1.04.10 Fulkerson vs KLilly

[M60A3TTS]

On air:
I think the AA units are better off in the Air Fronts than cities.
LaGG-3s are only marginally better than I-16s, so I wouldn't spend the APs there.
There is an opinion out there that I tend to agree with that the Black Sea and Baltic Fleet air commands with their associated bases can be disbanded. More manpower for the rifle divisions.

Other stuff:
Disband most or all of the fortified zones, again for more manpower.
Usually by this time, I transfer 16th Army along with one other, like 19th from STAVKA to Southern Front. Then you can use APs to offload some of the units from the armies of Southwest Front to armies of Southern Front.
On Turn 4, Reserve Front comes into play. Assigning 3 armies to it gives you a good maneuver element.
Has he committed any of Hoth's 3rd Pz Group to the Leningrad area or is it only Hoepner's 4th? 3rd Pz Grp would be 7th, 12th, 19th and 20th Panzer. That will give you some idea of his priorities.

[FredSanford3]

Depth, man, you need depth.  Study Tullius Deterius' AAR.  He knows how to play the Soviets.

[Arstavidios]

In the first turns most of my AP spending go into disbanding units. I want to get the manpower and equipment back into the pools ASAP.

This includes Air HQs in Excess of 1 per front. A lot of airbases. Fortified units, corps HQs, I know they disappear for free in due time but they clutter the front and they eat up a lot of mampower, motorcycle gangs.... err regiments, antitank brigades, mortar units as rifle divisions seem to always be low on mortars, AA units.

Basically i onlly keep artillery regiments, sapper regiments and construction brigades.

AA units in cities cost APs to reactivate so i don't bother with them.

I try to put all the mobile divisions I can into static mode as this frees a lot of APs and trucks. i usually do that aroud cities. Some of them will be attacked and reactivated for free ... if they survive.

This frees a lot of mapower and equipment that flow to the rifle units. hopefully this will help you having strong rifle divisions that will be able to launch some counter attacks.  Use hit and run tactics. Gang up your units and counterattack wherever you can with a good chance of success during your turn, then use your remaining MPs to disperse so that the Germans will not have juicy targets to pocket. A lot of your divisions should have CVs of 2 3 or 4 quite fast if you disband a lot to free manpower and equipment. Start assigning good leaders where you are strong and are launching couter attacks. This will also help.

If he is careless you can use your cavalry to completely encircle one of his divisions attack it and rout it.
I've routed the LSSAH on turn 3 or 4 of a campaign this way. Always good to see them run
Dont try to isolate for destruction later as you're not strong enough to hold a pocket, unless he makes a big mistake. If you counter attack his exposed units you will force him to advance more carefully. this will buy you some time.


Try to save your strong divisions as much as possible especially if you managed to lauch a few succesful counterattacks with them. This way you will get some guards divisions early on.

I know it's not always easy to do, but that's a few general ideas.

i hope this helps.

Good luck.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T5 front lines before I'm moving any Soviet stuff:

[larryfulkerson]

I moved some stuff out of Leningrad to Krasnokamsk so it wouldn't be trapped there any longer. I need it more than the Axis does.

[larryfulkerson]

Also, I moved the Armaments industry out of Odessa while there was still time.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's me falling back, falling back, running to keep up with the others. Running for dear life. Axis forces pressing hard, breaking through first here then there. Lots of enemy tanks, fields of them, crawling NE toward Leningrad. Not many Soviets to go around and lots of retreating and routing going on. It's chaos I tell you. I evacuated factories with most of the rail this turn so not many forces in the far east made a trip west this turn. Next turn I just have to have the fresh troops on the front line and the factories will have to wait for their turn on the rail.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's me pulling back in the south. I moved a bunch of dudes a sizeable chunk of distance this time. It's still not fast enough though.
Kiev is due for a surprize soon.

[Arstavidios]

You should try to counterattack all those regiments and small divisions. You can inflict some losses on them. A panzer division with a CV of 7 is a tempting target. You have plenty of divisions with CV of 2 3 and 4 in the area, you can use the offensively during your turn. This will make you some nice guards divisions during the winter.

