Let's start in the south.
Screenshots are tricky here due to that GUI bug where it is not showing the battle icons after a battle is done, so I don't have a battle screenshot here and in some other cases. To get a screenshot, I have to (usually) take it in the MIDDLE of the battle, and for that reason I slowed down the battles. But I don't have a screenshot for everything I might want.
Anyway, this is not the first area I did:
I started out in the same way as HLYA's guide with infantry moves near Lvov, although with a few things a bit different with more margin of safety than in HLYA's guide.
BUT this red ex I circled near Kovel is important. It has a NKVD border guard. If you do not shift that NKVD border guard somewhere else, then various Panzer Group 2 units that will be heading south have to spend an extra MP. So we get this out of the way (routed towards what will hopefully become the Rovno pocket). You CAN also save an additional 1 or 2 MP on a few units by blowing away this entire front line area (like HLYA does in his guide). However, I should not need those extra MP with my plan. Although if I did need an extra MP or two in certain places, one of the things I could adjust later is to blow away these other units as well, at the cost of some of them perhaps getting away.
Down towards the south, after doing these infantry moves (similar to HLYA's guide up to here), we find ourselves here:
I think most people attack the cav division on the 1=1 HQ first, but
the plan calls for attacking this mech division PRIOR to attacking the cav. That cav can give a lot of people trouble, but it is virtually inconceivable that it could ever give
the plan trouble (although the downside of that is that the mech can give some trouble instead, but I think the mech is more easily manageable).
Anyway, so I attack the mech with 3 divisions (with SUs). I also use bombers. This is all part of attacking with more force than might be strictly necessary for at least the key battles, to keep things on track. The cost of it is I will lose a very small number of bombers that I won't particularly have any use for until 1942 regardless. But it is another thing that helps make things a lot less chancey.
The mech will generally retreat either south-east, or east. You prefer it to retreat south-east, but my plan assumes the worst case scenarios for this sort of thing. In this case, it retreated east.
You can also see that the Lvov AT brigade retreated right 1 hex. HLYA tries to herd it into the pocket to the north, but I don't want to use a mobile unit on that (partly because it usually/often seems to rout rather than retreat anyway, and partly because I want to attack Lvov with a full division to be safe, which does increase rout chances also).
So I follow up attack the AT brigade to get it out of the way. I could probably have attacked with only 1 regiment and been fine particularly since it already lost a battle and it is just an AT brigade, but why take chances? I even used bombers on the poor AT brigade, just to make 110% sure rather than merely 100% sure that there is no combat delay:
Next I moved Grossdeutschland to the hex where the mech was, and then I follow up attacked (also with a SU and bombers, of course, to help make sure of things). Unfortunately I did not get a screenshot of the battle, but the mech retreated northeast:
There was also no combat delay. A combat delay would have been fine. The plan
assumes a combat delay. We also got lucky that the mech retreated this way rather than east again. But if it retreated east, that would also have been according to plan and would not be a problem.
The fact that it retreated north-east is nice, though, because it means we should be able to subsequently herd the mech into the Rovno pocket, rather than it maybe ending up getting away.
Next I slide in a Panzer regiment south-east of the mech (visible in the next screenshot). This gives me ZOC on the hex east of the cav, which will prevent the cav from being naughty and retreating there.
With ZOC established, next the same 3 divisions that attacked the cav attack the mech:
All we need here is not to get a combat delay. We
easily avoid that, with 99:1 odds. With 3 divisions, SUs, and bombers, you should be able to reliably avoid delay even if the cav randomly spawns with super high morale. And because we have ZOC to the east of the cav, it has to retreat (or rout) to the north-east, exactly where we want it.
In this case, I presume the cav must have randomly spawned as being pretty weak, so going to these lengths was probably totally unnecessary. The cav routed SO hard that it somehow routed ALL the way up here (the furthest I have ever seen it rout):
Notice also that while I had previously moved that 6=16 cav up, I had NOT yet moved it up next to that rout point. So it was there to catch the cav when it went flying northwards such a long way.
Next I moved another regiment southeast of the mech here:
This displaced the AT brigade from Lvov and it happened to displace northwards (which is fairly lucky).
But the point of moving the regiment up was to give me ZOC on Zolochev. That way when I subsequently attack the mech, I can be sure it won't retreat to Zolochev, but instead should have to go northeast.
The other nice thing about the mech having retreated where it did is it allows me to hit it with an infantry division one last time, rather than having to waste mobile unit MPs.
