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So how are people handling the Barvenkovo area when you are Russia? It seems people take a real whooping when trying to defend it. Is there a cost effective way of holding onto this first river position for awhile? It seems a waste to leave it undefended. Like a delaying action while other units dig-in on the Izyum river (Donets).

Hey now, there's gotta be some ideas about this defence.   You don't have to give away your uber killing zone ultimate fritz nightmare secret plan, just a general word on how much effort you put into holding Barvenkovo.  In the historical battle, the Reds got booted out of there after a short but hard-fought scrap. 

In one weird case I saw a Russian guy put all his units into a circle of big stacks with arty in the middle.... a classic circling of the wagons.... with the roads to Izyum behind him for an escape route.  It was almost impenetrable and he took losses much more slowly than a normal defense of the south does.  Meanwhile he hid stacks above Barvenkovo in the fog to counterattack me after I took the completely undefended city.  I grabbed the city and reconnoitred his ambush and premptively hit it with a retaliatory strike.  I was lucky with the circle in the east cause I got a rare AO which let me move stuff up the right side of the river going north-south a few turns into my attack so I completely encircled most of 9th, 5th cav and 57th armies in one tight lasso with his stuff all crammed together up against the river.  My thin circle also used the river to reduce the enemy's breakout odds.  I lost about a half dozen units like recons and stuff who were spearheading the lasso northwards but their sacrifice paid off.

I try and put my Soviet units in 2 adjacent, parallel entrenched lines south of Barvenkovo.  The double line will usually slow down the German an extra turn or so, but inevitably the breakthrough will occur somewhere.

cheers

I am thinking a defense in depth is best too, like 2 units a hex in front with one per hex in the 2nd row maybe?  Compared to this, the small perimeter, big stack defense is hard to crack but falls hard when it does.  How about counterattacking?