First try

[Arstavidios]

Well February comes and the situation moves from bad to worse as the Soviet army pursues its offensive with renewed strength.
Most German frontline divisions are unready and troop s are just brushed aside from north to south.
Reinforcements from Germany had little effect and had lost 25% of their strength by the time they had reached the front line.

Russian spearheads are nearing vitebsk. 2 more divisions were gobled up. I keep suffering massive losses every tun while soviet losses remain low. As a result the Soviet army is now about 6 000 000 men strong against 2 300 000 men for the Germans. only In the area of AGN which was not very much attacked is the German line still firm, but attacks are increasing and my troops just break as elsewhere.

Kharkov is holding But I'm going to have to evacuate due to the pression North and south.

South of Dnepropetrovsk the Russians have reached the Dnepr. Many Rumanian units are now routing and two german mobile corps have been repulsed and are going to have to recross the river.
I need to seriously improve my defensive skills. Everybody is retreating, up to now in relatively good order but with the increasing pressure it looks like more and more forces are at risk of being destroyed by the soviet advance.

[Arstavidios]

In the North my toops along the Volkhov are repulsed and the russians are nearing Leningrad. Those were my troops in the better condition with entrenchments

[Arstavidios]

In the centre looks like the next stop will be Minsk. My infantry divisions are just wrecks with many of them with less than 100 squads. Most of them are unready. Mobile divisions are a little bit better with many of them ready. With the increasing soviet advance many HQ where thrown to the back which does not help, although I'm trying to keep them well to the back and when possible with a combat unit.

[Flaviusx]

This is getting kind of ugly, not gonna lie. Blizzard on challenging is no joke.

Hang on until March, try to get the panzers ready for a counterattack. Once the blizzard penalties lift in March, you may be able to restore portions of the line.

[Arstavidios]

In the South Kharkov is holding But with the Russians accross the Dnepr around nikolaev it's time to fall back to the Dnepr too before AGS gets in trouble.

[Arstavidios]

Not looking very promising indeed.
Most of 42 will be necessary to restore the situation.
Any advice on how to handle blizzard would be welcome. settings are 100% for the Germans 110% for the soviets with 120% admin
However looks like I'm the one who needs some help here

[karonagames]

You are very brave to play those settings for the first try. At those settings the SU gets enough MPs to Attack, advance and attack again, and this can be very damaging. I think the 100/100 setting is historical - tough, like it was like it was historically, but survivable, as it was historically.

[Flaviusx]

Bob is the guy to talk to about this, he has perfected what he calls a linebacker defense that works reasonably well in PBEM and against the AI set to normal. (It is even rather effective, conditionally, later on in the war dealing with the Soviet offensive from summer 43 onwards, but that's another topic.)

Blizzard is so strong by itself that any adjustments to settings above normal may simply tip the game beyond the point of recovery. I don't think any of us has figured out a way to deal with it consistently with settings above normal. These things just feed off each other in a non linear fashion.

A hedgehog defensive variant hasn't been properly tested as of yet and may yield good results, but I'd wait to see what Pieter can come up with so far as that goes before taking the plunge.

[Arstavidios]

unit losses.
So far, I've lost 5 infantry divisions. Disbanded fortified zones zones also appear in the total, so actual losses were much less than that. soviets have not lost a unit for quite some time now.

[Arstavidios]

unit losses.
Many of the fortified zones were disbanded, however they appear in the total

[hgilmer3]

Still looks like a heck of a lot of Soviet divisions destroyed.

[Arstavidios]

Getting a good spanking by the AI is a good way to learn. It will make facing a human opponent more easy
This gives you an idea of what you may expect during the blizzard.
I will replay some turns on normal settings and see how things turn out.

[Arstavidios]

permanent losses are manageable but disabled hurt, all in all about one third of the troops are not ready for action

[Arstavidios]

oob

[karonagames]

Looking at those numbers, compared to my tests, I think the 10% boost to the SU cost you 300-400,000 additional casualties over 100/100, which means the AI was making 20-30 more attacks per turn compared to 100/100 and also means they will have advanced at least 3 hexes more than historical across the whole front.

[Arstavidios]

So now that we have established that blizzard with challenging settings is not for the faint of heart, it is time to release That most fearsone of the Reich's SecretWeapons, the Von Fubar ZeitMaschine, which will be coupled with dumbwaves that will make the soviet command somewhat dumber, and see how the situation turns out with normal settings.

Meanwhile i also have a witp pbem turn to attend to

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: BigAnorak

You are very brave to play those settings for the first try. At those settings the SU gets enough MPs to Attack, advance and attack again, and this can be very damaging. I think the 100/100 setting is historical - tough, like it was like it was historically, but survivable, as it was historically.

Ugh, this means my setting of 100/200% in my game is way over the top. LOL looks like I'll be tweaking down my settings as well. Any recommendations, my morale settings are 100/100, so I’m not sure if that’ll make a huge difference from what we see here when winter comes?

Jim

[karonagames]

For your 1st, 2nd , 3rd and 4th experience of the blizzard I would stick at 100/100 for all settings, and learn something about survival each time that you can apply to the next experience.

My first experience was pretty much what Arstavidios went through, on my second attempt I got Leningrad, and this allowed me to develop the "Linebacker" defence. My 4th attempt is in the Field Marshal Noob AAR, so you can see the theory explained there. I am not saying it is the only tactic that will get you through the blizzard, but Arstavidios' fortified zone tactic doesn't look to be the way to go.

On my 5th go, I went to challenging, and I managed things for the first 8 turns but, the last 4 were horrible - when your reserves are used up and cohesion goes..... As mentioned before, I have been unable to test the last adjustments that were made. They should have reduced the SU double attacks, which were the main cause of my grief, but until I play my next challenging Campaign in the new year I won't know if I can make it through the full 12 turns.

My 6th Test was the PBEM test, there is an AAR in the Development section, but it may be too buggy to be of value in the public section, but it did generate a ton of rules changes and adjustments to things like retreat attrition, and AFV and aircraft attrition levels.

[jjdenver]

Can the author of the AAR (Arstavidios) post exactly what difficulty is being used for this AAR? I'm having trouble figuring out what settings are used - just spent an hour reading this AAR to figure it out and can't see what it is.

[Arstavidios]

settings 100 for the germans
110 for the soviets.
120 admin for the soviets.