Fite Foward Defense

[Fungwu]

Okay, here is turn 9, I am holding them back, but only just...

Loss penalty is 37 vs 175 not very good for me.

Two things to note:

#1 For every merciless horde of nazis I have only one or two units holding them.

#2 Turn 9 and I've still got Riga, Nevel, Orsha, Zhitomir, Vinnitsa.

[Fungwu]

Oh yes, here is the rest of the front.

I am sick of retreating in Finland, those damn Finns will pay for every inch with blood. My opponent attacked into my screen of border guards, but my tanks and artillery restored the situation.

I don't want to defend like a turtle in Odessa either, I fell back one river from the Romanian border and so far I'm holding them. Reinforcements from across the sea head north from Odessa to do battle.

[Olorin]

ORIGINAL: Panama

Then you didn't know Guderian, Manstein or Hoepner. This is exactly what they advocated more than one time in 1941. If the German High Command had listened then Leningrad and Moscow would have fallen.

Hoepner and Manstein made to sit at the Dvina waiting for infantry but wanting to forge ahead while the Soviets were in total disarry. Then again they had clear sailing to Leningrad if they had given them the go ahead. Only a few formations between them and the city after they crossed the Luga at Sabsk and Porechy.

Poor Guderian made to sit for weeks after Smolensk and just as he was about to jump off to Moscow he is told to go south. He wanted to rush Moscow after crossing the Berezina and again after crossing the Dnieper and Smolensk and flanks be damned. [:D]

I know about the panzer generals wanting to do just that. But I said what I said having their superiors in mind, namely, Kluge, Halder etc. I don't think success was as guaranteed as they advocate in their memoirs. Manstein's stay on the Dvina river for example was necessary. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't drive forward all alone, being under attack frontally and his rears not yet cleared. This is a good subject to discuss but not in this thread I think.[:'(]

ORIGINAL: Fungwu
#2 Turn 9 and I've still got Riga, Nevel, Orsha, Zhitomir, Vinnitsa.

[X(][&o]

[Fungwu]

Turn is now 15.

Loss penalty is 253 vs 46 My rifle squad losses are 42.5 K lost 38.5K remaining.

So far so good, but it is a tense game. I've had to give a lot of ground in the past few turns because of powerful German attacks. My newest line is engaged in a few places but events are not causing me ulcers just yet.

Up to now I have thrown just about everything into the path of the Germans to slow them down. Now I am trying to conserve my units a little better. Across the front I have formed my groups so that I have infantry, recon, engineers, artillery, tanks, airplanes, and forts working together. Mostly the infantry are fortified with the help of the engineers in the front, the tanks stand in the next row defending the artillery. When the enemy tries to snake his units around my infantry I attack them with the tanks and the artillery. If I have a unit that is in contact on 3 hexes and it doesn't have good support I try to use a recon unit to disengage it and an engineer to re entrench it someplace better. I also try to escape with my recon units too, they are good at disengaging. I always try to shift my tanks and artillery back so they can't get surrounded. My planes are mainly helping with attacks, the Germans aren't using interdiction. All I need is to get more reinforcements in a place then I lose in the attacks and I will be gold.

In a couple of spots the Germans marched up to my lines and I used tank and artillery units to make limited attacks to force them back. In other spots my infantry got surrounded and tank units helped them break out again. So it is not just the Germans making attacks, but mine are pretty tiny at this point.

Here is the big picture.

[Fungwu]

Here is the detail of my line east of Smolensk. The yellow spots mark artillery underneath the tanks.

[larryfulkerson]

I completely missed the battle of Smolensk.  Or was there a battle?  Did the Soviet dude give up Smolensk voluntarily? 

[madner]

Every inch had to be taken out of the cold dead hands of Red Army soldiers.

From the German player perspective this is a lot more exciting then the usual game. I'm not that good at AARs, but every turn you have to make decisions on where to crack the armor, and how to keep the pressure on.

[Fungwu]

I completely missed the battle of Smolensk. Or was there a battle? Did the Soviet dude give up Smolensk voluntarily?

Damnit Larry, I don't have the patience to make a turn by turn AAR like some people

Basically I ran low on divisions after Orhsa, he came along the Dnepr on both the north and south roads, pushed through my screen of a inf and mechanized division, and then took the city in a direct assault against the tank division I put there. Like I said I ran low on divisions so he was able to move around my small force west of the city pretty quick.

Here is a shot from turn 18. He has 2 supply units here in two different assault groups. I am guessing this means this is an important attack for him, or maybe he just figures the rail road has his other spots covered and hes got 2 supply units to spare. In any case this was a thin spot, but his attack was not unexpected. In fact I might have just lured him into attacking this spot by specifically not putting many units here.

Basically I spotted his panzer columns opposite Bryansk a few turns ago and then he disengaged. I was sure he was resting up for his next push, and this seemed a likely spot. I wasn't too worried though because his divisions here are out of place to support his push towards Moscow further north. I am not too worried about losing Bryansk and Orel, I figure I can tie him down here before he does anything too dangerous, and there is a lot of room in this sector to retreat. My other sectors weren't too bad so I could spare a lot of divisions to reinforce down here, but I put them well back so he can't overrun them.

Looking at the divisions involved its my guess that the northern concentration is all of 2nd panzer army and the southern one is one panzer corps of 1st panzer army. I am sure my 5 infantry divisions and 2 mp units have the situation well under control.

