This thread is designed to allow the generals of XIII, II, III and VI corps to discuss and hopefully cooperate. To try to come to a coherent and defined strategy and to learn to use your forces together for best effect. I expect you to use this because up to now discussion has been sparse. I elected a SOCOM CO whose job it was to oversee and guide all the southern corps, but that's not happening. We need some discussion and some decisions.

Post away.

I know I'm NORCOM, but my vote is for a fighting withdrawal, inflict maximum casulties on the way out, and spend a day or so resting and refitting on the other side of the river. While being very careful and watching for amphibious assaults, of course. Or we could pull back to our side of the river and go after the amphibious corps before they try to get away.

A very good idea, this should deffinatly happen if we are forced to retreat across the river. Once we go across it will be very hard to regain the territory we lost. But like mentioned, a Bridgehead on the west side of the river would need to be manned by no less then the best troops that SOCOM has, or else it would be over run...

On regards to the supplies that we all need before we launch any effective assualt, we need a military unit to secure and fortify Unamtor so that X Corps can arrive and deliver the goods without worrying about the enemy coming up and just stealing everything. I suggest the 281st Cadian be flown out for this job, it would let them rest away from the fighting and they would get some reinforcements pretty soon in the form of X Corps. All they need to do is set up an adequate defense and I don't suspect that they'll be engaged.

The assualt could work, but the 8th Armored are a major speedbump. With that plan, we could destroy or route the Blood Pact troops pretty easily, but even against 3 regiments the 8th Armored have a good chance of beating back our forces. Not to mention 2 of the regiments we want to attack the 8th with are either artillery or infantry and then there is one below-par armor unit (from my experience anyways). Maybe if the 18th Desyndian Rangers committed to attacking the 8th instead of helping the 7th Skalansburg defend a bridge which I'd imagin they could do by themselves pretty well.

This post has been edited by =][=Nine Breaker=][= on Jan 14 2005, 02:30 AM

I suggest we change the plan a bit to look more like this.

The main changes are:

1) The 18th Desyndian Rangers will commit to engaging the 8th Armored with the 1st TITR, 132nd Mordian, and most likely the 701st Terran(though the Terran aren't on the map).

2) The 7th Skalansburg Rifles will split into 2 groups of 3000 troops. One will stay and guard the Bridgehead they created/ are working on, and the other 3000 will attack the "northern portion" of the 6th BPB.

3) The 110th Cadian wont bother splitting up their forces and will concentrate their efforts on the "southern" portion of the 6th BPB.

And I think that's everything.

Before we send the 281st anywhere its probably a good idea to look at what's just happened to them. Resting for a day probably won't help, not to mention sending them to fortify a skaxon town, as the skaxon just butchered 3000 of their comrades. There are currently 600 men in the regiment, and they are at "mutinous" morale level. The only thing they're good for doing is recuperating, and it might take a long time.

I also think its a bad idea to try to fortify the entire town with a single understrength regiment, especially when there are multiple chaos SF regiments running around that area. I do think they'll be engaged, they'd be a juicy target.
Once we withdraw across the river I could send the 123rd Darkwold and the 254th Mordians to secure Unamtor.

I think we should preform a fighting withdraw across the river and blow the bridges. This will buy us time and free manpower from guarding a western bridgehead. I don't think that its possible to hold on to any territory west of the river. With all this talk of using all of our best troops just to hold a bridgehead, its far to risky. With chaos in control of the skies and the capability for amphibious actions up the river its almost an invitation to leave the best of our units stranded on the western side. Even if they don't destroy the bridge and strand some of units over there, if we choose to leave some behind to guard a bridge they will be overrun by the tactics the enemy has used over and over again. They will be swarmed by a vast numerically superior force and overrun. if the time comes when we want to go back across we can build another bridge. And if chaos wants to come over they won't be able to do it over our own constructions.

Molotov: I didn't talk of using all our best troops to hold the beach-head, but rather that the units used would be drawn from the best of the four corps, and would be rotated. So for a while it might be the 701st Terran, then the 12th and 13th GPDF, etc.
Erkyde: I think its an invintation for them to get stranded and killed
Molotov: then we withdraw, but we try to take out as many of them as we can first
Erkyde: I do support that

Withdraw Plan for SOCOM

By the next update several things have to happen. Most importantly our perimeter has to be lessened, and that means falling back eastward towards our new bridges. the 12th and 13th GPDF of VI corps will have to drop back to approx. the location of VI/III HQ. I suggest the retreat be done in two waves. The first wave will see half of the men pull back to prepare a new line, and then the second half join them shortly after.

Once this happens we will be able to begin pulling units off of the line to take care of duties on the eastern side of the river. Most importantly securing Tanfar and Unamtor.

This should not interfere with the II/XIII corps attack on the blood pact, and if VI corps lends its armor to the effort could allow the 8th AB to be more easily overwhelmed.

Posted in the main strat thread:

A good point. The only problem, is that I've got little opportunity to get anything else there without it moving THROUGH the 8th Armoured at the moment. I'm trying to start by drawing them out of position. Besides if they turn and roll for the bridge at the moment, the commanders of 1st Tharkad and 132nd Mordian will fall on their rear.

I'm seeing their raid as a lightning strike against the two brigades as a distraction, and orders will be amended to make that clear. The plan is then for them to withdraw back to the bridge, across the central road. While they're at extreme risk, and I'm very unhappy about doing this, I need to do something to draw the attention away as we're rapidly being pushed against the river banks with no room to manuver.