HOWEVER, when I actually attacked, there was a
SURPRISE:
The mech actually routed northeast, but hen redirected back along he double rail. This is very unusual. Normally it would just go north-east along that other double rail. But it is not really a problem, other than possibly meaning the mech might have a small chance to subsequently get away.
The other thing to notice is in this attack with the infantry division, I only BARELY exceeded the 10:1 odds needed to avoid a combat delay. If I had gotten a combat delay, that would no have been a problem, because I did not get a delay on the hex where Grossdeutschland did the 2nd attack on the mech. BUT if I had gotten a delay on both hexes, that would have been a major problem. So in the future, if Grossdeutschland does get a delay and the mech winds up in that hex, it is probably a good idea to hit it with a mobile unit in addition to that infantry.
Next I advanced forward, and for some reason the mech now displaced northwards again. Lucky.
It was a very strange mech. Routing northeast, but ending east, and finally displacing north again. Probably it was just trying to make the AAR interesting.
Next I moved up the Panzer regiment to give ZOC on the yellow hexes. Note the Panzer regiment would have had MP to move there EVEN IF it had to go through a combat delay:
With the ZOC, the tank should retreat or rout north-east as well when it gets hit. Unless its commander is even crazier than that mech division commander, I suppose.
Air losses so far:
With the ground phase, we are getting up close to 6k in total, despite there having been no Soviet planes in the last few attacks. A battle or 2 ago, I noticed that and turned off my fighters, so my bombers are now flying unescorted. I will turn hem back on when later when I get closer to any other Soviet fighter bases.
The tank behaved more reasonably than the mech, and retreated 1 hex northeast, like a good little tank:
Next I moved up Das Reich next to Tarnopol, and also moved 2 motorized regiments to provide ZOC on the hexes east and southwest of Tarnopol. This will "encourage" it to retreat (or rout) south-east. And on the off chance it retreats one hex, then we can give it a follow-up shove with a Das Reich regiment to get it further out of the way.
The plan calls for Das Reich to attack with 3 SUs. We also attack with Das Reich in particular rather than some weaker division (some other versions of Rovno pocket use different units).
However, I looked and saw how pitifully weak the Tarnopol rifle division was on that previous screenshot. Only 3 CV? That is amongst the weakest I have seen in Rovno. So, while I still did use bombers, I decided to only use 2 SUs rather than 3.
So confident was I that the attack would not only easily win but also avoid a combat delay that I left off that last SU.
BIG MISTAKE:
1) von Vietinghoff missed his leader roll and dropped from 199 to only 147 final CV.
2) The Soviet infantry division was not just 3 CV but actually 7.8 CV, more than double the estimate.
3) In addition, despite it being a horrible Soviet leader, there were randomly 2 Soviet artillery SUs deployed.
As a result, the final CV odds were slightly less than 10 to 1, and there is a combat delay.
Let this be a lesson to you - never deviate from the plan. If a Soviet unit looks weak, it is probably strong and you have bad intel. Trust the plan.
HOWEVER, this is not actually a problem. The plan
assumes that there will be a combat delay on Tarnopol. There usually is a delay, in my pretty limited experience. If there is NOT a combat delay, then that's just gravy. So we do not count on it.
With that, pretty much all the attacks that are somewhat questionable on the south-side of Rovno. We did not have the best possible RNG luck, but also not the worst. The plan handled it without really breaking a sweat.
The only somewhat questionable attack we need to do on the south-side of Rovno is that hex 3 north-east of Tarnopol. That is an attack against a rifle division, but it is on clear terrain with no fort. The only problem could be if we hit it with underwhelming force and attacked only with a single regiment or 2. But there is no reason to use underwhelming force. Better safe than sorry and not to rely on RNG too much. In the worst case, maybe there is a small chance it will rout too far out of the Rovno pocket if we hit it a bit too hard. That has not happened in my tries, but could be possible.
But better to avoid the chance of it maybe messing up the Rovno pocket as much as we can.
I probably won't post too many more uncensored map screenshots, at least of relevant parts, until at least Bobo receives (and subsequently finishes) Soviet turn 1, on the off chance that it would give away unit positions too much and allow for some of the pockets to be broken. The parts that I have shown here so far won't really do anything to help Bobo.
I am pretty sure they can't be broken though, unless something happens that is unaccounted for by the plan, like a 50 MP Soviet cav division. But surely that could never happen. And God help us if it ever did - can you imagine the chaos that could be wrought by a 50 MP Soviet cav division? Let's just say, it would not be good for the plan.
) of course Germany did hand out medals to there Allies during the course of the war.
