The Commander Chair Digest

[wuschel]

THE COMMANDERS CHAIR DIGEST

The insider magazine for all failed, glorious, and soon to be megalomaniacs. Post Your hidden strategies, most dirty experiences, infamous defeats, et cetera, et cetera here. Read and learn from the best, or the worst, of the PR commanding community. Tell tales about Your great victories, bath publically Your shame, or shed some tears for chances lost. Here, You shall find it all!

[wuschel]

NUMBER 1
Featuring: Muttrah, Kashan, Qwai 0.85



1) Muttrah City
US SIDE - WON BY BLEED

US side taken over, docks neutralized, but still a foothold by one squad. At the end, the job turned out to go fairly well: I moved as many squads to docks as I could, and hold ground there and pushed with one squad towards the next objective. Once the competent APC crew showed up MEC was steamrolled. Always kept one squad at defense, even if the leaders sometimes fed up of waiting. While we lost quite a bunch of tickets during the attack and defense, MEC got into bleed through flag loss.

Lesson of the day: Speed is of the essence! Use Your APCs wisely. And do not loose the Cobra..

2) Kashan
MEC SIDE - LOST BY 90

Took over more or less in the first third of the round (ticket wise), or with the MEC down to North Outpost. My biggest achievement in this game was to push out the squads of main and effectively reorganizing them. Everything else went more or less by their own. HAT, Sniper, AA Squads were holding ground north of South Village, tanks, APC and Airtrans were working well together with the rest of the team. After a while, we managed to recapture south village. While it is difficult to estimate the total cost of tickets of this offensive operation, since the team was also involved in other clashes, I estimate the cost to be 60 tickets. Knowing that we only have 200 tickets left I chose to attack the bunker complex. And squad after the other were from southvillage to bunker area into the heat ogf battle.We managed to capture South bunker and get a FB up in the complex at a cost of 120 tickets, partly due to heavy asset losses through an enemy Apache attack. However, it turned out that the fighting in the bunker complex and the loss of assets in the north had a heavy toll at us, and I could not see a way to fall into an ticket effective defense and kept pushing against North Bunker.

Lesson to be learned: Prepare to support the bunker assault, especially the support troops like tanks and APC. It is not only a good chance to win the bunkers, but a good chance to loose some assets.

3) Qwai River
Chinese side - lost by 50

I took over approximatly 15 minutes after beginning of the map: Our squad was the only one defending temple objective from attacks by infantry and helicopter insertions, and most of the team was still in main - it took not very long until we and our firebase were wiped out by concetrated US attacks. We lost our tanks, and a lot of other assets. Fearing that the US might steamroll us, I ran to the commanders truck and put the commanders hat on my head. Again, reorganization went fairly smoothly, and soon I was in the situation to attack the Temple Objective.

The map shows the western part of Qwai. During the game, the number of infantry squads varied, but at the end I had 6 mixed squads under disposal. Air support by our chopper went quite smoothly for scouting and guiding a tank squad. Most of the time an Infantry squad was stationed at objective 56, defending and rebuilding the BF there. while 2-3 squads were attack objective T (temple). After we lost our tanks again due to very unfortunate events, one of the tank crews were so nice to switch to infantry and wipe 2-3 enemy squads in the north of OBJ56. Supported from the OBJ56 defending squad, they halted the westward and southward advance towards the objective. At the end, north was defended effectively by mixed defense and offensive operations (light blue color). Even an enemy activiy at the FB far north could be surpressed.

Counterattacks against objective T were not going so smoothly: Flanking from the west proved to be too difficult because of terrain and enemy fire, and several attempts of flanking from north failed as well. Numerous vehicles were lost, partly because of futile attacks, or simply because the front was so hot that You could boil an egg on Your notebook screen. I do not know how effective the JDAM was on the objective T, but 10 minutes later it was in our hands. Two squads managed to get a hold at the ridge and push insde the temple. Also, most probably the anti tank kits of the enemy were killed of by the area attack, so our tank could get into there and make mincemeat out of the enemy..
At the recapture of temple objective ("T"), I had 70 tickets remaining. Enemy attacks and taking back objective temple costed the team approximatly 180 (!) tickets. I ordered most of the team to defend objective temple, while some forces roamed the near objective 56 or the norhern part in search and destrox operations.

