Helio's Axis AAR (v Cannonfodder Soviet)

[heliodorus04]

He lost men, and we can expect the shortfall is going to grow in the next several turns.  He finally went down in total aircraft.  I’m running out of tanks to kill, I think.  The gun situation is also going to get huge in my favor.  On the German side, good manpower, almost doubled my Armaments over last turn, and vehicles are at a point where I am concerned with what I want to do between now and Blizzard.

[heliodorus04]

NEWSFLASH!
Bryansk’s 4 Armament Points are captured! First captures since Misk (I’m pretty sure). It won’t be long now till the red menace is toothless without these precious factories! (…) Seven arms points are in Tula, 8 or 9 more in main Moscow. These will play into my considerations at some point. SW Front is pocketed, and did not escape. The next step there is ensuring continued isolation, and determining what timetable I want for eliminating the pocket.

Player’s Note: I’ve decided that corralling isolated Soviet divisions for turns on end so they come back late and not for free (i.e., turn 18 or later) is exploitive, a-historic, and I’m not going to do it. So the isolated 7.Independent on Lake Ladoga were culled. And throughout the Kiev pocket, I have no time for such luxuries, and I fight anything that shores up my lines and bolsters against a link-up to the pocket. Slow going. Not many surrenders. Several Held. But time is on my side. By the time I move the vast majority of the infantry of 4., 17., & 6. Armies, saving the panzers to see what’s happening in the overall front.

[heliodorus04]

Here’s the supply corridor after the bulk of infantry have moved, but before most of the panzers have moved.

[heliodorus04]

At the end of that phase of movement, the Kiev pocket cannot be broken. The panzer corps from the north are all low on MPs except one, and I’m inclined to rest 2 of the 3 57.Panzer units (the armor divisions), and use the motorized (34MP) to tidy up the pocket just a little bit more. That way the HQ won’t have to move, and the supply bonus next turn should put them all into the low to mid 30s, and that will enable a leap-off next turn (assuming I develop a plan, which I have not yet). The debate with 47.Panzer is whether to rest locally, hopefully climbing into the high 30s for MPs next turn, or to move northward to somewhere around Kaluga. That depends on, I guess, what my plans turn out to be at Moscow, so that’s where I’ll turn my attention.

[heliodorus04]

I’m dividing the Moscow frontage into an Area A, Area B, and Area C to discuss operations.

[heliodorus04]

If I don’t change the way this looks by the end of the turn, I wouldn’t be surprised if CF decides to launch some attacks toward Vyazma. 9.Army has ended up moving northward to try to isolate the Valdai Hills (in conjunction with 16. & 2.Armies). These form a bit of a reserve to the Area A on the map.

In the south, Stalino has more than 20 Arm. Moscow and Tula combine for 16. A few scattered Arm on the way or around Voronezh.

At this point in the game, I need to re-assess my goals. Originally I set out for Leningrad (for the Finns in winter), and that will succeed. The task for 3.5 million casualties always seemed like a long shot, but with about 1.7 in already, and an estimated million more in the Kiev pocket, it’s not entirely out of reach, and I have reason to believe I will have a more orderly blizzard than most Germans usually see.

Manpower centers and armaments come into focus, finally. I need to get more of both. I’m generally thinking of 3 objectives for resuming the offensive. Moscow, Stalino, and Voronezh. I don’t think I’ll analyze them too much yet: I still have Southwest Front to try to destroy.

This turn’s SitRep is a little different in that I’m whittling as I write. With that Kursk pocket the way it is, you have to plan on the fly. I should have taken a screenshot before I started of the supply corridor leading to Kursk from the north and from the south. CF didn’t panic, and he brought pressure to the corridor along the east side (I have no idea where all those divisions came from – it’s insane how many there are; hopefully they’re all newly formed, but we’ll see the screenshot later. Where did they come from after seeing nothing out there last turn?).

On the book-keeping side of things, I spent around 30-35 on some deliberate expenditures. I moved 14.Panzer Corps into 11.Army; I put Balck in charge of 14.Panzer (combined total about 30) and I had to move some divisions in the Kursk corridor. So as a reminder, last turn I appointed a new commander to 6.Army, and I assigned the Italians to 17.Army. For the south, my general plan is to use 6. & 11.Army driving toward the Donbas, with some force going in to the Crimea. 1.Panzer Group will support this effort. The south is getting organized for a movement in force to the east. I also wasted 7 AP assigning the Hungarian air corps an HQ: that was stupid – I noticed it didn’t have an HHQ listed, so I checked the options and clicked the only one there without realizing I was spending AP. Thank GOD the commander made his check, otherwise it would have been 15 AP. Man!

3 Armaments caught inside Kalinn (might be an offensive here later). Remind me to ask CF for his armaments lost count. I might be approaching 10.