[Peltonx]

Larry you should be using atleast 70% of your rail to move factorys. You will get the divisions back, but you will never replace lost production, never.

Leningrad is really not worth the trooops, simply rail out production and then slowly withdraw from the north.

The Finns are really a handy cap for the German player after the 42-43 winter.

Once Leningrad is clear of factorys ect start railing out podution from south. I would not waste rail on Keiv or Odessa. The German will get some production.

Rail, Leningrad, Z-Town,D-town, Kharkov then Stalino. This should keep him under 80 arm pts.

Your #1 defence should be Moscow then south. Your 41 tactics are generally ok, but you need to improve on your summer 42 tactics.

Good Luck with the new game, might want to start a new AAR.

[wpurdom]

How come all those southwestern troops weren't cut off on turn 1? Was there an agreement or house rule?

It seems to me that you're the first player in a long while that has a chance to duplicate Tullius's strategy, if you can rescue that strategic reserve of yours in the southwest. Your opponent is 3 or more turns behind the new Tarhunnas-Pelton schedule already (which itself can be defeated, see Q-ball and Hooper). You have a real shot at holding Leningrad, but you're fairly weak in the Moscow front if you opponent gets his act together. If you have a chance to counterattack at or east of Kiev go ahead, but I think you need to concentrate on rescuing troops from the SW pocket, reinforcing the North, adn saving industry in the South - esp. Kharkov - and perhaps Leningrad (though you may hold it) as you withdraw mainly around Moscow but perhaps behind the front lines on the Riga/Leningrad front if you wnat to try to hold Leningrad - rather than worrying about bettering troops on the front line of the South by counterattacks. I think you want to get enough up north that you can counterattack their like TD.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: wpurdom
How come all those southwestern troops weren't cut off on turn 1? Was there an agreement or house rule?

No agreement or house rule......KLilly just didn't do the Lvov pocket on turn 1 for some reason. I'm not complaining though. I'm thinking I can save most of those SW troops if I move them fast enough.

Here's the turn 6 front lines before I moved any of the Soviet stuff: Kevin seems to be headed NORTH around the Kiev area. That's surprising. And he got across the river in the far south so I have to start falling back down there. There's not much between the Axis stuff nearest Moscow and Moscow.........I need to rail in some troops there ASAP before the situation gets entirely out of hand.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the OOB, losses, and production figures:

[larryfulkerson]

I used the Commanders Report to find all those air bases that had no planes on them to deploy planes from the National Reserve.  So now there's no planes in the National Reserve......I'm all deployed finally.....No use in having airplanes if you don't use them.  Not deploying all of them is like fighting with one hand tied behind your back.  I'm putting the U-2VS biplanes on night missions.  Also the TB-3's 'cause they are the slower of the level bombers and more vulnerable to Axis fighters.

And it goes without saying that I have all the transports on night missions.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what SU's I want in my Army and Corps HQ's. I'm guessing three arty units and some RR construction dudes and some mortars ought to be okie dokie for now. I've got 112 AP's left and I'm going to beef up the HQ units with SU's with it.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's left in Leningrad to move yet. I'm debating moving other more important stuff for now since there's still time to move Leningrad stuff yet.

[larryfulkerson]

I've got yellow and orange mixed up in the Riga area but I'm going to try to sort them out in the next couple of turns.
I need to move some people to the east and I'm not sure I need all these guys just to defend Leningrad.

[larryfulkerson]

Kevin captured Veli Luki Town but there were no industries there as I recall so it's no disaster yet.
I've moved some guys to contain the situation for now but it's going to take a ton more guys to stop the breakthrough in this area.

[larryfulkerson]

Kevin is pushing hard in the Smolensk area and I'm just barely able to keep some unrouted troops in his advance path.

[larryfulkerson]

Not much more than a single thin line of troops in the Gomel area. Next installment of troops I've got to invest some in this area because it clearly needs more help.