10th October - Case Blue has failed
...and so this is the end of the great German offensive in the East for 1942. I make a couple of half hearted attacks in the Caucasus but dont really achieve anything. What is worse is that around Armavir Olivier has gone onto the offensive and his tank corps cause havoc to another one of my panzer divisions. His forces are getting too strong in this area and I decide to start falling back.
At Stalingrad I make one last attack against the city with no real expectation of success. Again it is a blood failure and with the OKH deadline for taking the city now having passed it is time to suspend offensive operations.
I really needed Stalingrad to act as a buffer for my prestige as it currently stands at five. The reality now is that I wont be able to play another replacement card this game, I am reliant on what OKH gives me each turn. The reason for this is that the only way for me to continue the game is to continue playing the ambition card. I will have to play it for the first time in the next couple of turns as my prestige goes to zero for failing to take Stalingrad, that will cost me 25pps. After that it will just go up and up. If you look at my objectives on the insert on the map, you will see that I have regular objectives coming up that will make me have to play the ambition card again each time to survive. Of course the ambition card also creates its own problems, as my strategic position is at 10, each time I play it I will get another objective that I will not be able to take. There will come a point where I just cant afford it and at that point I will be dismissed.
Anyway, that is the reality I have to live with now. So, bearing all that in mind, what do I do next to prepare for defence?
The first thing is to make a decision about Stalingrad. It is possible for me to assault it again and if I do get it as another objective next turn I will save up and then re-launch the attack. The reason for this is that it is the only objective I am near to and have a chance of grabbing some prestige and staving off dismissal. The other reason is, that it will help me solidify my defence line.
To the north of Stalingrad I am seriously thinking of gradually pulling back out of my northern Don bridgehead, the Soviet forces are just getting too strong to hold on, it will shorten my line and give me the possibility of using the Don for defence.
Next up is 1st panzer army area. I still have some strong panzer divisions in this area, and depending on how things go in the Stalingrad area, if I dont go for Stalingrad again I will withdraw some infantry to this area to enable the panzers to go into reserve.
As mentioned, in the Caucasus I have already begun to pull back around Armavir and depending on how strong Olivier's offensive is, I may pull all the way back to the Kuban line and defend from behind the river.
Of course the worse thing about the whole defensive strategy is the lack of air cover. I have 150 fighters including some Italians. They cannot make a dent in the overwhelming Russian numbers as things stand. So I withdraw all fighter units completely to the west and take them off intercept. They will be completely rested now until the main Soviet offensive starts. Then I will only use them on selected parts of the front to try and halt some of the Soviet air attacks.
So all in all it is a pretty dire situation, especially the lack of air cover and no prestige to play with.
However.....
...there are some bright sparks on the horizon. I still have 685k troops and I also have a greater number of tanks that the actual start of Uranus. Add in the fact that I'm fairly certain I'm not about to get surrounded - even if Olivier does well in the north he has no troops for a southern pincer - then those troops numbers should actually start to go up once the German reinforcements start hitting in November and December.
The other thing is that whilst having a strategic position of 10 is annoying, it does mean that I have quite a lot of withdrawing to do before I get anywhere near the dreaded no step back order.
So all in all, the game is not totally lost - I still currently have the victory points for a minor victory - and I think I have a chance of holding on.
I have lost the offensive game, but a new and very different game is about to start.
Bring on Uranus Mark II[:D]