[heliodorus04]

Leningrad shot



Nothing significant happened in Leningrad: 2 hasty attacks onto the port at Oshinovets failed to either dislodge or reduce the fort (1). I took Povlovo because I could without too much trouble. Right now the hard part is being patient. It’s just a matter of time before I get the port, and then I can grind down the starving remains of Leningrad. With regard to the aftermath of Leningrad, if anyone has strategy advice on where to draw the winter line around here, let me know.

I decided to go for Tula because I can at least pin down 7 armaments until I can take the city (my game, I hope, serves as an example where it’s important stuff cannot move once it’s adjacent. I also ran across some airfields and got about 100 tons of fuel windfall.

[heliodorus04]

Area C is the first thing I need to do in this sequence, because the highest priority are the 7 armament points in Tula, with the airfields being secondary.

[heliodorus04]

Now Area A back up near Kalinin, where again, 3 armament points are available.

[heliodorus04]

And now, Area B, where I’m outnumbered rather conspicuously…

[heliodorus04]

Now for 11.Army operations.




The 2 armament points in the Crimea are cut off from evacuation now. I’m reserving the opportunity to re-route 14.Panzer to the Crimea, depending on what I see east of the Dnepr. That about wraps up the screen shot portion of the turn.

[heliodorus04]

A note on anti-partisan duty: One of the chief strategies I exploited to achieve my results so far is the doubling-up of FBDs in the south (starting on T2) and in the north (starting around T8 at Vitebsk). My conclusion as a player is that it is a must that you double-up in the south. It’s not as necessary in the center because the line along the Daugava is streamlined being in the Baltic conversion zone. I decided to double-down because a) my Dnepr crossing down south was a wreck, and I probably over-reacted to that failure by going crazy like Nazi zombies over the land bridge; and (b) once I zombified the land bridge I knew I had an advantage I needed to press.

We can talk more about whether doubling-down should be allowed, if you like (feel free to bring up macro game issues in any of my threads), but in defense of that and of buildup let me counter with this simple point: if it wasn’t for buildup and doubling-down, there would be no way to disrupt hedgehog defenses. Buildup is all that enables your tanks to do deliberate attacks turn over turn for the summer. I think I’ve used buildup in a good-sportsmen kind of way (if you feel differently, let me know if you want to discuss it). Without buildup, you can’t do the Kursk that I just did.

Now, it stretched some amount of believability that the exploding-rocket-truck armada can carry all this fuel that far away, with such flexibility to changing maps and priorities. But to me that loss in realism is easily suspended when you think of all the things Soviets get that are a-historic (like brigade ZOCs, which I won’t argue against anymore) and the command and control stuff. Each of these deviations from rigid reflection of history at the time is key to creating dynamic strategies. Buildup is what gives the German side its best AND most important tool in the summer 1941 game.

Here, now, is an example of my anti-partisan duties. I have somewhere around 12-15 regiments patrolling between Memel and Vyazma (1 group of 6 or so) and between Cherkassy and Proskurov. I move them in a circular pattern as so, so that they paint a ZOC path covering the railroad and 2-hexes to one side. Meanwhile, other units are moving so that they can cover the full circle each turn. It’s the best I can do to try to keep partisan squads from forming up too close to my rail.

[heliodorus04]

The supply route in the south is much better, with a lot of alternate routes about to be created. But the center is in risky shape along the Daugava, so I’m being proactive. Does anyone think this might be effective for me?

AFTER MOVE TURN COMMENTARY
5-TURN PLAN
As I review all this (after sending CF the turn) I’ve got to thinking about what I want to get done before the firs t turn of blizzard, and an assessment of my strategy so far. I’ll start with the latter.
Having gone over my goals and priorities, I thought I’d mention that my grand design for this 1941 campaign is one of engaging the Soviet Army as often as possible in conditions as favorable to me as possible. Obviously 1-million men encirclements are cool-looking and fun: Axis fantasies. But that was as much luck as skill, and I shouldn’t be expecting anything like that anytime again soon, if ever. Originally, I thought keeping detailed records of every division and its HQ has not had as much a payoff as I thought it would.

Where I thought I would see divisions reduced to shells in a turn or two under frequent attack, I have learned that the Soviets get a tremendous amount of units, and rotating lines are normal. CF is a great organizer. Over a turn or 2, the tracking definitely helps me choose whether to do a #HSA or a deliberate, and has helped my units conserve MPs and avoid losses. It has also given me a fairly decent idea of something that I consider important to track henceforth: New Soviet Army arrival.

It became a readily apparent trend that when I fought my way into the divisions of an Army newly arrived to the front, the artillery support in the first 2-4 attacks was very high, contributing to tough fights. New Army units required stack-attacks and/or deliberates, and you had to be especially careful the second time you attack a unit. But after you’ve hit divisions of that Army 5-7 times, and 80 percent of those are retreats, then hasty attacks are going to be far more efficient, as the SUs are beaten down from a lot of retreating.

