Turn 34 - TGIF (Thank God its February)
The situation gets from very bad to total disaster. 2nd army is about to loose another 2 divisions in a pocket. Of course the efforts to relief those brave men failed again due to lack of fighting power. 9th army is in miserable shape, most divisions are in state "unready". Where it is possible I am merging two miserable ones into one still miserable division.
On a bright side, the front around Leningrad and Novgorod seems to be stable.
My monster tak divisions, 16th Panzer, that had something like 350 tanks in autumn (due to a bug) is now down to 54 tanks.
For the next three weeks the only thing I can do is try to escape pockets. But now another bad pocket is forming in the 4th army sector at Orel. I need a miracle to get these units out of the frying pan.
Looking at the strength picture we are approaching 3 to 1 in favor of the Russians everywhere, and for number of planes it is even worth. So I guess I can cancel any Spring offensive. I will need months to bring my remaining forces up to strength again. And the I will probable start digging for the winter in May, so that I have a nice level 5 forts frontline by then. I will use swamps and rivers and use the pitiful remains of my Panzer force as reservers behind the lines. That means I will have to shorten the line quite a bit and probably need to retreat the hole southern bulge.
Summarizing the game up to now I think Marshall Miller did the right thing by running east as fast as he could. What could he lose by doing that? He never held ground except for short periods along the Dnepr. Every Russian player should be able to avoid major losses using that strategy. Since I could not kill enough forces I was trying to hunt him down even in the snow turns instead of starting to dig in early October. This proved to be a fatal mistake. Even if Nikolaus had been a success, the 100K+ Russian casualties never would equalize the bitter losses caused by lack of strong defenses.
I wonder if the Blizzard effect is as bad in the second winter?
