Bob Kalinowski - 12:46pm Apr 5, 2001 PST (#6041 of 6052) "Tell the king that after the battle, my head is his to do with as he pleases; in the meantime, allow me to use it in his service!" -- Seydlitz at Zorndorf Frederick the Great -- Roy, I played the heck out of AH Fred from 1987-1990, and albeit the combat system is "unfair," regarding force size as cited by Brandon (and allows the "Fred +5 sp is unbeatable" anomaly), it is a heck of a fun game. I can't quote chapter and verse, but you try to get the dance against Fred going roughly like this: By 1758, Browne is dead, so the only 2 leader the Austrians have is Daun. You have to plant Daun opposite Fred in whatever theater Fred is going for (Bohemia -- Prague, or Silesia/Moravia -- Konigratz). You stay in the mountains whenever possible. The base Austrian strategy is defensive; if Fred moves for P or K, you circle around him and block supply with your zoc and troop drop offs. Fred cannot besiege when his supply is cut. To do this in either theater involves the painstaking and not always successful process of building supply bridges between P and K, and up to the mountains n/e/w of each. If Fred is going for Prague, the Aus parks in the hills north, tracing back to Konigratz, and vice versa. Then of course Fred will go after the linking depots. To do so, he puts a cover force on Prague, or abandons it all together. If he abandons it, you decide whether to reoccupy in toto, or retreat east, keeping to the hills as best you can. Often your linking depots get hit. But Fred loses a few turns going there and back. If he sends out only a detachment to get the depot, your goal is of course to jump that detachment on a FM run. If Fred heads west against the French, Daun immediately moves against Breslau (silesia) or Dresden (saxony/bohemia). If Fred keeps heading west, retreat the nearest French column and try to get Daun to besiege Dresden. Fred will often come back. Retreat back to the hills, and waste more of his turns. Meanwhile, as you suggested, the French advance in two widely seperated columns, one aimed at Magdeburg, trying to plant depots in the hills as much as possible, the other farther north in the Hanover area; Ferdinad can beat both, but the -2 hill modifier is a much better evener here; if Ferd heads for the north group, the southern tries to advance; if he comes for the south group, get back on the hills and wait. Meanwhile, the Russians are advancing from the east, taking care to put sometimes 3-8 guys in their depot chain, shuttling the extra sp forward with the extra leaders, to avoid raiding by Lehwalt; I have had several games where Lehwalt/Dohna alone can keep up the raid strategy, but others, where the die fails, where they are caught and stomped. And if Fred races east, the same as above applies -- retreat, get Daun moving on a 10 pt fort. A key goal for the Coal. is also to maintain 20/25 sp armies -- this will defeat the Fred+5 unbeatable stack because you can overrun Fred at 4:1 and capture him without combat. But you can usually maintain this only with the Russ and 1 Fr, 1 Aus force; you don't have enough troops to keep 2 Fr or Aus at that level. So the Coalition plan always involves a seesaw to and fro, keeping away when Fred is close, trying to move in where he is not, hoping that the sum result of the oscillations is that some Coal force lands on a big fort and takes it while Fred is elsewhere. And it is all subject to the whim of the die; you try to move 4 hexes to get that depot built in a hill, you get a dr1 and can only move 2. Then Fred does jump you and slam you for 5 sp lost, 5 captured, and you're DM for 6 turns. But maybe Fermor got to Konigberg in the meantime, or Clermont reached Minden, etc. Your mileage will always vary. And unless you're playing the AH General campaign game, there is no Miracle of the House of Brandenburg in 1758 or 59 (there is a death of Eliz die roll which i believe begins in 1760). The Miracle of the House of Brandenburg refers principally to Saltikov's decision to retreat after decisively defeating Fred at Kunersdorf, August 1759. Though only 40 miles from Berlin, he had taken 13,000 casualties, and thought he had done enough for the Austrian war effort that year, especially since they were still stiffing him on supplies he needed to advance which they had promised for months. Sorry for the long post. You struck a chord. Bob Kalinowski - 07:47am Apr 6, 2001 PST (#6052 of 6053) "Tell the king that after the battle, my head is his to do with as he pleases; in the meantime, allow me to use it in his service!" -- Seydlitz at Zorndorf Roy, Fred follow up -- Absolutely, you need to have at least one junior leader as a kaka shield for the good leaders; it sometimes happen in mid-late game that a junior guy gets hit, and you don't have any others available; this makes battle with your big leader a little more inviting for the enemy, and if your luck is like mine, you will regret not replacing the shield. Another thing I remembered about Coalition Germany Ops -- use mixed stacks. I can't quote here, but a lot of the senior French 1758 leaders are still crap 0 init, so if they get Dmed, they never recover. So too the Empire leaders. You can mitigate this by peeling off 1-2 Austrian 1 init leaders and sending them west to link up with Empire/French stacks. You ensure the leader with the best init (here, always 1) has the most troops in the stack, and the other two nationalities just 1-2 less. Ex -- send Nadasy west with 7 Aus sp, combine him with Sachsen and 7 Empire sp, a junior French with 7 or 6. The senior leader leads; barring this, the leader with the most sp; make sure it's your 1 leader (drop off other sp for the depots, not his). You now have a 20 sp army lead by a 1 Aus leader; they move faster, and if they're hit, you at least have a chance of rallying instead of losing the whole stack for the game, ala the senior French-led stacks. This got me to Magdeburg once (although it probably resulted more from lucky results from a rare Daun-Fred battle/ rapid rally/2nd battle series further east that kept Fred busy).