Also, while individual divisions can sometimes accumulate 2-4K manpower between turns (outliers, but they happen), given the armament situation, the Army’s SUs, especially artillery, do not recover much, if at all.
The idea I was trying to reach for was to answer the question whether by repeatedly beating down the divisions in your way if the morale hit could create a safety buffer for both the blizzard and to a lesser extent, to 1942’s summer campaign. I don’t know if I have an answer to that yet. Data-collection on Soviet divisions through 12 turns doesn’t yet tell me much other than the Soviet have a LOT of divisions. New ones keep showing up all the time, and so far, all of them are actually full of men, if not guns.

CF hasn’t been able to contest my initiative anywhere, but that’s not necessarily a sign that he’s off balance. His demeanor and calm when he learned of the Kiev pocket was unsettlingly peaceful (to me). The Soviet has little to gain from attacks, particularly in the way I’ve conducted my security. The only sign I see that perhaps he’s strained is that I’m seeing Cavalry fill the line, and that’s usually a sign that Rifle divisions are brittle and/or in short supply. Still, that’s not strong data of his imminent collapse.

So I still don’t know if my Erode Army Morale approach is remotely close to viable.

Which brings me to my next point: I think I will only know whether this is working when the blizzard rolls around and his units are weaker than ‘normal’ (I don’t know what a normal blizzard is like). I’ve been following along with, I think it was Q-ball’s discussion, of the importance of attacking to increase your morale and lower the enemy’s.

Toward that end, I am resolving that my 5-turn plan will consist of leveraging every opportunity to attack, attack, attack. I’m not going to ignore fort preparation for winter, but rather I am hoping to rely on surviving winter through the custom of forts & cities along thought-out phase lines, and ensuring the Red Army is as small and poorly functioning as I can make it. This means snow is also going to be a major offensive stance, at least in certain sectors.

[heliodorus04]

I'm going to update a quick screen-shot of T13. In my cursory review of the change of control, I saw that the Kiev pocket remained isolated. Upon closer review, the entire thing was held by 3/168 Infantry.

I wonder if CF did recon that didn't reveal the regiment, and maybe he thought he had a clear lane. If so, the demoralization that might have caused does cause me some glee. And I'll get an apparently high-morale cav division added to the pocket. Welcome Ivan! Join your friends!

(3.168 was not attacked, by the way; it's positioning saved the war)

[Balou]

Some thoughts:

Leningrad: Whenever I manage to transfer tons of heavy artillery (Hwz) and pioneers to my assault corps/divisions, using stacks of 3 divs, the already weakened defenders regularely crumbled within 2 turns.
Winter lines near Leningrad: the Valdai hills are good defensive terrain if one doesn't want to go too far east. OTOH I think once the Finns are released, they can easily cover a greater distance if the frontline runs further east.

From another thread I've just learned that your POW-count of one of your pockets has to be lowered, so Moscow should remain an option, it's only turn 13. To me, denying manpower is the next better target if grabbing armament factories doesn't work.

Your reassignements: I don't know how overloaded your AGS is right now (command points), but assigning more HQ/divisions to it could be a problem (according to manual).

HQ build up: because it may be abused here and there, I don't think is a bad thing per se. It's an abstraction for a logistical effort, and the Wehrmacht was - within their limits - not so bad at it and certainly better than the Sovs in 41. As long as we don't have anything equivalent to HQBU, I am going to use it as Axis. And finally: from my POV, using or misusing rather reflects an attitude than a flawed design.

[Peltonx]

Good job man.

You can go for the arm pts or a huge pocket around Moscow.

Mybee both?

Pelton

[Michael T]

Here, now, is an example of my anti-partisan duties. I have somewhere around 12-15 regiments patrolling between Memel and Vyazma (1 group of 6 or so) and between Cherkassy and Proskurov. I move them in a circular pattern as so, so that they paint a ZOC path covering the railroad and 2-hexes to one side. Meanwhile, other units are moving so that they can cover the full circle each turn. It’s the best I can do to try to keep partisan squads from forming up too close to my rail.

Helio do you have any evidence that this actually does anything to the Partisan units? I am all for it if it has an effect but I am skeptical that moving your security around like this has any benifit.

[heliodorus04]

Here are the OOB figures for the start of Turn 13; let’s start with air power losses:

[heliodorus04]

And the other

[heliodorus04]

Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian air forces come to the rescue!
Note to future Axis players: The Italian Air Force makes a good friend to stack with




The MC-200s flown by the Italians have no capacity in game; does that mean this is all the aircraft they have without my choosing an upgrade path for them?