I'm looking forward to reading these posts when I have a bit more time, but till then, here are two stories.
Battenkill when I was a Cat 4. We had a plan for the finale but since the race was really conservative, one of my teammates sprung away midrace. He opened a gap, some people chased, so he looked back, sat up, so everyone else sat up, too. That's when he started riding. When he was out of sight, the rest of his teammates changed our plan to helping him stay away. This meant going really hard up climbs and on dirt roads, to dissuade a hard chase on pavement. It worked, I guess, because my teammate stayed away and won.
Another one - Hilly road race, cat 3, three hard climbs per 20-mi lap. We kept our protected rider very sheltered, kept him out of trouble by leading him up a sharp climb and leading down a tricky descent. We covered a lot of flurried attacks and put him and a few more of us into a good-sized split. He missed a solo move that wound up winning but initiated the podium move over the sharp climb with 1mi to go, sprinted for 3rd from a four-rider move. He said the only reason that he had the energy to do that was that he was completely sheltered the whole race and didn't have to do any work whatsoever (other than get himself up the climbs). He's not a podium-all-the-time rider - it was a really surprising result he's proud of.