41-45 GC AAR notenome (sov) vs 821Bobo (axis) no 821 past first page.

[notenome]

Railnet screenshot. The blue emphasis is for the most important trunk line in the entire Soviet union. Without it communications with the south have to be rerouted through Stalingrad (!)

[notenome]

End of turn screenshot for the South:

We crack the line in three different places, and a lot of shifting of armies is going on alongside the rotation of exhausted units. 821 is slowly shifting his mountain divisions north, now they block Kharkov. A lot of Axis holds this turn, some in situations (CV wise).

The problem with freak results (in 41) is that they cost the Axis mps and some men, whilst for the Soviets they wreck entire armies which sends units into unreadiness. Unreadiness is the real problem/differential here. With distance to railhead being what it is, that means those units will stay unready for 1 or 2 turns, which can cause havoc to entire offensives.

[gingerbread]

How much manpower did you generate in Turn 29 (first turn with '42 multiplier)?

[notenome]

Gingerbread- gah, didn't take a screenshot of that, but the manpower pool grew nonetheless. Iirc we have something on the order of 2400-2500 manpower with about 86 damaged.

[notenome]

Forgot to take a frontwide screenshot. We brokethrough the forts in many places, took far higher casualties than I would have liked, surrendered 2 Axis divisions, rotated a lot of divisions out to gain strength. The Red Army got ridden pretty hard in December but readiness is improving, which is good. Losses and OOB.

EDIT: Ah, forgot to take the losses screenshot, well then just OOB. Axis are closing on under 2.5 mil men operational, which is great. If I can force them out of the fort line fast enough, February could be the bloodiest month for the Wehrmacht.

[glvaca]

Beware of March!
They tuned it down but it isn't out of the cards completely. His forces will rise significantly in strength come Feb. also.
Just keep it in mind when you do your planning...

[notenome]

I am rather curious about March simply because of the casualties. The Wehrmacht seems a lot more beat up then in other AARs I have seen whilst Soviet strength is rising (slowly). What roundabouts are the benchmarks for March?

[Flaviusx]

He could be right back up to 3 million in March. He'll start getting his blizzard disableds back in February, at the rate of hundreds of thousands per turn. It's fairly breathtaking how quickly the Wehrmacht can recover from blizzard now, it's been vastly accelerated from previous versions.

The numbers you are seeing in the OB are to some extent an illusion, a blizzard mirage if you will. Take them with a grain of salt and an asterisk.

[hfarrish]

Is it no longer 1% of the disabled pool back per turn (that's my recollection of what it was for the longest time). That does make a big difference if it's been significantly expanded.

[notenome]

o'really? What's the disabeld return rate up to now? I campaigned for a long time for it to be raised

[notenome]

January 8th, 1942.

Readiness surges in the Red Army! 10,000 new rifle squads leads to 2/3 of rifle divisions being ready. Hopefully the new year pause will have been the necessary nudge the Red Army needed to break the Wehrmacht in January.

A slew of Guards promotions also helps including a cavalry division inside of a cavalry corps. If the other divisions get promoted, thus the corps switch over to guards status? Not sure how this works.

Incredibly, despite a 100k boost in strength, the Soviet manpower pool grows slightly to 569k.

In the North Vyshny Volocheck is evacuated. This is very important as that city was the last level 2 fort and urban hex in front of Operation Pyotr's ultimate goal (the Valdai Hills).

Worryingly, Axis strength has increased slightly during the pause. We battered Axis divisions in December, in the hopes that the next 6-8 turns will make encirclements and breakthroughs easily. Early signs appear encouraging, as 821 has slapped a regimental and depleted division tarbaby on the breakthrough north of Orel. With Axis armored strength either tied up in the Moscow area, in the south or garrisoned far from the front, there may simply not be any reserves for this area. STAVKA certainty hopes so.

[notenome]

EDIT: for dignity's safe, no more whining. I promise.

[notenome]

Goodbye Maximillian-Pico, we hardly knew ye. 1st, 2nd, 3rd Shock Armies advance 30 miles into the enemy rear and overrun a Fascist HQ, killing a German general. Hope he was a good one.