After 15 minutes of defense, the round was over, with US having taken victory. Still, I congratulate the team of having accomplished to take ojective temple and hold the ground near objective 56. Especially the offensive against the temple region is a very difficult task.

Lesson to be learned: Never loose temple on the chinese side! Taking it and holding it is imperative. It will decide the outcome of the map.



One might ask if I should not have stayed in the defense and try to save those tickets. I knew that retaking the temple might be very costly, and I had an eye on the always dropping ticket counter. On the other hand, I knew that a huge part of the enemy forces were bound at this place. Releasing them against objective 56 might have been risky, especially with enemy forces roaming around the northern defense lines. In the end, I wonder if I could have lured the defenders out of the temple region and attack them somehow, but this thought had vanished quickly in the middle of damaged tanks required repair trucks, air recon sightings, and infantry coordination.

Last thoughts:

Commanding on public servers can be quite tiresome, but fortunatly there are still enough squad leaders around that form up responsive squads and communicate actively. And while I know that 1:2 is not a good statistic, I believe that my team was better having a commander than not. There was more coordination, most squads were actively pursueing a team objective. Still, I find that commanding is a big luck factor and I do wonder whether it was the enemy team or maybe the commanders choice to put up offensive actions instead staying in the defense that lead to defeat.
However, the mentality of wasting assets, especially by unexperienced players, has to stop. It is bad enough, but understandable, if You loose assets during fights - but loosing them due to some stupid player not beeing able to restraint himself hurts even more from the commanders perspective.



Gibbon-6

[>para<]

nice post 3) i agree with you for TEMPLE ,is chinese lose it they gonna loose the game
1) for Muttrah City lesson of the day ,i never see cobra more then 5-8 min in the air after spawn i dont know why bad pilots ,or good air defense by MEC

[Wilkinson]

Epic stuff mate.

[Michael_Denmark]

Very nice post. From my point of view it has tactical thoughts, practical problems, awareness, terrain and adaptation embedded.

I really like that you evaluate your decisions, while at the same time present some of your self-awareness factors as well. Not all PR Commanders does that.

I completely agree in your conclusion about not loosing temple when on PLA side, on the great tactical map of Qwai River. I came to that conclusion my self some years ago and actually won a tourney battle by not loosing the very same.

If you not already play as CO or Staff Officer in the PR tournament, i can only encourage you to consider doing so. Think the application-phase for next campaign is on-line by now, or at least will be so before than later?

Again, great post.

All the best,
Mike

[GrimSoldier]

Nice post and yea not losing temple is pretty much a must to keep if PLA is to win.

[wuschel]

Hi,

thank You for Your comments. It always found it nice to find many helpful people within the forums, and so I wanted to give them some thing back.

Very nice post. From my point of view it has tactical thoughts, practical problems, awareness, terrain and adaptation embedded.

[..]

If you not already play as CO or Staff Officer in the PR tournament, i can only encourage you to consider doing so. Think the application-phase for next campaign is on-line by now, or at least will be so before than later?

Mike

Hello Mike,

in fact, I would like to apply for a CO position in the tournament, as I am certain that it can be a very interesting experience. However, the amount of free time I have does not allow me to bind me to certain events when it comes to entertainment. As much as I wish to, I am afraid I have to reject Your offer for now. Thank You for Your consideration.

Yours ,

Piotr

[Michael_Denmark]

Hi,
Hello Mike,

in fact, I would like to apply for a CO position in the tournament, as I am certain that it can be a very interesting experience. However, the amount of free time I have does not allow me to bind me to certain events when it comes to entertainment. As much as I wish to, I am afraid I have to reject Your offer for now. Thank You for Your consideration.

Yours ,

Piotr

Your welcome.

Time is a factor when playing the tournament. No doubt. But then again, i can only recommend it, cause with even a small amount of specific knowledge-focus, one can actually take stuff from this game (CO/STAFF level) and use it in real life. Use it to understand decision-making processes in civilian companies and so on.

Btw: Sometimes - some teams - has made deals so to say, using staff officers having only restricted time available. Thus a staff function - part-time - if available in next campaign could be an option. The tourney can always use staff people.

Ok, enough sale arguments from my part of PR town.