Mid July brought no relief to 9 Army, again pushed out of its positions in two places. The interventions of the LW were not massive, as I had an abundance of fighters in the area but my Stukas were not positioned properly, hence mostly out of range. It may not have made a huge difference but 100 ...

I don't remember who replaced Keitel temporarily, but the next decision from the top was to put Manstein in charge.

You would then wonder why he would have been available... Well he had been leading Army Group South until 2 weeks before and was then dismissed! Fortunately, his replacement was ...

Early July brought a nice variation to this pattern. Not for the VL - Vitebsk sector, which suffered another two defeats, of which one marginal. But the central wedge was quiet for once, I presume after emptying a number of dumps that needed to be replenished.

https://nsm09.casimages.com/img/2026 ...

The end of June saw a number of painful defensive battles, with four attacks that could all have gone badly for the assaillant. The first one took place between VL and Vitebsk. Admittedly light woods are better than clear steppes, but not ideal to hold on to a determined assault. The same is not ...

Let's conclude this review with the right wing of 17 Army and the more active sectors of 1 PzA and 6 Army. Fairly strong Russian forces have managed to push the Axis line by 20-30km on both sides of Melitopol. The defence could have been conducted more skilfully but counterattacks have kept the ...

Army Group South follows. Sadly Q-Ball had managed to jump over the major river in several places during the winter, and had extended the bridgehead before a counter attack stabilised the situation just ahead of the Raspoutitsa. 2 PzA is next to 4 PzA, the latter being directly in control of Kiev (2 ...

Let's take a look at Army Group Centre, which starts with 8 Army (at that time Kempf detachment). These troops are in charge of the land bridge between the difficult terrain of the South Valdai and the relative protection of the Dnepr. Vitebsk is an excellent anchor but without armour to sweep the ...

We never provided an overall picture of the front, so here is an attempt at making it clear, with apologies for the ugly markers that hide reserves.

Let's start with Army Group North and more specifically 18 Army, south of Leningrad. The positions are generally strong, in rough or forest terrain ...

A typical example of the asymmetry of losses is available with the action mid-June between Vitebsk and Smolensk. Hube staged two assaults which pushed back the advancing enemy. As soon as units go into a rout, their casualties rise disproportionately. In this instance, none of the large Russian ...

Before resuming the narrative of this campaign, let's take a look at the losses incurred and inflicted. The first picture shows the outcome of several weeks of Russian attacks against systematically entrenched positions, whereas the Germans were mostly able to launch counter attacks in the open ...

We are now entering August, which is historically when the major Russian offensive started, with the Germans suddenly discovering that they had a much bigger issue than they thought. Given that I have lost track of at least 15 Guards infantry corps and Q-Ball carried zero attack last week and only ...

The last week of May was far more active, with heavy action around Velikiye Luki and 6 Russian attacks altogether. I didn't know exactly what forces had been amassed near VL and did not try to second guess where the blow would land, so concentrated on giving strong air cover and adequate artillery ...

As expected, the storm broke near Vitebsk, although initially only from the direction of Smolensk. For a couple of turns, the Velikiye Luki area remained abnormally quiet. A counterattack punished some of the ordinary infantry that advanced alongside the Guards corps. This was nevertheless a good ...

The following turn saw another successful Russian attack, followed by a counter attack with strictly the same expected odds as the previous week. But whether the level 1 fort had been ignored in the initial battle odds or the composition of the Russian stack played a large role, the outcome was this ...

At that point, I was expecting a Russian move in strength against the marsh zone in the southward bend of the Dnepr. Any hex won can then be occupied by strong cavalry units that are difficult to dislodge. So I tried to protect this avenue, and had to accept that another Russian wedge crashed onto ...

The week of May 9th did not really bring any relief for the Germans in the Centre and the Hungarians fighting with them. Nearly 370,000 men surged forward, 6,600 guns and about 700 tanks. Eibl did really well in providing support but this was insufficient in this instance as in the next attack ...

When you think you have seen the worst from the Russians, they manage to pull off one more rabbit. The next week, they throw back another stack from the swamp with nearly 350,000 men, well over 6,000 guns and a few tanks as well.

https://nsm09.casimages.com/img/2026/01/24 ...

We are now mid-July 1943 and the Russian army on the map is 7.5m strong, a dauting challenge for very stretched German forces. Anyway here is a snapshot of what happened after a few mud turns.

In essence, most of the action was business as usual with pretty strong assaults against positions that ...

Thanks a lot for both answers. Yes I may change the bomb load if I try to take on level 3 fortifications, which happens seldom but the situation arose a couple of times recently as I deployed mandatory reserves against an area where the Soviet didn't seem about to launch a big offensive.

On the ...

I have in mind that attaching several SUs brings some form of malus to the unit that hosts them (on a direct basis, not as HQ allocation during combat), but I don't find it in the rules. Did I misunderstand that part? I have a couple of attacks planned where I would love to be able to maximise my ...