Also, I'm no expert logistician but it seems partisans attacks combined with our advance have put Orel and a large part of the Axis Front out of supply.

[notenome]

End of turn screenshot, January 8th.

The slog continues. 29 retreats and 8 holds this turn. The only real breakthrough is where we've concentrated the shock armies. This is a real test of Tukhachevsky's, err comrade Stalin's, doctrine as it applies to WITE. Theoretically every mile penetrated vertically destabilizes 10 miles horizontally, so the 40 mile penetrations of First/Second/Third Shock would lead to a 400 mile destabilization (40 hexes). In black we have what I hope to destabilize and red what should theoretically be destabilized. The problem is that we need stronger complimentary thrusts to threaten the flanks of Kaluga, Orel and Kursk (blue arrows) and we don't have a lot of time to do so.

The more I think of it the more I believe that random weather has really had a major impact on this campaign. The Red Army has now been fighting for 29 of 30 turns, which is very hard to take. The upside of this (and our aggressive defense) has been that Axis have lost roughly 350,000 permanent losses (around 330,000 KIA and 20,000 captured), which is about 120-150k more than I've seen in most AARs. So we have two exhausted armies slugging at each other mercilessly. Axis tank numbers, though slowly rising, are also very low in comparison with other AARs I have seen.

One other thing of note is that I did a trick I had been saving up for. My level bombers where all doing daylight ground attacks thoughout the war, and this turn I switched them all to night missions. 821 had no planes flying night intercept after close to 30 turns with no reason to do so, which meant no fighter intercepts. As a result we caused some 2000 Axis casualties from bombings alone, which is fairly impressive.

That said I'm not satisfied with out progress during the blizzard. Part of this is my avoidance of simply slamming against every Axis division I see, instead opting to circumvent strongpoints and force the Axis to dislocate from their strongpoints. If this was the right move or not remains to be seen. Its difficult to gauge what is a good performance for the Blizzard with all the changes have been made (it used to be like 50-60 retreats per turn, that certaintly isn't the case anymore) Comments on my performance so far would be appreciated.

[notenome]

Oooh, just got around to looking at ol' Max. looks like he was a good one, so that's nice. Better than 95% of our Generals, that's for sure.

[M60A3TTS]

From the looks of things, the Axis may start the summer campaign in a good position to unhinge your defense line at the southernmost point around Rostov. Something to think about as you redeploy troops in the Spring.

[notenome]

I still have some hope for that area as Caucassus Front's heavy hitting infantry just got released. Really strong troops there which can hopefully unhinge the far southern flank, but yes, the south may very well be a mess come summer, which can be both good and bad.

[Fishbed]

If you've got a couple squad to spare here and there and do not plan on using the Caucasus front for offensive ops, why not start to build a defense line on the eastern shore of the Donetz? You know quite well that whatever happens, if he plans to strike the southern area with a big mechanized force, you won't stop him inside the bend (and you'll be pretty lucky to stop him before the Don bend anyway...). Same thing for the Don between Azov and the Donetz arm. Better be safe than sorry!

[notenome]

Fishbed, right now I have diggers on the Volga, Don and Tsynula. I plan to eventually have diggers on the the Donets as well.

[Flaviusx]

These diggers are a waste of time. Get these guys on a rail head, prep them for reinforcements and refits, and shuttle them off to the front when the snows hit. You'll need them.

Digging in inclement weather, especially with brigades, is pointless.

It's more important to feed the front now. Your guys will be hurting come March. You'll need to pull out the beaten up divisions to the rear to refit and replace them with fresh guys from the rear. As a matter of fact this shuffling will be more or less SOP for all of 1942. I call it the attrition shuffle. He will also no doubt launch a counteroffensive come March (if not sooner, snow can hit in February) and swat aside your worn out units up front.

Exception: if you have forts that are already dug, then it's a good idea to station a unit on them to prevent decay. But actually increasing fortification is for clear weather by and large now, getting forts dug in during snow and mud requires massive engineering assets for minimal results.