Before I do it would be helpful to hear critique of this AAR's style and content. Is there something that I might or should do differently to be more clear or entertaining?
I just returned and made time to read your wonderful AAR from the beginning. While my eyes are a bit buggy reading all that in one sitting, I would like to take the time to offer you a comprehensive reply.
Firstly it was dammed thrilling, and only got more so as I realized that you were getting on target for a “textbook blitzkrieg”. In fact the blitzkrieg started going so well that you have made me wonder about my unorthodox favorite approach to defeating the Bear easily by charging cavalry "through the Pripet Marshes" instead of your masterful and more realistic "surrounding the Reds in the marshes" and destroying them there. Of course my crazy and really fast Blitzkrieg wasn't on TRM at all, so no comparison. What I mean to say is that I started looking at blitzkrieg in a new way because of how you methodically pulled off this one - one good bite, then a couple more to each side of the first, and a final good chew on the hinterland to change the flag on a very large piece of SU while knocking down their horrible total unit count. And repeat for next operation,: and repeat until won. Oh, the magic of those red/yellow/violet goal lines! Or just brilliant strategy pulled off with true German precision?
As an extra note to the military successes you showed, I think there is much to study in your ARR – especially the comparatively small number of units you used both on ground and in the air against Russia. But I sure was glad to see it included Fallschirmjäger, and later marines. But generally I found your few MOTs and ARM alarmingly few. As it turned out, the alarm was felt mostly by the Reds.
Next I would like to comment on your running commentary which is of a great style. Thank goodness you don’t have my style or I probably would have gone blind reading too much writing! Anyway, you have a really active way to describe things with some wonderful and unusual choice phrases that somehow just made it all come more alive for me. There are quite a few good chuckles in what you set into text.
Finally I’d like to comment on your screen shots (OF COURSE!
) and they are really good. Nice use of showing many elements to make any screenshot show its best while all is arranged best can be and with good tempo of various map modes, different zooms, use of cursor to increase info, nice selection of pop ups and effective arrangement of them to not obstruct view of what matters, plus many more of the finer points regarding superior screens.
Of course, no critique (your request) would be serious if ALL was perfect, right? Hence I did find one fault thru out your AAR that appears randomly, IMO. Sometimes I felt there was serious separation between the text and the following screen shot. For example, you might have written about Barbarossa, followed by next paragraph about the Battle of Atlantic, then India… and then we get to the next screen shot that is showing what you mentioned there about Barbarossa. But by then the Barbarossa text is too far from its relevant screen shot. IMO, the additional you wrote about the Atlantic Battle and India should not have been written between the text and screen that related to Barbarossa. Clearly, it should simply have been moved to after the Barbarossa screenshot, and so later continue the text related to other theatres.
To put a handle on this type of editing error I would call it “text/screen relevancy”. So, if you (for example) mention a province in the text, then the accompanying screen should show that province . This basic rule applies to nearly everything that a screen can show. Mostly you abide by that logic. For example, if you write “The snows in Russia are melting away” you show the next screen with a patch work of frozen terrain (and not a political map mode).
Compared to all else that I think was excellent throughout your really great AAR, this occasional lack of relevancy between what I read and then next viewed screen is pretty minor; and I only mention it as it is the only criticism I could find.
To conclude, you gave us a really wonderful AAR masterfully played - and presented. Thank you immensely!
Oh, re-reading I see you also ask if there is anything you might have done to be more entertaining. Well… let me think… … … try losing (?) … … … or waiting until nukes really do target you? While “Until the Bitter End” continues to enjoy a certain edge in that regard (if I may be so brash to make comparisons) might I suggest that most nearly everybody will probably eventually vote their favorite German AAR being the one where Hitler dies appropriately and Germany gets whooped ONLY BECAUSE we probably are all madmen malingering in methodical mayhem. :rofl:
