Do the Allies *need* to go on the offensive?

DMcCunney wrote:

n7axw wrote:If it turns out that Vicar Zhasphar is actually under the control of the seijins, one thing I wouldn't do is send him home after whatever presentation they have in mind...

We don't know where Nimue's presentation takes place, but it's a reasonable assumption the seijins can't keep him. What would they do with him? It's unlikely they could take him with them when they leave.

...although there is some appeal in sending him home to keep gumming up the works, especially if he's thoroughly shaken up!

Quite. I can imagine the fun if he tries to tell anyone about his experience. (And the one he might tell is Rayno, and his likely mental state when he does so will push Rayno a lot closer to the edge... ("OMG! Zhaspar is losing it! WTF do I do now?" )
_______
Dennis

I was presuming the cave with Owl and Nahrman to take care of him which he should find a bit creepy...

Or knock him out and let him wake up on the front steps of the Temple with a headache... Man, what a heck of a hang over! Now, did this or did this not all happen...

Don

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Louis R wrote:Ah! The soft underbelly.

Yes, indeed! The PPCLI are only one of many, many regiments who could tell you all about the Soft Underbelly of Europe

Larry wrote:< snip >

Strategically you want to attack anywhere but in the North. Hey diddle diddle straight up the middle into prepared fortifications and artillery? No thank you. Hit the soft underbelly instead.

Larry

The Newfoundland Regiment as well in WW1 at Gallipoli.

Churchill's penchant for the "underbelly" strategy in two wars is questionable at minimum.

jgnfld wrote:[snip]

The Newfoundland Regiment as well in WW1 at Gallipoli.

Churchill's penchant for the "underbelly" strategy in two wars is questionable at minimum.

I would say debatable rather than questionable. In WW2, Sicily worked. Anzio worked eventually, but not for nothing was the "soft underbelly" there described as a "tough old gut".
.

Peter2 wrote:

jgnfld wrote:[snip]

The Newfoundland Regiment as well in WW1 at Gallipoli.

Churchill's penchant for the "underbelly" strategy in two wars is questionable at minimum.

I would say debatable rather than questionable. In WW2, Sicily worked. Anzio worked eventually, but not for nothing was the "soft underbelly" there described as a "tough old gut".
.

Gallipoli ran into a lack of adequate amphibious doctrine. Against a weak Turkish commander, it might have been successful, and then rather bad for the Germans and allies.

The Temple Lands map has some interesting green markings that could be construed as ICA movements around the right flank of the Southern MH in the Recklair Gap and the Snake Mts with a dotted tail running southward to Dairnyth.

Wild guess no. 37
A The ICA attacks through the Recklair Gap while moving additional forces through gaps in the Snake Mountains. When the MH moves forces to attack the combined forces, the ICA retreats to Dairnyth grinding the attacking MH forces all the way.

B The Missing, Mysterious 50,000 show up at the mouth of the Sabana river (or the Tanshar), then drive up the river to destroy portions of the Bedard Canal which puts a serious crimp in the supply route of the MH. Neither river shows any locks so an attack there couldn't be stopped by simply blowing up locks.

Please be gentle

OK

I'll gently restate my contention that the lower Sabana isn't navigable, at least once you get any distance from the sea. The new maps make it quite clear that the Bedard Canal reall does parallel the river for quite a distance after it first reaches it. That suggests to me that not even Shan Wei's engineers thought it worth trying to make the existing river bed usable.

The Tanshar, OTOH, we know to be navigable - once you get out of the delta, that is. From HFQ we know that it's actually easier to go 100 [IIRC] miles across country to get to it than to try to get boats to that point from the coast. [from Erthayn, I think: reflections by the captain of the Gardynyrs' first ride to Zion] Which, unfortunately, indicates that it might not be such a wonderful invasion route either. At least, there must be some reason why Clyntahn let the MHOGATA twiddle its thumbs in comfortable quarters all winter instead of pouring down those rivers and hiking around the Gulf of Tanshar to get at the soft underbelly of Siddarmark. Admittedly, it doesn't look like there's a good route along the coast, but with that many serfs on hand you'd expect Clyntahn would just tell them to _make_ one. By no later than yesterday. AFAICT, he didn't even say 'why not...', and if the Church can't get out that way, I have to wonder if the ICA can get in easily, in the numbers that would be needed.

One gets the impression that Malansath would be better campaigning ground, but it's much closer to both Harchong and Zion, and might be much better protected. That's the area the MH2 would be moving through on the way to the canals. Although I can't think of a better time or place to jump them, 6 or 7 to 1 might be pushing it just a little.

EdThomas wrote:The Temple Lands map has some interesting green markings that could be construed as ICA movements around the right flank of the Southern MH in the Recklair Gap and the Snake Mts with a dotted tail running southward to Dairnyth.

Wild guess no. 37
A The ICA attacks through the Recklair Gap while moving additional forces through gaps in the Snake Mountains. When the MH moves forces to attack the combined forces, the ICA retreats to Dairnyth grinding the attacking MH forces all the way.

B The Missing, Mysterious 50,000 show up at the mouth of the Sabana river (or the Tanshar), then drive up the river to destroy portions of the Bedard Canal which puts a serious crimp in the supply route of the MH. Neither river shows any locks so an attack there couldn't be stopped by simply blowing up locks.

Please be gentle

Louis R wrote:OK

I'll gently restate my contention that the lower Sabana isn't navigable, at least once you get any distance from the sea. The new maps make it quite clear that the Bedard Canal reall does parallel the river for quite a distance after it first reaches it. That suggests to me that not even Shan Wei's engineers thought it worth trying to make the existing river bed usable.

