Helio's Axis AAR (v Cannonfodder Soviet)

[ComradeP]

A quality unit in level 1-2 forts in a light woods hex will probably be enough to slow him down for a turn in the Moscow area, although it depends on his CV's. I guess he'll move units to the frontline on the last snow turn, so you can determine whether to fall back or not based on how scary his CV's are.

At this point, one of your main worries should be that your defenses from Orel to Belgorod are manned by units that will be more than happy to run all the way to their countries of origin as soon as the Soviets give them 1 angry look in the blizzard. This is, again, just meant as an FYI, not as a complaint about your dispositions. With a frontline like that, it's almost inevitable that the minor Axis will be at the frontline somewhere.

You could, for example, relocate 6th Army there so you at least have some German forces in the area.

[heliodorus04]

Hopefully this doesn’t induce seizures in my readership, but I’m going South to North this time, simply because the south is where the action is. Crimea first:

[heliodorus04]

As the eastern demarcation line was basically reached, I brought an FBD back and will be building toward the SW over the winter. Some Romanians are digging. You can see the basic outlay of my semi-isolation at Taganrog Bay, but more on that later. I acquired a lot more ground to give back. His divisions on the Crimea are painfully low on resources, so I’ll keep hitting them if they dare stay close.

It’s still very fragile, and I will have to find some backup here. This is such an exposed position, as well, to the elements. I plan on bringing 2 or 3 more German divisions here, and perhaps the Hungarian Mountain brigade. BTW, I barely caught a unit withdrawing next turn in time, from leaving with a pioneer and a stug SU… I so rarely got this far you forget this stuff matters a lot.

[heliodorus04]

The rest of the south-south:

[heliodorus04]

The Wehrmacht finds the ribbon-wrapped 1st Guards Division, and prepares a special welcome for them to the Eastern Front... I consider it a good omen that the first Guards unit I find is "1.guards". Reinforces my hope that he has very few guards after my summer campaign.

[heliodorus04]

I took no real risk in terms of getting myself caught in a bad supply state in his turn. He has an escape route, it will take him more than his turn to extract all of them, and I intend to crash south and west on him like a tide, and to keep going west to safer positions, leaving tank tracks in the ice. Elsewhere, while I drove to the edge of the cities, taking them seems of little consequence at this point (they will make for a wonderful spring prize).

Further north, once my gains reached the crest, any other units marched to make some winter forts. Next turn more of my infantry can stop to dig. I’m trying to be as efficient as I can in terms of picking a town or a place I already have considerable progress on a level 0 or 1 fort.

6.Army has too much ground to hold, and so I’m trying to get some minimal forts to level 2, while other army elements work on sturdier positions closer to my supply line. The planned offensive to raid his rail line will not occur. I’m swinging 6.Army elements toward Kursk to bolster the defense there. 48.Panzer corps will retire to Kharkov, and I will see what happens there later, I guess. 3.Panzer corps will hold Z-town/D-town, or other locales. Next turn I have to figure out who is leaving for the railroad back to Berlin, where Goebels will feed them wine and cheese from France and call them conquerors…

[heliodorus04]

Kursk to Orel

[heliodorus04]

Belgorod: Romanian mountain digging in a second line supporting 6.Army. Italians digging (slowly, poor cv) behind 6.Army. Romanian Cavalry Corps digging in west of Kursk supporting 4. & 6.Army.

Note that 18.Army is ‘shaving’ land off of the Soviet bulge, while the original elements keep digging in place. 18.Army (made up of 1.Corps from the original unit, and an ad-hoc “panzer” corps created from elements of 2.&3.Panzer Groups) will reinforce around Kursk. I’m going to lose those positions north and south of Kursk, I expect. This situation is exploitable to the point that my 2 German mountain divisions are probably going to have to float around here. My best hope is he outruns his supply line.

[heliodorus04]

Ryazan-to-Kalinin

[heliodorus04]

That’s a scary exit of the Ryazan pocket, but I have armor in the center available for evacuations if necessary. The armor occupied the forts and Tula to speed the digging. They finished the turn with high MPs.

The larger problem is getting infantry into the second line north of Kaluga. I hope that gets better sorted next turn, but it’s a little scary. So is all of this transition from ubermensch to rattenkrieg.

[heliodorus04]

Valdai region catches a break!

[heliodorus04]

I caught a break north of Vyshny, and I am going to cut that rail line, almost certainly, and perhaps isolate a pretty good infantry division. That will buy me a little peace, I hope.
And that’s the turn, more or less.

[ComradeP]

I think many of the Soviet units will be able to just walk out of the danger zone in the south, there's not much stopping them from doing so.

What you should also note about the attacks against the Guards Rifle division: it didn't rout after 3 attacks and neither did the cavalry.

I'm not entirely sure what you're hoping to accomplish north of the Msta, but at least every destroyed rail hex will take him a turn to fix.

[heliodorus04]

Statistics:

[heliodorus04]

Total Soviet Casualties, Start of T23: 3.371 Million

Total Divisions Destroyed, Start of T23:
Tank: 35
Motorized: 16
Rifle (incl. 6xMountain): 149
Cavalry: 17
Airborne Brigades: 10

“Units” destroyed turns 1-10: 158
Destroyed turns 11-22: 204

I achieved basically my objective of 3.5 million casualties, yet was not able to capture the manpower centers that Germany had. My conclusion is that the game too heavily favors the Soviet’s ability to keep both land and bodies. I should have logically performed better in terms of terrain acquisition if I do better in killing the Red Army. That’s not particularly the case here, and it may be worse for me in 1942, because I have NEITHER the manpower centers nor the armaments. This is not the game I want to play, that makes the Soviet both offensively impotent and defensively unbeatable. I’m surprised others do.

I’m actually a little more covetous of changes that make the 1941 Red Army more offense-capable somehow, because the first 4 or 5 turns of the Soviet game are atrociously unenjoyable, and unforgiving.

In the north, a few spoiling attacks that aim at strong stacks, to reduce their morale and offensive power, and I destroyed some rail lines to keep his supply restricted to the northern area where the Fins can fight. I’m pretty happy with these defenses, and I predict that CF is happy to let this theater go idle (Famous last words?).

I’ve moved the Fins forward for two reasons: A) I want him to fear my left flank, and to think twice about pushing at Germans with Fins there to protect them. B) Because you start to remember that it takes a while to march anywhere in snow. So Fins are mostly an idle threat, as they just need to keep morale up (which might lead to some attacks, you never know).

[heliodorus04]

Northish

[heliodorus04]

I think I may be worrying too much about the Torzhok-Kalinin axis:

[heliodorus04]

A bit of a gap, but 16.Army elements are flexing back south towards Vysnhy, so it’s not as thin as it might look, I think. I think that this is a real difficult spot for CF to supply an attack, and I have two cities, and a lot of good defensive terrain (that gets less beneficial to me as freeze gets worse), and I’m just not seeing units up here. We shall see… I have to emphasize the breakout from Moscow in my defensive plans over this sector. I do have armor south of Kalinin that can move to the cities, and I might quarter them there. Overall, I haven’t figured out yet what all my units are going to do to escape blizzard effects next turn, particular the armor around Moscow, which is in the line to defend.

[heliodorus04]

Moscow:

[heliodorus04]

Not quite done moving, as you can see Tula is ungarrisoned. But the withdrawl from Ryazan had to be done carefully as CF boxed in a division with cav, but it’s all going to work out. I mustered a good attack east of Tula on a strong stack. 2.Panzer Group is basically going to be north of the Oka, with 3.Panzer being south. Two new infantry divisions arrived by rail east of Vyazma and started digging.