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Wednesday, April 23, 2008

The Plan is Perfect!

This is Steven Petrick Posting.

One of the games I played quite a bit growing up was Avalon Hill's Stalingrad. While named after the city on the Volga, the game presented the entire Russian front from the Black sea to about half way up the length of Finland, and from Poland to just a little past the city in question. All unit counters represented Corps, with a game turn being about a half month (if I recall correctly) and the game going from the German invasion until the start of 1943.

I wound up playing the Soviets quite often as most players wanted to play the Axis, and developed a plan of action that I used time and again.

The key point to my plan was that Finland was "isolated" from the rest of the Axis front, and I wanted to "shorten my line" so that I could concentrate more forces against the main Axis offensive. So when I set up the Soviet defenses, I would "rob Peter" by taking forces away from the main line of resistance to "pay Paul", massing those forces opposite Finland. I would thus amass in front of the Finish frontier the three most powerful armies that the Soviet Union could muster with its available mix of counters. When the Axis launched its offensive, I would respond by launching my own into Finland. We were playing a game, so everything was known quantities and I knew exactly what the Finns were capable of, and exactly what the Soviet forces were capable of, the only thing not predictable was the die rolls. But the die rolls in Finland did not matter, as the force was overwhelming versus what the Axis could have in Finland.

In a few short turns, Finland would be overrun. While this was happening the rest of the Soviet forces would be conducting a carefully staged fighting retreat. As they fell back, the front would become wider, spreading them thinner and making it easier for the Axis to mass for a breakthrough. Ah, but the plan! With Finland gone, I would be free to move my three best armies out, not needing to leave any troops to defend the Finnish border, and mass them to counter the Axis offensive.

The plan worked. It was perfect. It worked time and time again.

Except that it failed that one time.

The problem was that while I could set up the Finnish campaign such that I pretty much excluded any chance of bad die rolls affecting it, I could not control the die rolls elsewhere. This one time, the Axis rolled very well for their initial offensives out of Poland and Romania. That might not have been disastrous, but the only offensive action I got to take at that time was in Finland, and I was focused there and not paying enough attention to the rest of the front.

In all likelihood, I could have probably saved the game if I had abandoned my Finnish offensive and gone over completely to the defensive.

But the Plan was perfect. The Plan could not fail. I would destroy Finland and there would be time to redeploy the offensive armies to stop the Axis before they took Leningrad and Moscow. The Plan always worked.

Except it did not.

The lesson is not to be so wrapped up in your ingenious plan that you do not notice that something has gone wrong. And be ready to dump the whole plan if you have to, no matter how committed you were to it.

The problem with plans is always going to be that the other side will not necessarily read their copy and know they are supposed to lose.