We hope that we manage to get the other lane of the bridge intact in next couple of hours.

Eindhoven

101st started clearing the East of Eindhoven meeting with very limited resistance.
Best bridge was captured intact!

XXXCorps

After some morning tea and biscuit gen. Horrocks decided to put some pressure on the Jerrries in the Valkenswaard. However so far some small pockets of resistance prevented XXX Corps from using the highway. Gen. Horrocks expressed his dissatisfaction with the Germans and promised to get them bastards a good spanking.

[parmenio]

Good to see you're giving this another go.... I love the unit patches on the screenshots

[zovs]

Yeah me too on the unit patches, plus glad to see my counters getting some use, I think they look lovely! Great AAR a TW!

[ChrisAd]

The counters do look great on a 4k monitor. Much easier to read the map and to see which units are selected.

I love MG. I think it's my Star Wars/LoTR equivallent. Like I can replay it hundred times

[ChrisAd]

Just a litlle feedback on my tactics and also on how Montgomery got this wrong.
I have never understood why somebody would think that dropping troops only West of Arnhem is a good idea. It literally makes zero sense tactically.
Quite far from the target which gives enemy a chance to react.
Quite exposed which makes LZ easy to be contested.
Allows for attacking the bridges only from one side.
Adds distance between 82nd and 6th for no apparent benefit.
Makes it harder to hit the Nijmegen bridge.

Quite frankly, after restarting I was thinking to give up them LZ and basicaly set up permiter around the railway bridge and thus saving precious resources for the job.
It is just utterly silly to set up reinforcement base in the middle of the open ground, next to the dnemy and so far from the objective.

[ChrisAd]

After work related break we are back at it!

19-Sep-1944 as of 17:00 before any moves

Arnhem Sector

As one can see from the picture the Red Devils proudly hold the railway bridge and the elements of XXX had just crossed Waal in Nijmegen and move quickly towards Arnhem.
All now depends on what ze Germans will do. They have been suspiciously quite today and that makes me nervous (I am betting they reorganize themselves to make for a big push).
Looking at the map it seems like Germans overspread themselves a bit which resulted in their attacks being mostly ineffective.

So far so good

XXX Crops (Best-Veghel)

Situation is tense with the Jerries pushing at Best but otherwise under control. I have decided to detach a small TF of Shermans and infantry to contain them. Since already elements of XXX Corps crossed the bridge in Nijmegen it does not seem like too much of distraction to the main effort.

[zovs]

Awesome AAR!

[ChrisAd]

Arnhem 19 September 1944 21:00 before any moves


The 82nd has cleared the highway towards Arnhem and linked with XXX Corps in pushing North.
The pressure from Groesback Heights is increasing but so far all looks too good to last. I have managed to fend off almost all of my opponents assaults and it looks like he got a lot of disrupted results as he barely attacked today.
If I manage to link with Red Devils on the morrow than the game is pretty much over for Jeries.

[ChrisAd]

Arnhem 20 September 1944 9:00 before any moves

[ChrisAd]

My opponent confirm my suspicions.
He got many unfavourable rolls and he is not able to do anything around Arnhem.
I on the other hand got quite few friendly rolls and managed to secure all key bridges.

Also he said he was absolutely not expecting me not pushing at all for Arnhem road bridge thus he wasted few resources (trying to secure it) unnecessarily.


Thus we have agreed to finish by the end of the dusk turn of 20 September.

I wouldn't call myself victorious. I played MG'44 a lot, had actually a lot of luck and managed to surprise my opponent in key objectives.

One remark for Allied player: if you secure the Arnhem railway bridge just leave the road bridge and keep fingers crossed for taking Nijmegen's bridge.
Should both of them be secured then ze Germans will have almost no chance of getting any sort of thing going.
This scenario would greatly benefit from:
1. Fixing all German units for first turn or two to prevent gamey actions to secure key bridges.
2. Drop zone options for Allied player (as in MG'44 game).
3. Non-historical weather (again as in MG'44).

Generally it all comes down to pure luck (bridges being blown) and favourite rolls on 18/19 September. There is not much more to it.