In less than five minutes, the two rounds of the first day of the war game were completed. When Dio, who was the referee, announced the progress of the battle and the losses of both sides, Musdegan's cold face finally changed.

Weiss ignored the gaze from the other side, lowered his head and focused on the changes on the sand table.

As he expected, Musdegen was playing the chess and the red side was planning to make quick battles and decide each round properly, but he could not expose his main attack direction rashly. Therefore, in the second round of the first day of the battle, he "flyed together" and sent ground troops to launch a tentative attack on the left and right wings of the defenders. As a result, he was hit by the ground troops of the defenders and the mobile artillery force, which lost 4,000 troops. The flying ships of both sides did not exchange fire - it was possible that the Red Fleet did not dispatch, or it might be that the activity was not in front of the front enough.

In the first round of the second day of the battle, Weiss made a bold decision: to concentrate the main force of the flight fleet to the right wing of the front line, and made a detailed command that "if you encounter an enemy flight ship on the right wing of the front line, regardless of the strength of the enemy, you will launch a decisive attack. If you do not encounter an enemy flight ship, you will cross your front line and advance 50 miles, bombard the enemy's defense positions, artillery positions, road bridges and baggage vehicles along the way, and then turn back decisively."

In addition to being surprised, Dio also showed a hint of gloom in Weiss's statement.

After listening to the combat deployment of both sides, the referee returned to the middle position and wrote on the notebook for two or three minutes before announcing the progress of the battle: In this round, the Red Party lost one battleship, one armored ship, two patrol ships, one armored ship, and three patrol ships that were damaged and needed repairs. The losses of the ground troops included three artillery regiments and one baggage regiment, with more than 8,000 troops. The Blue Party had one battleship and one armored ship that needed repairs. Some positions were damaged and the loss of troops was only 2,000.

Before Dio could finish everything, Musdgen's face turned into a red apple. He stared at Dio for a few seconds, then lowered his head and stared at the sand table for a while, finally raised his head and turned his eyes to Weiss.

At this time, Weiss deliberately provoked: "What? Want to invest and admit defeat? Start another game?"

Musdgen glared and said, "Don't be too proud, the battle has just begun!"

Weis held his hands in front of his chest and said in a hurry: "Your army morale has been severely shaken, and the overall combat capability has declined a lot. From now on, I just need to stick to it with all my strength. You will definitely lose. Why do you have to fight to trap beasts?"

Seeing the hesitation in Musdegen's eyes, Weiss knew that his words had successfully shaken the opponent's confidence. If Musdegen was not calm enough, then his mentality may be negatively affected not only in this wargame deduction, but also in every game played tonight.

After a moment, Musdegen suddenly sneered, and he turned to Dio and said, "Okay! I admit that as you said, this is indeed an extraordinary guy! I basically lost this game, but I will not give up because there is no word 'surrender' in the dictionary of the Musdegen family."

This guy said it was very good, but Weiss knew that his real intention was to use this game to find out his tactical routine.

Seeing through and not saying it out loud, Weiss can also use this game to test the opponent's usual strategies. He controlled the situation cautiously but not conservatively, and gradually dragged his opponent into a war of attrition with the method of avoiding the real and turning to the false, and eventually won the battle at less than half of the historical casualties.

Dio redesigned the chessboard and restored the war game performance to the historical facts before the battle started. Weiss and Musdgen came to the door at the same time and used the cold wind outside to speed up the cooling of the skills.

Musdegan raised his head and said, "Actually, I didn't underestimate you. At the beginning, I just had a little bit of luck. I felt that the commonly used starting strategies were enough to deal with you, but I didn't expect..."

"Inertial thinking is the most easily understood by the other party." Weiss responded, "I think a truly powerful commander must know how to figure out the other party's thoughts and make arrangements in a timely manner without any fixed routine."

"You are right, but the problem is...If two commanders who have never fought and have little knowledge of each other meet on the battlefield for the first time, shouldn't they adopt the tactical strategies they are most familiar with and confident?" Musdegan asked back.

"This absolute situation is almost impossible at the level of battle," Weiss said. "For a simple example, if we broke out with the Norman Empire, would we know nothing about the generals who could serve as the commander of the battle in the Norman Empire? If the answer is yes, it means that our intelligence department is completely incompetent, and we ourselves are also incompetent."

Musdgen snorted inexplicably.

"Okay, commanders, you can return to your battlefield." Dio said in it.

When the two returned to the sand table, Dio said, "In this game, are you going to swap roles or throw a coin again and choose the side?"

Mussdgan looked at Weis, and Weis shrugged: "I don't care."

The former then said, "Then follow the convention and exchange roles!"

Weiss said there was no objection.

Dio pulled up the curtain and signaled that both sides would start to adjust their pre-war deployments.