Furthermore while Chaos would have left many forces in reserve, I feel they would have been drawn out into action against the 194th if they were in position in the north.

Besides sometimes a daring move is necessary to deal with a difficult situation. And now our situation is definitely that.

Now in response to the stuff I just read

In response to this and Nine's modified plan:

1) I only want the 18th to engage if the 8th actually move out of position. Otherwise they'll simply be chewed up and spat out.

2) I'm trying to keep those troops in a position that we can withdraw them easily and quickly. They may need to reposition quickly to keep Chaos forces out of Tanfar, and as their the only unengaged unit that can quickly respond, with full supplies and plenty of men I don't want to start splitting them up. My forces are far too split already.

Also from their current position they can roll along the road quickly if the 110th ends up getting over their heads.

3) The 110th is aiming for a quick raid and withdrawal to a position to defend the bridge/withdraw fromt he West side of the river.

There is a method to my madness . If Molotov feels strongly enough to overide this approach thats fine. Particularly as I haven't had a chance to spend as much time reviewing comments and others plans/situations since Monday.

Also note that I'm trying to keep the bridge closest to Tanfar open. If Chaos takes this region, we must defend Tanfar or fight a fierce action at a later stage to take it back. Neither of which are particularly nice choices, better to keep them from coming up.

Edit: Also note that at the moment I'm trying to keep the 8th Armoured from rolling unhindered into the III/VI Corps HQ.

This post has been edited by Lothdyn on Jan 14 2005, 08:12 AM

Fair enough.

Either way, the 7th SR are heading that way and so there is absolutly no need to split the 110th up. If they hit the southern part of the 6th BPB(I think it was the 6th) and the 7th SR get the northern part of the 6th BPB, then we will cause many more casualties and could severaly weaken the regiment.

This post has been edited by Commissar Molotov on Jan 14 2005, 07:06 PM

I agree that falling back is our only option at the moment but have a few concerns...

My corps is quite a way ahead of the rest as it held against the enemies attacks.. therefore they'd require more time to withdraw. They have built considerable defences already and would in effect be gifting the enemy some positions... this could work to our benefit with simple booby traps and the like.

Basically, to retreat in good order leaving the enemy suprises and no gains material wise i/we need time.

I currently already have several lines of defences to fall back to as at each stage i had a CEB following behind to effect a fortification of our gains. This will allow the suggested staged withdrawal of 12/13 GPDF to be effected quite quickly. With combat engineers already constructing several pontoons over the river and appropriate AA in place it is achieveable.

One thing we will have to watch out for is the enemy launching a full blown assault as we retreat. 2 Half Regiments cannot possibly hold against a determined assault.

I can spare no more armour to help anybody. Currently i have 1.5 regiments of armour out of 2 out with II and III corps which lost 100 or so tanks in 1 days fighting. To lose these elements would be disaterous so please use them wisely and remember i sent you them to help you out.

Oh and Unit Citations:

12th GPDF and 13th GPDF for bravery and stalwart defence in the face of the Emperor's foes and utter dedication to their task in their first major combat role.

The 7th SR are only heading that way if it proves absolutely necessary. They and the 18th are all that will stand between the 8th Armoured if it decides not to take the bait of my trap. As the 1st pulls back, if Chaos don't take the bait, there will be a delay before the 1st can alter it's movements. They could snap up the bridge if I only have the 18th there. An additional 3k men will make a big difference on defence.

Okay, here are some things that need some pointing out...

1) XIII Corps shouldn't be used for any defending purpose (thought the Terran could set up an okay defense, they would be far better used battering the enemy).

2) The 7th Skalansburg most likely thirst for revenge right now against the 34th GIM. The 7th SR are probably very good in close combat considering all the enhancing drugs they are on and the fact that they are indeed psychos. If we could get them into grips with the 34th GIM then I'm sure we could do them some surious harm. However we'd have to find a way to distract the 8th Armored (this needs to be planned).

3) We need to take back Unamtor before the supply convoy gets here... There seems to be only one enemy regiment in the city, and 3 Impie regiments close enough to engage them. We have to go about planning on how to take that territory.

4) We need to bloody up the 8th Armored! So far they ran up and down many of our regiments but are still almost at full strength (around 250-280 tanks I'd think). They are obviously not going to fall for many of the old tricks such as luring them out of position and then attacking in mass or simply trying to flank every side that happen to leave open. We need to think abstract here.

I'll post some more up later after I get some much needed sleep.

This post has been edited by =][=Nine Breaker=][= on Jan 15 2005, 04:35 PM

8th Armour is becoming a pain in the ass... they seemt to be better at their jobs than any armoured force we have so i dont think a massed tank battle would go well for us.

Maybe make sure any unit moving against them has as many one use shoulder mounted AT weapons etc as possible? We could do with herding them somewhere that it will be advantageous for us to fight them. Like try to get them to cross a bridge where we can catch them in a bottleneck.

Other tactics could be that any unit that is attacked by them simply lets them through as easily as possible and then hit them in the rear, if we can set something up so that we let them through, have a regiment behind to counter-attack and the former regiment closing behind them then i think we may have them.

The question is how do we get them into such a position?
De Brye... what are your thoughts on assaulting Unamtor. Obviously we need to take it fast! A siege like action wont work here.

Maybe we just dash right in there from 3 directions and go street to street? With a veteran group going after and holding the supply dump before the enemy can blow it?