The Tanshar, OTOH, we know to be navigable - once you get out of the delta, that is. From HFQ we know that it's actually easier to go 100 [IIRC] miles across country to get to it than to try to get boats to that point from the coast. [from Erthayn, I think: reflections by the captain of the Gardynyrs' first ride to Zion] Which, unfortunately, indicates that it might not be such a wonderful invasion route either.
SNIP

While neither of the rivers is a clear choice for invasion route of the season, this Sabana-Tanshar thing has gotten pretty interesting.

The Sabana starts in the Mountains of Light in the Episcopate of St. Teraysa. It join with an un-named river to drain a huge area of the Kingdom of Hoth. Further downstream she is joined by the Raishot which drains the large area to the west of her watershed. Below the junction with the Raishot, the Sabana is a mighty river with a lotta water looking for somewhere to go. Shan-Wei's canal guys decided to start the Langhorne (I wonder if it was called “Langhorne” when it was built?) south of the junction and use some of the water for the Langhorne and to pass the unused water downriver to link the Langhorne and the Bedard.

The Bedard-Langhorne link starts as a narrow squiggly line where it comes out of the Langhorne-Sabana junction which probably indicates they used the existing riverway. At the point where the squiggly line goes into the man-made canal the water is split between the canal and the original riverbed. My SWAG here is that the bulk of the water is diverted to the Bedard Canal with whatever's left over being sent down the original Sabana riverbed. The riverbed meanders alongside of the canal until it reaches the unnamed town/lock where it splits away to the south. And so, the once mighty Sabana flows meekly and unheralded to the Gulf of Tanshar.

So what happened to the Tanshar River? The Tanshar and the Klynair rivers drain the area to the southwest of the Raishot watershed. The combined river flows through the Sweft Forest to the Gulf. The canal builders decided to connect the Bedard to the Tanshar there among the sylvan glades of the Sweft and in doing so, turned the once mighty river into a tightly controlled path to the sea.

Don't cry for the Sabana. Shan-wei's engineers may have turned her into a mere shadow of her former self, but they have kept her free of the daily deluge of dragon droppings the Tanshar must endure.

phillies wrote:

Peter2 wrote:[snip]

The Newfoundland Regiment as well in WW1 at Gallipoli.

Churchill's penchant for the "underbelly" strategy in two wars is questionable at minimum.

I would say debatable rather than questionable. In WW2, Sicily worked. Anzio worked eventually, but not for nothing was the "soft underbelly" there described as a "tough old gut".
.

Gallipoli ran into a lack of adequate amphibious doctrine. Against a weak Turkish commander, it might have been successful, and then rather bad for the Germans and allies.

Yes, and at Anzio, the general in charge (Lucas) failed to attack quickly enough in order to seize the hills surrounding the landing area, thus getting his forces blocked there by the greman army which occupied said hills. Lucas got himself relieved for that (but in his defense, he was a little short on troops, and did not dare to move in force out of beachhead). Had he been more aggressive (or had he disposed of a bit more troops), he would have seized those hills and the task of Kesselring would have been much more difficult. The initial landing was made with complete surprise, and was a success. The exploitation of it was a total fail, but due to the command in place, not because the conditions made it impossible to succeed...

Gallipoli was as well badly used, and failed due to a a total of three factors:

- the operation was too ambitious compared to the actual possibilities of the british army
- once more, there was a lack of aggressivity in the first hours of the landing, and the british thus failed to secure enough space to protect their beachhead,
- the turkish commander (Kemal) was particularly good and exploited perfectly the numerous mistakes made by the Allied.

The concept was sound, but the actual operation was badly prepared and commanded, and suffered from the same ailments that affected many other operations during WWI: generals that came from another era, and failed to fully grasp what they were facing (in term of weapons, tactics,...).

The debate over tactical versus strategic offensive can go on forever.

In my view you need to keep one eye on the long game: defeating the CoG is only the first part of the problem; what is needed is societal change after that has happened.

One of the major problems is going to be how to blast an essentially feudal society such as Harchong into a different societal pattern. I have been assuming that the pattern that is being followed is essentially that which obtained in Russia prior to the First World War. If you arm (and teach to fight) enough of the peasantry and then send them home defeated then what happened in Imperial Russia is just likely to happen in Harchong.

The obvious thing to do would be to re-create something like a WW1 stalemate on the Harchong front - introduce machineguns and maybe poison gas - while pushing on other fronts.

Eventually the Temple finances will crack, leaving the Mighty Host nothing to do but go home. Then stand back and watch Harchong implode

Mycroft159 wrote:The debate over tactical versus strategic offensive can go on forever.

In my view you need to keep one eye on the long game: defeating the CoG is only the first part of the problem; what is needed is societal change after that has happened.

One of the major problems is going to be how to blast an essentially feudal society such as Harchong into a different societal pattern. I have been assuming that the pattern that is being followed is essentially that which obtained in Russia prior to the First World War. If you arm (and teach to fight) enough of the peasantry and then send them home defeated then what happened in Imperial Russia is just likely to happen in Harchong.

The obvious thing to do would be to re-create something like a WW1 stalemate on the Harchong front - introduce machineguns and maybe poison gas - while pushing on other fronts.

Eventually the Temple finances will crack, leaving the Mighty Host nothing to do but go home. Then stand back and watch Harchong implode

I don't see Merlin allowing the Allies to use poison gas, and you know that the minute there is a use of it on the battle front by the Go4 and AoG, Houwsman will have a quick solution to it and get masks to all the men on the front line. I hope it never goes to gas.
Although that would mean that the Go4 are throwing out the prescriptions if they do start to use them. The Army using them will wonder about the reproductions for using weapons that are in total opposition to the prescriptions and the loss of life caused. I see gas having worse effects on the surviving armies moral.
If it does get to trench warfare I wonder if they will have a Longhorn Days peace and exchange of gifts like in WWI?