Triumph or Agony (1941 Russia) Boron (Reich) vs. Seille (Sowjets)

[wmcalpine]

I look forward to this one. I have been "educated" by both xB and Seille in AT. I will learn much from their tactics!!

Bill

[oldspec4]

Also very interested in how this AAR plays out.  I need all the tips/help I can get just to beat the AI.

[seille]

Russian turn 3.

Not much to report. I still build up defenses at the usual places.
Leningrad, Sevastopol, Kiev, Smolensk and so on.


In the north i did a successful attack to the german armored spearhead.
Out of range of it´s own fighters i sent my planes in for preparing the following ground attack.
My tanks surrounded and destroyed both german korps after that.
Unfortunately i forgot to make a screeshot, but it was a concentric attack with high bonus.
That´s the kind of opportunity my russians are waiting for.

That are the kills/losses from my turn.

[xBoroNx]

Saw that coming grmml [:@]

[Vorsteher]

I did not see win was able to be are yet no German player that this scenario in 1941.The turns are too long.Second turn is august.But Smolensk fall 16. July.I hope better version coming soon.

V.

[tweber]

I think you can win the scenario as the German player (Seille can vouch for that).  The design was set so that typical play gets you to the historic line at the time of the Soviet Offensive on December 7th.  However, the Germans got about half the territory they would get in the first few weeks and the rest over the next 6 months.  To do this in game turns, you have to greatly increase German mobility and combat effectiveness in the start and then decline German mobility and combat effectiveness later on.  I chose to set the side up so there was less change.  The end result is that the Germans will be a bit slower in July and August and a bit faster in October and November.  My goal was to capture the flavor of the conflict, not the exact timing.

[seille]

Yes, the german player can win. At least when he plays well.
Tweber just kicked my ass and i just won a game myself yesterday as german before the german summer 1942 offensive.
 
The scenario setup is VERY ok. You can come close to Leningrad and Moscow and make better than historical
progress in the south.
 
It all depends if both players play historical way or different. What do they produce ?
And their overall strategy.
 
@Tom
Don´t worry, the scenario is set up well. I don´t think the germans have to win in 1941
when the russian player doesn´t play too bad.
 
The scenario feels very good. As i often say alone this scenario is worth to buy the game !!
 
 

[xBoroNx]

Seille is really good. He has built a quite strong defensive line around dneprovostosk.
Another strong line is around orsha blocking army group centers advance.

[xBoroNx]

Something very weird happened.

As i mentioned a while before i did a suboptimal build in turn 1 assuming that paras can like in WAW be dropped into cities. This is not possible in this scenario though, so my parabuild was somewhat of a waste of resources.

But they can drop on airfields, so i did hope that seille might have airforce in an airfield near smolensk without army troops guarding them. My guess was correct and i decided to risk a transporterfleet + paragroup. Seilles fighters shot them down, but i got that weird combat report then:

[seille]

I suggest you play this turn again since you obviously found a bug (VIC !!! )
These damn intercepted paradrops are still buggy.
In my eyes transports down = paras dead.

PS. I saw this bug already while alpha test in a game vs Tom, but i thought it was fixed.

[xBoroNx]

Hm but you wiped out my tanks last turn and will win anyways, so i suggest to continue. This way you will be forced to guard your air troops next time with a small garrison.

After all you only lost 11 planes there = 22000 production = a merely fith of your production per turn and i lost 6000 production too in this attack.

[xBoroNx]

Casualities this turn, the Sowjets also lost 63 SMG II, 7 Fighter II and 8 Light Tanks II.

[seille]

The plane losses i had in the center due to a bug are hard, but we continued without replaying that turn.
Partially my mistake not to guard the field, but it was still a bug after my planes downed ALL transports.

Btw, I wiped the tanks out last turn cause i had planes in range and the tanks had no air cover.
This is no reason to allow bug abuse [;)]

In my turn i still organized my defense.
And i attacked in the north by three tank units with good effect.

[xBoroNx]

The longer i think about it i think it should not be fixed. Paratroopers usually attack during the night, so most of them were shot down, but a few survived and eliminated the airport then. Overall this makes sense imho. Just think of the nice paradrop scene in one of the first episodes of band of brothers

[xBoroNx]

Hm not shown on Seille's report is that he lost a few planes in futile attacks . The weakening AG north suffers is intolerable in the long run though

[xBoroNx]

For AG-Center the Situation is very interesting. Seille blocks the road to Moscow with significant forces:

[seille]

Russian turn 5.
Not much to report from my side.
I tried to stabilize my fronts as good as possible.
 
Germans are on their way to attack Sevastopol and Charkov
and they started their attack to Smolensk.
 
I´ll start to post more screens during the winter turns. Actually i can´t attack, completely busy with my defense
and i don´t want to show my defensive positions in detail yet.
 

[xBoroNx]

Hm Seille deployed an air wing quite risky in Novgorod. Unfortunately our artillery which bombarded them and the garrison troops killed no plane .

[xBoroNx]

But fortunately our armor manages to storm the city and overrun the enemy planes on the ground.
In Kharkow we have not so much luck, we almost take the town, but only almost. Now the front there is a bit grotesque.

[xBoroNx]

I am frustrated. I nearly managed to cut off the whole smolensk army, but only nearly. Now i have to try bloody direct assaults likely