ORIGINAL: Klydon
I will be interested to see how the Russian winter campaign goes at this point as this AAR is a bit different from the "dig in early" tactic that we have seen the Germans employ much of the time these days.
Personally, I think that's just because most players just have no balls these days. Everyone's trying to min/max the system, looking for perfect plans among the common wisdom, and they've forgotten that war is a desperate gamble, despite efforts to pigeonhole it into nice, neat little strategems. If you can push and keep your opponent off his game, then do so, Baelfin. Damn the Katyushas! Full Steam Ahead!
I didn't say I advocated digging in early [;)]
My observation is that it has been past strategy to do so and a lot of German players still do it. I think a lot of the effectiveness of digging in for the winter for the Germans went down when 1.04 went away. A far better strategy to me seems to withdraw in a controlled fashion across much of the front, especially during December.
There is a lot to be gained by attacking late if you can swing it from the standpoint that you get to the point where Russian units don't come back for free anymore. Getting rid of a chunk of Russians that way puts the Russians not only behind for a winter offensive but there will also be fewer to deal with in the spring. Granted the Russians have a pile of units; don't get me wrong, but reducing the pile is usually a good thing and you have to start someplace.
Krupp brings up a interesting point and I think he is generally right. I am probably in the "plan, plan and then plan some more" camp. To a point, I think you get more consistent results and can get deeper into a tournament more consistently, giving yourself a chance at the end. The person that is an attacking animal seems to either do really well or crash and burn big time. Their strategy appears to be based on luck and over a period of time most of the time, luck will even out, potentially leaving that type of person in a bad situation. Its not really based on luck perse, but risk/reward. Sometimes the big risk just doesn't pay off. I think the person that does the best is one who can combine elements of both depending on the situation at hand.
ORIGINAL: Klydon
I will be interested to see how the Russian winter campaign goes at this point as this AAR is a bit different from the "dig in early" tactic that we have seen the Germans employ much of the time these days.
Personally, I think that's just because most players just have no balls these days. Everyone's trying to min/max the system, looking for perfect plans among the common wisdom, and they've forgotten that war is a desperate gamble, despite efforts to pigeonhole it into nice, neat little strategems. If you can push and keep your opponent off his game, then do so, Baelfin. Damn the Katyushas! Full Steam Ahead!
I didn't say I advocated digging in early [;)]
My observation is that it has been past strategy to do so and a lot of German players still do it. I think a lot of the effectiveness of digging in for the winter for the Germans went down when 1.04 went away. A far better strategy to me seems to withdraw in a controlled fashion across much of the front, especially during December.
There is a lot to be gained by attacking late if you can swing it from the standpoint that you get to the point where Russian units don't come back for free anymore. Getting rid of a chunk of Russians that way puts the Russians not only behind for a winter offensive but there will also be fewer to deal with in the spring. Granted the Russians have a pile of units; don't get me wrong, but reducing the pile is usually a good thing and you have to start someplace.
Krupp brings up a interesting point and I think he is generally right. I am probably in the "plan, plan and then plan some more" camp. To a point, I think you get more consistent results and can get deeper into a tournament more consistently, giving yourself a chance at the end. The person that is an attacking animal seems to either do really well or crash and burn big time. Their strategy appears to be based on luck and over a period of time most of the time, luck will even out, potentially leaving that type of person in a bad situation. Its not really based on luck perse, but risk/reward. Sometimes the big risk just doesn't pay off. I think the person that does the best is one who can combine elements of both depending on the situation at hand.
I understood that it was not an advocacy, but an observation, and I agree completely that the best type of player is one who can combine elements of feral aggression, and cool, level-headed calculation, to achieve his goals.
So I ended up going conservative. I think Qball is just too damn good a player to try to pound north. I may have surprised him last turn, but I doubt he will be this time, and I'll end up accomplishing nothing useful with 2 mud turns coming up. All though if I had read JAM's post before I did the turn I might have charged to my doom anyway ..... 8)
I think that I might be able to get a few more divisions on the Kalinin vyshny-volovchek route. Bagging any of the guys over that way will deprive Qball
of some good trained troops.
