RE: 1.04.36 KLilly vs Fulkerson T7

[larryfulkerson]

I had enough rail cap. to rail out 2 of the 4 points in Z-town.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's my turn15 moves:

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the front lines in T16 before I've moved any Soviet stuff

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the OOB, losses, destroyed units, and production:

[76mm]

I just noticed that you seem to have a lot of different colored, and more, fronts than I did at this point in the game...what are the light pink and light blue fronts near Kursk and Kharkov?

[larryfulkerson]

I thought now might be a good time to evacuate all the industry out of V-town.

[larryfulkerson]

I had enough points left to move some SU-2 Production and Heavy Industry out of Kharkov.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: 76mm
I just noticed that you seem to have a lot of different colored, and more, fronts than I did at this point in the game...what are the light pink and light blue fronts near Kursk and Kharkov?

Light Pink = Urals M.D.

Light Blue = Volga M.D.

EDIT: I thought to myself, what's to keep me from using these guys as Front HQ's? I couldn't think of a thing besides the physical
distance from the actual Front HQ itself to the units that belong to it. It's surely a disadvantage but I thought I'd try it anyway to see
what happens.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's my turn 16 Soviet moves: I did a bunch of pulling back and checkerboarding and carpeting again.

[larryfulkerson]

I did a daylight raid of the fuel production at Bucharest and did 5 % damage ( it's 10% damaged now ) for the loss of 4 of my bombers.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T17 front lines before any Soviet movement

[larryfulkerson]

I guess Kevin is going to start his winter-ization soon because there are only a few Axis attacks this turn:

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the OOB, losses, destroyed units and production

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a CR listing all my Army HQ's sorted by HHQ

[larryfulkerson]

I launched about 1/2 dozen air strikes on his air bases and got some good hits on his recon planes.

[larryfulkerson]

I did another daylight raid on the fuel production at Bucharest and moved the damage on his fuel production from 10% to 15% for the loss of 5 bombers

[Q-Ball]

You are in awesome shape. You should have a good winter; already you have 5.3 mil, which means by December you should have nearly 6 mil, barring any Snow setbacks.

A few suggestions:

1. Start forming Reserves. I would park them on rail lines, and feed them into the action. Reserve Armies are good, or just Reserve units, if your Armies at the front have extra room. Keep Reserves under STAVKA.
2. Pull all your Cavalry off the front. Set them all on REFIT. When December hits, combine them all into CORPS. Save APs for this, at least 200. Assign a bunch to a Shock HQ (use STAVKA ones to save APs). If you use a Shock HQ for this, make sure the leader of that HQ has a high Mech Rating. And someone you want to get promoted.
3. Don't build any artillery at this point; save your armaments
4. Build at least 15-20 SAPPER Regts. You will want to attach 2 to every CAV CORPS. Build them now so they can train up a bit. Attach extras to ARMIES. I can see building much more than 20 if you like, you never can have too many, and they are very cheap. Also, if you build now they will help you dig for SNOW turns.
5. Build at least 12 Tank Bns now; attach at least 1 to each Cav Corps you create. Build them now, so they train-up a bit. Use extras in Army HQs. You probably shouldn't build more than 20-ish, as you don't have the tanks for much more, at least now. Make sure some Tank Bdes are NOT set to REFIT, and are just shells; I would rather fill-out the SUs than all the Tank Bdes. Some Tank Bdes will just be empty for awhile. You don't need all the ones you get anyway.

Very Important:
Make sure you always carefully manage your units on REFIT and not REFIT. You don't have enough men for all your units. You want to make sure alot, if not all, the units at the front or key reserves are on REFIT, so anything that isn't on refit gets ZERO replacements.

You want the shells to stay shells; if you don't manage this, you get piles of units that are 1/2 strength, and UNREADY; basically useless. You want to concentrate all your replacements in fewer units, so they stay combat-capable.

You want ALL your replacements to be deployed in the REFIT segment; if you see alot in the regular replacement segment, you are diluting your units too much, and will hinder your ability to sustain an offensive.

You should have dozens of divisions with less than 1000 men around; don't disband them, but you don't want to feed them either, unless you truly have excess. Which you probably don't, yet.

During the offensive, make sure you rotate units in/out, and set to REFIT ones that need a break. They will recover replacements in a turn, and right back in the battle. This will allow you to sustain offensives over several months. After 2-3 battles, without a break, most Rifle Divisions will be UNREADY, and pretty much burnt out.

The Big Things:

1. Manage REFIT to keep only some of the RED ARMY fed with replacements; starve the rest of it.
2. CAV CORPS, CAV CORPS, CAV CORPS. Use these to exploit initial infantry attacks. They can leap ahead of your Rifle units, and start attacking Axis units that have already retreated once, which are easy pickings. Many can be pushed with hasty attacks. I once made 6 successful attacks in a turn with a Cav Corps. Keep doing this, and they will all be GUARDS corps come spring. In my game vs. Tarhunnas, I now have 36 Guards Cavalry Divisions, and something like 15 Guards Cav Corps.

[larryfulkerson]

Hay Q-Ball dude.  That's all good advice and well worth the effort.  Excellent suggestions.  Well thought out and play-tested too.  Do you have any advice for the Axis player?  KLilly has permission to read this AAR with the proviso that he give me a 5-turn lead on my published turns for intell purposes.  He's going to read these and think we're all against him unless and until we have some Axis suggestions too.  Too bad he doesn't do his own AAR for this purpose.

[larryfulkerson]

There's something wrong with the forum software.......I can't post any pictures or attachments of any kind. So until that gets fixed you
COULD keep up with my game with KLilly by downloading the suplimental zip file that unzips into an html document with pictures and
everything. you can find it here:

Turn 18 KLilly game AAR

[larryfulkerson]

I still can't post any pictures or attachments so I'll just have to substitute this humble HTML document as the AAR again:

KLilly's turn 19 AAR