Judging from the war games on the sand table, the Red Side representing the Norman Empire seemed a little sparse. In fact, when the war that swept most of the planet broke out, the total population of the entire area controlled by the Norman Empire was only 55% of the Ulster Free Federation, and the limit of mobilized troops was less than 40% of the Ulster-Wessex coalition. In this way, they almost won the war. In the military history community, a common view is that in the early days of the war, two divisions could fight three or even four divisions of the Union Army. In the face of field conditions, it was easy to fight with less and more.

Starting from the Red side, Weiss felt that the core of victory was to concentrate troops and give full play to his advantages, rather than simply sticking to the idea of ​​quick battle and quick decision. Therefore, he deployed two-thirds of the ground troops in staging on the right wing of the front line, deployed suspicious troops in the middle and left wings, and deployed an elite marine corps at the tactical support point of the second line of the middle, thus creating a "rotating gate". If the opponent adopts a sticky strategy, he will gradually pry open the turtle shell from the right wing. If the opponent is fighting a defensive counterattack, it will lure the opponent into the middle and left wings, use the tactical support point to restrain the opponent, and the main force uses the three-dimensional tactics of ground pushing and airborne support to achieve side-rear roundabout encirclement.

It's that simple!

He lost one game first, and the loss was too much. Musdegen was more or less psychologically burdened. After the start, he adopted a very steady perseverance tactic. The flight fleet seemed to only serve as a cover and did not easily approach the front line. After the battle in the four days and eight rounds before the battle, the Red side opened the front line of the left wing of the Blue Defence Line at the heavy price of losing more than 30,000 people. Two elite, full infantry divisions poured in from the defense line. The main force of the flight fleet also broke into the opponent's defense zone at the same time, suppressing the Blue Defence Line's flank and the rear of the defense line.

In the first round of the 5th day of the battle, the key decisive battle was staged on the right wing of the Red side and the left wing of the Blue Side. The Blue Side Fleet, which was replenishing, arrived at the front line and set up an aggressive double-line slashing battle queue at high altitude. At this time, the main battleships of the Red and Blue sides were 4-5, the cruiser was 6-9, and the patrol ship was 12-17. The Blue Side's flight troops were dominant as a whole and had the "Liberty" battleship with the largest tonnage and the strongest firepower in this battle. Therefore, if a head-on air showdown was held, the Red Side had almost no chance of winning.

Just when Musdegan thought he was pushing his opponent into a dilemma, Weiss calmly told the referee that his fleet had set up a single half-moon arc battle formation above the breakthrough of the defense line, pointing the arc center towards the center of the enemy fleet. Each warship received the command that it was allowed to withdraw from the battle alone only when the damage level reached the limit. At the same time, the four heavy anti-aircraft artillery battalions of the field troops followed the second wave of troops into the blue defense zone and set up air defense positions on the spot.

Not only that, Weiss also made a request to Dio to command air combat on the spot. That is to say, the commander himself participated in the battle with the flying fleet. If the flagship was damaged in the battle, the wargame deduction would be directly declared defeated due to the commander's death.

Dio told Musdegan about Weiss' request and asked him whether he would also join the on-site air combat command. If so, he would conduct a live deduction of the air combat face to face with Weiss. If not, the referee would "automatically command" the blue flight fleet according to general rules.

Musdegan considered it and chose "No".

Since air combat is almost not restricted by terrain, the factors affecting weather conditions during wargame deduction have also been reduced to a level that can be basically negligible. For live air combat deduction, only in blank areas are required.

The double-row slashed combat formation chosen by Musdegan refers to the battleships being arranged in a row of oblique lines above (usually the limit area of ​​the battleships' ceiling), while the faster light ships are arranged in a row of oblique lines behind their side. This formation is not only conducive to the main ships leveraging the firepower and range advantages of heavy artillery, but also able to protect the light ships in the early stage of battle. When the fleets of both sides gradually approach and the battle enters a white-hot stage, the light ships are put into battle in the form of frontal assault or flanking guerrilla. Although their artillery is difficult to directly penetrate the armor of the enemy's main ship, they can lose their maneuverability by attacking the propulsion device at the rear of the enemy ship. In the historical factual Battle of Gedrink, the Norman Flying Fleet lost their new main ship "Admiral Novas".

Weiss chose a single half-moon arc battle formation to put all the flying ships into battle from the beginning, making up for the quantity deficiency with his firepower. During the on-site deduction and command process, he let the four battleships set up a "cool move" at an angle of 30 degrees, allowing the armored ships on both wings to actively press forward, maximizing the fleet's firepower output.

According to the war loss conversion rules of wargame deduction, Dio buried his head in the calculation for a long time and came to a conclusion that he couldn't believe. So he calculated it carefully again, and the result was still the same. He had to announce the battle result with a look of confusion: the Red side lost 2 battleships, seriously injured 2, and the light ships lost 70%; the Blue side lost 2 battleships, seriously injured 3, and the light ships lost 60%.
Chapter completed!