In the Middle my boys are looking very very thin indeed with the panzers driving around north and south now.
In the south Qball supplies the Dnepr pocket by air, but I am still able to get a couple of surrenders to free up lines of supply to the crimean chokepoints.
I think that instead of surrendering, an air supplied unit should route to its airhead, instead of just giving up.
Next turn with mud across the map im not anticipating too much action besides pocket clearing in the south. The pocket just south of Kalinin willprobably not hold, but I may get them later.
I'll post losses in a bit.
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"We are going to attack all night, and attack tomorrow morning..... If we are not victorious, let no one come back alive!" -- Patton
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The Logistics Phase is like Black Magic and Voodoo all rolled into one.
"We are going to attack all night, and attack tomorrow morning..... If we are not victorious, let no one come back alive!" -- Patton
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WITW-Alpha
The Logistics Phase is like Black Magic and Voodoo all rolled into one.
re: the "Big soccer field" thing, let's hope Q-Ball hasn't seen the screenshots I posted on Pelton's AARs, the ones about the cavarly creating a big mess... via the flanks (TDV TM@) [:D]
Run forest run!!
"Hitler is a horrible sexual degenerate, a dangerous fool" - Mussolini, circa 1934
You are almost certain to reach 3.5M pre-blizzard losses caused - well done.
This could have the effect that a high(er) proportion of Soviet units will be unready and thereby not being able to attack, though it would be dangerous to put too much trust in that when designing your blizzard defence.
just my own two cents regarding your winter defense prep, what i would do personally would be to withdraw most of my units if not almost all, from the south and center and far north just leaving a screen and trade as much space as possible to avoid combat, send those units you withdraw form those three fronts two ways.. send some to reserve to preserve morale and rest up and the others to moscow to reinforce defense there, i think holding moscow the one place ion the front line you want to make a stand there and take your punishment hopefully with a double or triple line / stack on defense
there are several reasons for my thinking here
1 you cant defend everywhere against him but i think if you want to defend one spot you can
2 moscow the terrain is more favorable for defense and less favorable for movement ie slowing down tanks cav inf ect
3 moscow is not so easy to take back after winter if he really wantes to hold it he probably might be able too or even if he cant it will take a large effort to get it back
4 moscow manpower...
5 moscow provides better winter protection
6 in the south i would actually be happy to have his units farther forward in clear terrain its perfect spring and summer maneuver ground
7 holding moscow secures our northern flank for a summer offensive in the center, if he wants to take alot of ground in the center let him you can force him to retreat by trapping him between the crimea and moscow in the spring / summer
8 this is a bold strategy, yet relatively safe and conservative one which he may not foresee or be prepared to exploit fully, keeping the initiative on your side
tl;dr so basically put in the effort and losses to hold that difficult moscow terrain now and then you will be set up for clear terrain operations in 42 as others have said holding ground is not so vital, but moscow has high population and is hard to recover its a good hub and threatens your northern flank in 42 operations you dont want to waste time recapping it
DO not take digging in comments from me too seriously, I generally play Teutonic Knight chants while playing German, and that reminds why I am in the Eastern Front [;)]. I never dig in well enough, and generally pay for it. I applaud your turn 17 gambit, and agree with your reason to go conservative on 18, you can surprise Q-ball once (from what I have seen), but you will pay dearly if you think you can do it again. I await with baited breath this winter and the 1942 follow up. This should be interesting.
Mud the entire map not much going on. A little movement to try to get ready for snows to drive on vishny volochek
Dnepr pocket getting air supply, my guys are out of gas still so not much clean up done down there.
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"We are going to attack all night, and attack tomorrow morning..... If we are not victorious, let no one come back alive!" -- Patton
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The Logistics Phase is like Black Magic and Voodoo all rolled into one.
Blizzard in north soviet and I find a new map tool to go crazy with (thanks Emir Agic !!!)
Hoth grinds forward slowly while manstein moves up to provide some support next turn.
Mud in the south keeps the Dnepr pocket fighting strong. I think Qball made a great move here with this.