A note: Previously my opponent landed the whole 7th FJ division behind Kiev in connection with a push across the river to encircle the city. It worked and I lost about 7 arty regiments and a tank division as a result, but I destroyed 7th div hq and 1 regiment of paratroopers. This turn he dropped the remaining two regiments on either side of the southern blue arrow. I had enough units to surround and destroy both regiments, so I guess all I have to worry about now is everything else.

[Fungwu]

Here is the situation at Moscow, my opponent caught my units a little out of place and has made some good progress, and me without many expendable units to throw at him. Luckily a few tank divisions were able to redeploy, and I got
about a million fresh divisions being railed in. He appears to be attacking with about 6 motorized and panzer divisions. I'd say about 3 are exhausted including all or most of his panzer regiments. I'm guessing his attack will bog down before Moscow is captured. I think this will be a valuable place to bleed him. As he drives forward the terrain just gets worse and worse, but he can't stop, because hey, its Moscow. According to my best estimates, the Germans have lost about 18K rifle squads, I myself have lost 48k with a strength in the field of also 48k. Basically I've got plenty of guys and he is running low, any attrition I can cause now will work very well for me.

[Fungwu]

Here is the front at Leningrad. This place is a gold mine. Well if you are looking for dead Germans and not gold.

In my picture I have illustrated the possibilities for defensive lines here. I am not even trying hard, but it shouldn't take more than 3. Hell even it does I think it will only be worse for him to lose enough guys to actually penetrate more than 3 of my defensive lines. Many people start defending at the Luga river. You can see the benefit of defending forward here, with all those marshes I can even create a solid line and still have 2 or 3 or 4 divisions deployed behind with the artillery.

He has half his mobile divisions coming straight up from the south and the other half trying to worm around the flank. Good luck, it is all hills and forests over there, all I have to do is string some divisions along the only road.

In my FITE AAR that I am playing as Germans I explained a few reasons why I decided to avoid attacking Leningrad altogether. Here you can see why. Actually the Germans made more progress here than they should have, I had two tank divisions making counterattacks and then I had an early turn end and both were routed, had I not screwed up things would be even worse for the Germans here.

[Fungwu]

Here is the South. At Odessa I was forced to fall back because of developments to the north. Now I've got the city pretty well defended. Unlike some players I did not leave a huge army there, just enough to ensure the defense. Most units fell back and now form my new line.

A lot of troops got shipped into Nikolaev sparing me some rail capacity.

I lost about 7 units in the southern half of the line because the northern half retreated. The red arrows show my retreat. The units left behind are waiting to be captured, but on the bright side taking out so many units should sap the impetus out of that wing for the next turn so I can prepare a better reception for him. His north wing is steaming along and this is the spot I am having the most trouble right now.

My new line should slow him down some, but of course I'll need a lot of new units soon. Luckily this spot is nice to defend because the frontage become progressively smaller, so it should only get easier for me. I don't think I can stop him from getting the two factory towns here, but I should be able to delay and bleed him enough that by the time he does get them his momentum will be spent.

[Fungwu]

Here is the front at Turn 22. In the north the Germans haven't done anything for the past few turns. At Moscow I have deployed a pretty formidable line of fortified tank brigades opposite the Germans. So far they haven't tried tackling it yet. Instead the spearhead has angled south east and is headed for the Oka river west of Tula. I have a few units placed west of the Oka to slow the Germans down and the main line will be along the river.

The Germans are headed around either side of Bryansk, and the southern pincer is spread out along a broad front. There appears to be two points of effort, one headed toward Orel, and the other towards Voronezh. My reinforcements this turn have primarily gone towards this sector, so I hope to slow down the Axis progress considerably over the next few turns.

Between Kharkov and D-town are some infantry formations that haven't reached my main line yet.

In the extreme south my line runs from D-town through Z-town to Kherson and then the sea. This is a great spot to defend because the frontage is severely limited by flooded marshes along the river. The Germans are not quite in a position to attack here yet. I have a strong initial force formed from the survivors of my last line of defense here. I am reinforcing them every turn by sea which is sparing me some rail capacity. I hope to next turn ship in 3000 more points of troops by sea and as much as I can spare by rail. With any luck I can stop them here, but currently intelligence estimates the Germans will be stopped somewhere around the yellow line.

[SMK-at-work]

Buzz had a house rule for his mods that the Soviet units in the Baltic States & Eastern part of Poland weren't allowed to move out of those areas which gave a similar effect.

[larryfulkerson]

Richard ( aka Pioneer ) and I started a FITE game and I'm the Germans and he's the Soviets and we've gotten to turn 12 now.  Richard is using the Soviet attack-at-every-opportunity strategy.  Instead of retreating to the east he's throwing units at me and setting up boat loads of road blocks and stuff like that.  I have published the AARs for those 12 turns and you can find those AARs here http://65.101.188.183 toward the bottom of the web page.  I have just cleared Minsk house by house and the battle for the middle begins.  Richard and I are just now getting to the stage of the game where semi-solid Soviet front lines are built.  It's not the Axis chasing the Soviets anymore ( actually it never was...they are standing fast and forming lines).  I've lost a lot more troops than some of my previous FITE games ( at least that's my impresssion ).  There may be something to this forward defense after all.  Thanks for the idea.  I mean Richard thanks you.  I guess.  Here's the front lines as of turn 12.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a link to download a movie of the first 16 turns of the game between Richard and I.  It's about 2M bytes big.

http://www.fileshost.com/download.php?id=FAE8DDD21