Turn 6
The Fins continue to make good progress in the north, mostly unopposed. At Vyborg I’ve surrounded the division there and will eliminate it next turn.
Infantry from the 18th Army forced the marsh hex north of Lake Pskov again this turn. But this time they had a unit close enough to exploit the gains and a single division made the move across.
4th Panzer group saw most of the units it had hoped to trap in the Pskov pocket get out or move north of the city along the coast of Lake Pskov. So I opted to widen the breach and secure the gains I’d made from last turn’s thin breach instead of trying to make another partial pocket this turn. The result is a nice 3-4 hex wide salient that should allow me the freedom to pinch off any units still in the Pskov pocket next turn and also start a drive towards Leningrad which is now just 11 hexes away.
Near Vitebsk almost all the soviet defenders moved out of the potential pocket north of the Dvina River, so 3rd Panzer Group turned its sights east towards Smolensk. Even though Soviet resistance has stiffened significantly and many of my hasty attacks failed, reasonable progress was still made and a lone panzer division sits just 3 hexes northwest of that city at the end of the drive.
It may be time to start moving 2 divisions at a time in game, as a lot of my single division hasty attacks are starting to fail. This will reduce my gains each turn, but should cut down on my losses and allow me to start winning most of my attacks again.
Infantry from 9th Army cleared the few remaining Soviet units south of Vitebsk and also widened the breach to the east created by 4rd Panzer Group to help open the supply route for the planned drive on Smolensk. They should be able to take Vitebsk next turn.
4th Army infantry made several attacks across the Dnepr this turn and cleared a lot of the east bank. Unfortunately this used up too much movement for a lot of the divisions and they were unable to cross the river. They have a good bridgehead across the river north of Mogilev however, so next turn should see the majority of the rest of the Army getting across.
2nd Panzer group had a very tough time getting across the Dnepr, but did succeed on grabbing a thin 2 hex long beachhead on the east bank. Although unable to advance further due to ZOCs, they did manage to route units in two additional hexes just east of the spearhead.
Next turn they should be able to widen their toehold to allow the rest of the Group to cross and begin a drive on either Gomel or Smolensk. It depends on how well 3rd Panzer Group does in its move. If they need help I’ll send 2nd Panzer Group northeast, otherwise it’ll head for Gomel.
After seeing my ambitious plans to pocket big chunks of the Red army get thwarted at both Pskov and Vitebsk, I decided to scale down my expectations some. So this turn 1st Panzer Group had to be satisfied with surrounding a single stack of three divisions (2 of them Tank divisions). They also made good progress to the east routing a whole slew of soviet units.
Next turn infantry from 17th Army should hopefully reach the area just east of Proskurov, thus freeing up the rest of 6th Army to head northeast into the breach created by 1st Panzer group. If not I’ll have to slow down my progress a bit as I’m running out of infantry to use on flank guard duty.
In the south 11th Army and the Rumanians reached the Soviet defense line, but most of the units lacked enough movement to attack it. I did manage to break a few Russians but not enough to allow me to continue east next turn without significant fighting first.
As this turns screenshot shows, I heavily invested in fortified zones this turn. This is the start of what will become my winter line. A fallback position that I intend to hold at all costs come the blizzards. Anything east of the line I’ll fight a delaying action for, but once I fallback to the winter line, my units will stand and die.
Since fortifications cannot increase beyond 2 if there isn’t an enemy unit within 25 hexes, I wanted to get the line on map as soon as possible so it can dig in while I’m pushing the Russians east. If they can get to level 3 or 4 before the Russians get pushed too far for digging to continue, I’ll be happy. They can then begin digging some more as soon as the Russian counter-attack gets to within 25 hexes again.
In the north near Leningrad, they may never stop digging, since it’s so close to the front lines up there. If APs allow, I may begin a second line up north along the Dvina, but I really don’t want to have to fall back that far up north. But having not experienced the winter in game yet, I have no idea if I’ll have to or not.
Jim