I start the retrograde movement of hi morale INF units this turn. It will take a while to get everyone I want to protect off the line and back home for the december victory parades, so I have to start now.
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"We are going to attack all night, and attack tomorrow morning..... If we are not victorious, let no one come back alive!" -- Patton
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The Logistics Phase is like Black Magic and Voodoo all rolled into one.
Other than the German Rail Supply Modifier, there is really no difference to having those high morale units sit out the winter in Germany, or in a Level 4 town (as a singleton), City (two largest units), or Urban hex (three units). Given that, it would be best to keep them within easy reaction range to the front, so that they can more readily be used in case of emergencies.
That said, the tough part of surviving the First Winter with your high morale units still bright and shiny, is to accurately judge what constitutes a big enough 'emergency' to commit those winter-quartered troops. Keeping them in Russia, versus sending them all the way back to Germany, will make it much easier on your rail capacity come March-May, when you are going to not only be railing them back into position, but the large number of reinforcing units, as well.
Best of luck. I've got an Axis game against Q-Ball going on, too. We're only at turn 14, so I've got some catching up to do...[;)]
Blizzard in the north again!! Man I wish I would not have wimped out on turn 18 and kept on driving north. Oh well better safe than sorry in this case.
Hoth and Manstein are positioned for a drive north with the goal of pocketing any russians around Vishny Volochek. 39th and 41st Panzer corps are built up this turn, Supply lines are very good here, only 13 mps even in the blizzard.
Russians have been getting frisky all up and down the front, my lack of mobile troops in the middle is no doubt encouraging Qball to pile up some cheap wins.
Complete failure (once again!!!) in the south to clear the Dnepr pocket has unhinged my plans to have a limited bash phase in the south.
One panzer corp that I have down in the south thats rested and supplied can't accomplish anything on its own 8(
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"We are going to attack all night, and attack tomorrow morning..... If we are not victorious, let no one come back alive!" -- Patton
WITE-Beta
WITW-Alpha
The Logistics Phase is like Black Magic and Voodoo all rolled into one.
Other than the German Rail Supply Modifier, there is really no difference to having those high morale units sit out the winter in Germany, or in a Level 4 town (as a singleton), City (two largest units), or Urban hex (three units). Given that, it would be best to keep them within easy reaction range to the front, so that they can more readily be used in case of emergencies.
That said, the tough part of surviving the First Winter with your high morale units still bright and shiny, is to accurately judge what constitutes a big enough 'emergency' to commit those winter-quartered troops. Keeping them in Russia, versus sending them all the way back to Germany, will make it much easier on your rail capacity come March-May, when you are going to not only be railing them back into position, but the large number of reinforcing units, as well.
Best of luck. I've got an Axis game against Q-Ball going on, too. We're only at turn 14, so I've got some catching up to do...[;)]
JAM thats exactly why I am sending them back to germany, otherwise I am going to be too tempted to use them 8)
"We are going to attack all night, and attack tomorrow morning..... If we are not victorious, let no one come back alive!" -- Patton
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The Logistics Phase is like Black Magic and Voodoo all rolled into one.
Snow weather in the north and south Good times for the german army!!
I finally clean up the Dnepr Pocket!! but thats all we accomplish in the south.
In the north however things went as planned, but Russians fought hard and limited our advance just short of our planned goals.
Still we should have a decent chance to get some more red army guys killed before the blizzard starts if the weather doesn't turn on us.
Starting to dread the next few turns of doom in december allready .....
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"We are going to attack all night, and attack tomorrow morning..... If we are not victorious, let no one come back alive!" -- Patton
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The Logistics Phase is like Black Magic and Voodoo all rolled into one.
I am in serious trouble if the weather is mud again ........
I had planned on discussing my defensive plans for the blizzard with this turns post, but now I will have to wait and see what the weather is next time and if I am going to be able to extricate my panzer hammer.
So far I think the weather die rolls have been split pretty evenly both good and bad for me. At this point I can only hope that I have killed enough of the russian army to make a differance in the paybacks over the winter. I am sure there will be a cavalry horde chasing me back to smolensk at some point.
