Turn Review from Hellraider

Duke of the Blue Moon vs felix45 - Day 10

The (hopefully) eagerly awaited game review will still have to wait a while because of "time restraints". To make up for that, I present a mini-version of the game review, the turn review.

The situation at hand:


It is the Duke's turn in a game which is for our intents and purposes even. He has lost the fight for the pair of usually contested properties, but managed to snatch felix's middle city. Now the ball is on him to defend the property and make use of the positional advantage it gives. The Duke chooses the following course of action -



- and prompty drops the ball, as he gives felix a great opportunity to attack, resulting in this:



Now the question at hand is, what should he have done instead? Let us first evaluate the goals of that particular turn. At the start of day 10, his formation in the west is fairly vulnerable. His artillery can be attacked easily, he has not completely connected the units on the different sides of the mountain range and he needs to keep control over the city he has captured. In the east he looks fairly safe for now due to felix having invested in an additional arty and a preemptive AA.

The main focus of this post will lie in the west, but for now I will discuss the eastern situation a bit. While the Duke did not make himself vulnerable to a direct attack there, there were still some questionable decisions involved. First off, building the copter makes little sense. He has already lost his ability to threaten both sides of the mountain range because felix has captured the contested property, so a major advantage of the copter, the mobility, is lost. More importantly though, he neglected to ascertain his control over his middle city. Parking a tank on it is nice, but he also gave felix the possibility to easily threaten it with an unexposed arty. Now felix exposed his artillery anyways, ultimately resulting in a huge battle, but let us ignore that fact. To avoid this situation where a protected arty points onto the property, the best course of action would have been to place the YC artillery 1N of the city, while shielding it with the remaining units.

Another advantage of such a turn (picture later) would be more offensive tank placement and therefore better control over the area between the mountains and the shoal area. Furthermore, building 2 vehicles would have been superior to building the copter in terms of firepower and defence, making it unnecessary to divert another tank to shielding the copter.

So much for the east. Now, onto the other front. As mentioned before, the Duke has to find a formation that prevents felix from launching any efficient attack. The biggest threat is a copter attack coupled with blocking the AA from reaching it, which is also what ultimately happened in the game. This is mainly caused by the mountain range, which makes maneuvering the AA fairly difficult since it has to cover the units on both sides of it. The obvious solution? Simply move all units onto one side of the mountain range. The result I came to:



It is easy to understand that there is little need to focus on felix's outer city for now. It already belongs to him, so there is little reason to keep it under artylock. There is also no attack coming from that direction, so losing a bit of positioning there does not matter. This particular turn also picks off an additional infantry and is a huge positional gain compared to before. Assuming that felix does not attack, he will have to retreat and choose between one of two evils. Either the arty stays at its current location protecting the city, which will result in him losing a bit more position while allowing the Duke to place his units even better, or moving the arty over and giving up the outer city in the process. The first option is most likely preferable, although still not optimal.

Now of course felix would also have the option to attack. The YC artillery is technically vulnerable and can be attacked by the copter (not by the recon). However, that plus the walling infantry would be all that YC loses in that exchange. In retaliation, he could kill 4 infantry and the copter while retaining his position. Neither a new tank nor a new copter could enter the fight immediately, leaving felix with a recon, a tank, 2 infantry and an arty in an awkward position. He wouldn't be able to launch a good attack with that, but if he retreats at that point he'd have lost about twice as much as his opponent in the exchange before. As a result, the formation showed before is most likely the best that YC could have chosen. Not only is it sound defensively, it also opens up a whole load of new possibilities by virtue of being in such an offensive position. It would even be possible to make a rush towards the BH HQ if BH decided to go for YCs airport, effectively even restricting the other front a bit.

A few last words towards what should be built at the end of the turn. As I said before, the copter is a suboptimal choice as it has little immediate offensive potential and basically validates the preemptive AA. By not building the copter now, BH has a near useless AA that he can't even expose, as its destruction would be met with a newly built copter. With 15k, the basic options are 2 tanks, 2 arties and tank + arty. Mechs are not needed in this situation as they reach the front too slowly and have no synergy with the CO. I daresay that 2 arties is not good as well, because the west could really need more than a sole tank to sustain the offense. So one fresh unit should be a tank on the western base. As for the second one, it probably is a matter of preference and style. Many will feel uncomfortable with not building a vehicle on the weak base, but the AA and lack of tank really limit BH's attack opportunities, making a second tank (two arties is more than enough for that front) in the west viable. Personally, I would have most likely stuck with tank west + arty east either way though.

Signed,
Hellraider