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"We are going to attack all night, and attack tomorrow morning..... If we are not victorious, let no one come back alive!" -- Patton
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The Logistics Phase is like Black Magic and Voodoo all rolled into one.
I have spent the last couple of days thinking about how I want to defend in this game. Initially my thinking was to trade space for time to limit the chances of soviet infantry deliberate attacks, especially in December. However I have changed my mind and decided that I am going to attempt to fight it out for moscow and the north in the trees. To this end I am committing 2nd army east of moscow, elements of 3rd panzer army north of moscow, 16th army northwest of moscow backstopped by 4th panzer in cover in the major cites of rzhev, kalinin and torzhok. Moscow itself is going to be defended by a panzer corp of scrubs (less than 86 morale) and the infantry of 9th army in a line stretching to the oka south of moscow.
The area south of moscow is going to be the most critical in my estimation, as 4th army in the center is going to be falling back quickly to stay out of the russian tentacles. My trump card in this area is th XIII corp under Lothar rendulic, he is going to have plenty of guns and not only the 22 airlanding division but _both_ german mountain divisions. At some point he may and up getting the motorized brigades as well. Will have to see how it pans out, but the theory is that they will be able to blunt a lot of the russian attacks down here by being dug in, in woods, backed by motorized brigade reserves. Supply is good in the area, and I _may_ be able to generate heavy russian casualties, especially in january and february.
The front line around moscow I expect to be at the gates of the city in the east in mid january but I will be dug in and stacked to the skies with good troops.
The north side of moscow will be more of a problem, here i will be using 4th panzer army to hold out for as long as possible. I had wanted to be able to pull the cream of these guys out of the line for the winter holiday in berlin, but its just not going to happen. Maybe I will be able to thin them out a bit I doubt it if I am goiing to make a fight of it for Moscow.
In the south I have completely failed, my total mismanagement of the 1st panzer army has left me with a lot less of a terrain buffer than I had wanted at the start of the game. Not only were they useless in supporting the drive in the center to voronezh, they failed to get redeployed in time to the south to do anything useful. Qball's mistake in not pulling back along the dnepr enabled me to score some easy kills, but his masterful work with the air supply and tenacious defense against the strechted out panzers kept me from A: getting a little bit more room towards stalino, B: cleaning up Odessa which is going to become a special nightmare over the next 12 turns. I can already see the Cav Corps showing up down there and wreaking havoc.
The trump card for the whole of AGS is 3rd panzer corp, they have 3 of the ss motorized divisions, all at 99 morale and with all of their elements trained to 94 or above experience. Othere than that AGS is coompletely weak, the rest of 1st panzer army is going to have to go into reserve in rumania and bessarabia, to counteract any nasty surprises Qball may have for me.
I'm fully expecting to be pushed back over the dnepr and beyond, but I am ok with that as long as I dont lose a bunch of guys in the process.
My strategic reserve consists of ~12 infantry divisions 88+ morale and 12 to 15 mechanized plus GD all 90+. These are the guys that I am absolutly not going to hazard in the blizzard, so I am moving them back to the warsaw area for the winter. In mid february they may start to trickle out in order to conduct some march madness attacks, but other than they are staying put for the winter.
The leningrad area is going to be especially dangerous for me, I have no rails up there and next to no units. I would not be unhappy to get pushed back to Talinin or beyond, because i think that will give me some opportunities in the spring and summer for some pocket killing of the russians.
Other areas of concern: Luftwaffe- They have been pulled out to the national reserve. When the weather clears I'll bring them back for the gas tanker offensives in the spring and summer.
Support units- I completely screwed this up at the start of the war, I tried to move some stuf around by changing support levels on HQ's and wound up dumkping everything back to OKH. So between build ups to sustain the offensives and reequipping corps with SU's I burnt a lot of extra AP's. (one of the reasons there are no forts on the map) So except for a few designated "fighting" corps everything is coming off the line back to OKH. I dont see much sense in having extra crap exposed to russian attacks and weather losses while I am displacing like a madman.
Axis Allies- I am under no illusions that they are going to make any sort of differance during the winter, so they will be doing rear area security and staying out of trouoble. The mountain units will see some combat, along with the italians ( who will be the first sacrificial lambs if necessary)
Thats my grand plan, feedback comments and catcalls welcome [:D]
"We are going to attack all night, and attack tomorrow morning..... If we are not victorious, let no one come back alive!" -- Patton
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The Logistics Phase is like Black Magic and Voodoo all rolled into one.
Thats my grand plan, feedback comments and catcalls welcome [:D]
Old dogs don't do catcalls but I think you recovered well from a less than ideal start. I still think not going for L was a mistake (woof,woof). Casualty numbers look good especially as you can add back in 175K hiwis who have come out of the captured pile. This should mean a weaker counter offensive than I thought you would get.
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I have spent the last couple of days thinking about how I want to defend in this game. Initially my thinking was to trade space for time to limit the chances of soviet infantry deliberate attacks, especially in December.
I am not sure Deliberate Attacks are your main enemies. 1.05 made sure the Germans should recover quickly, no matter the combat losses.
With that in mind, I foccused (my blizzard massacres thing) on tons of attacks: quantity vs quality that is. Why? Because 1) Germans will be back no matter what after the blizzard and 2) more attacks (ergo hasty attacks) = more Guards harvested.
In other words, deliberate attacks will NOT give you a lot of Guards. Cheap hasty attacks all over the place, yes. In the end it's the "wins" that matter. I can affirm this tactic worked for me [:)]
Good luck and don't forget to make a nice testament [:D]
"Hitler is a horrible sexual degenerate, a dangerous fool" - Mussolini, circa 1934
I have spent the last couple of days thinking about how I want to defend in this game. Initially my thinking was to trade space for time to limit the chances of soviet infantry deliberate attacks, especially in December.
I am not sure Deliberate Attacks are your main enemies. 1.05 made sure the Germans should recover quickly, no matter the combat losses.
With that in mind, I foccused (my blizzard massacres thing) on tons of attacks: quantity vs quality that is. Why? Because 1) Germans will be back no matter what after the blizzard and 2) more attacks (ergo hasty attacks) = more Guards harvested.
In other words, deliberate attacks will NOT give you a lot of Guards. Cheap hasty attacks all over the place, yes. In the end it's the "wins" that matter. I can affirm this tactic worked for me [:)]
Good luck and don't forget to make a nice testament [:D]
I am going to try to defend in piles that will make it difficult to Hasty attack, especially in the north. we'll see how well it works out. In the center and south, i am going to get my butt kicked most likely 8)
"We are going to attack all night, and attack tomorrow morning..... If we are not victorious, let no one come back alive!" -- Patton
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The Logistics Phase is like Black Magic and Voodoo all rolled into one.
Looking back over the last 24 turns overall I think it was a successful '41. The two turns where bad weather hurt me, 12 and 23 were balanced out by the good weather on 18 and 20. Turn 12 mud was bad becuase I felt that I had qball completely off balance and on the run, and the panzers were poised to get across the oka behind ryazan, which i think wouold have given me a larger pocket at moscow. It also played havoc with my northern attack that was designed to aid a big moscow cut off. In the end I had to settle for two minor pockets around moscow plus one major one at the end. I had been considering a drive north to link with the finns ever since the the beginning of the game, in order to bag the leningrad defenders late in the snow season depending on how well the moscow operation went, but in the end I was unable to pull it off.
Turn 23 mud stopped the attack I had planned to isolate and kill the valdia hills area on turn 24, leaving a nice tidy line and space to fall back on in good terrain. Not a decisive blow by any means , but annoying to give up those last few kills we were working for 8)
The Blizzard is going to be a bumpy one for sure! Mainly german speedbumps getting run over by the russian steamroller 8(
"We are going to attack all night, and attack tomorrow morning..... If we are not victorious, let no one come back alive!" -- Patton
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The Logistics Phase is like Black Magic and Voodoo all rolled into one.
