1942-43 Scenarios

[SigUp]

I am thinking about tackling on the later date Grand Campaigns. So therefore I would ask if someone has experience with the Soviet side in 1942 and the German side in 1943. I would be thankful for strategies, as well as administrational help concerning suppert units, air units etc.

[Flaviusx]

Stay away from the 42 scenario. It is a mess. Not playable except against the AI. Half the Red Army is set on static, and good luck finding the APs to get it moving.

[SigUp]

Thanks for the info, guess that was why it was changed in the 43 scenario. But as I intend to play against the AI anyway it shouldn't be too big an issue.

[delatbabel]

Someone from the forums (Keke) spent the time and effort to fix the 43 scenario after Matrix botched it -- basically rebuilt the entire scenario. Matrix then included Keke's rebuilt scenario as the official 43 scenario in a later patch. The same hasn't been done for the 42 scenario yet. The first step would be to load it up into the scenario editor and un-static all of the static units, then mark them as frozen with un-freeze dates as necessary. That was the first step in what Keke did, basically, as well as make the lines and command groupings more historic.

The rebuilt 43 scenario is a pretty good game. I haven't played it to conclusion against a human yet but I suspect it's more balanced than the 41 scenario if you put a reasonable end date on it. The German player has basically two options -- attack and cut off the Kursk salient on turn 1, or sit back and build defensive lines. Needless to say, strategy #1 is doomed to failure, the Soviets have too much in reserve to counter-attack with and the Germans will lose their attacking forces fairly quickly. A limited southern assault followed by a build-and-slowdown strategy seems to work quite well.

[SigUp]

Interesting, and how would such a southern assault look like? By the way, support units to be reordered manually into the corps right, then, should some of those divisions in the rear be disbanded to get the men out of them?

[delatbabel]

I haven't played around with the southern assault much as the Germans. However any northern assault is pretty much doomed to failure because there are hordes of Russians waiting around as reinforcements there and around Moscow ready to be brought to bear. It's harder for the Russians to bring them to the south.

Yes, I would be disbanding divisions in the rear but be careful of your garrisons, partisans can make a bit of a mess of things if left unchecked.

[juret]

soviet side is extremly strong in 43scen,

Iplayd a few campaign to the bitter end as axis on challanging/ hard on the 43 campaign.

It gives a great challange and train axis player to set up defense and to plan the eastern withrawal in order.

strategy would be for axis :
ags : withraw 17th army on turn 4, and move to stalino area, let 3 rumanians divs defend the kerch strait
kharkov :dont attack in the begining hold the shoulders north kharkov and south orel. make sure rivers south of kharkov and north of orel is defended.
If u have luck the AI will push further west and make the pocket even bigger.
AGN : make forts in the swamps around luga river, they AI wont attack up here for sometime so use it to make positions to be able to withraw to.

overall :
-withraw all PZ and mot from frontline duties. use them in center or south as reserves or as spearheads to cutoff soviet penetrations.
-try make kerch strait and leningrad area an static non moving areas.
-hold out 43 and plan for a 44 withrawal to the dniepr in the south
-in the north try to establish a strong riverline defense from Riga to withrbesk in 44
-the small landbridge with no rivers between dvina and dnept should be super heawy defended with all your SS with tigers in regs on reserve activation behind.

hold 43
withraw 44 and burn your panzers (their toe goes down to 40 tanks per div in 45 anyway)

[SigUp]

Thanks. So you propose not to immediately start evacuating the Orel area? Interesting approach, as I am somehow concerned by the weak state of the 2nd Panzer Army units there. Another question, what to do with the Luftwaffe? I am thinking about stripping AGN of its entire stock of aircraft and concentrate them in the South and Centre, while deactivating Ground Support for the Soviet phase. And what to do with support units, three artillery, one anti-air and one pioneer unit?

[juret]

orel-
yes the units are weak but smart management an a 1 hex withrawal double their defence behind the river. assinging a few stugs and the nashorn bat. to 25th pz grd division makes it a very good unit to anchor the defence in the clear plains between the rivers for some time.
Also assigning one strong PZ divs from overstacked 9th army to 2pz army gives it 3 regs to have as reserve activation unit behind the front. with river bonus these regs cv are doubled wich means they go into battle with 8-10 cv unmodified at least.

first use zucha river as defense- it should hold rest of 43 with a few more units and lvl 3 forts. if getting hammered to much just withraw behind oka river. But dont give up orel it self, with lvl 3 fort fort unit and 2 inf divs it can get x defence and force soviet to attack with 3 units from 4 directions many times before it falls.

luftwaffe - ye strip AGN. move it all to 2 balls of LW units - one around kursk salient and one kharkov area- and axis minor airunits down at stalino. Also disband the airfields with only 1 or 2 airunits on em. they give 7500 men to pool and assign the airunits to other airbases. I slowly change my tactical bombers and ju 87s to jagd versions of the fw 190a wich is superior fighter and much needed in the defence and to shoot down the sturmovik hordes.

Support units-
ALL Mec SS Panzers gets 3 support units each.
The SS get all tigers. The higher morale of the host division the better the support unit fight.
Mec units . gets a many afv i can boost em with- mostly stugs and nashorns or marders. this boost em to ^100 afv divisions
Panzers- pioners mobile aa bats and other stuff.
mec ss panzers in long term all divided into corps with 7+ ini leaders and act as regs in reserves behind the front. useally use them to cover alot of grind so they build forts behind frontline and same time reserve act into battles.

support.
calm fronts /static front-
strip the hq of all support

active armies
-1 hwy art
-1 hwy nbw

active corps
-4 art
-2 aa (prefer the ones with 88s)

panzer corps (4-5 to control the 20 mobile divs)
- the 6 best support units i can find, useally only art or neberwerfer

pionners stugs jagdpanzers panzerjaeger pioneers to mobile divs, grossdeutchland,sturmdiv and key units holding strongpoints and towns awaiting attacks.

[swkuh]

Thanks, juret, for showing your approach and giving some reason. Should get SigUp going.

[SigUp]

Great, thanks for the advice. Will probably try a new game while implementing your strategies. The first try was... a disaster (Soviet on 105). They broke through the lines of the 9th Army in on the shoulders of the Kursk salient just south of Orel (had pulled XXXXVII Panzer Corps to the Zusha, 12th Panzer Division to 2nd Army and 4th Panzer near Bryansk to act as reserves), gaining a total of 6 hexes. In the South the Reds gained 2 hexes from 6th Army. But a though going was the area of the 2nd Army. Just north of Sumy the Red Army opened up a 3 hex gap and South of Sumy the lines of 4th Panzer Army was broken. Now, the situation is not hopeless. In the area of the 6th Army I have already positioned Reich and Totenkopf, making this area relatively safe, while in the middle part the Soviets just don't have that many units to follow up the breakthrough (yet), but it is definetely not the opening turn I wanted.

Well, lessons... first breaking down mobile divisions into regiments to get more reactions is a good idea (although I dislike it, hate so see a 10 CV panzer division get broken down into 3 CV regiments). Second, don't disperse 9th Army assets too quickly, the Central Front south of it is plenty strong. Third, strengthen 2nd Army with mobile units until I can fill this area with more infantry divisions, too many regiments there. Fourth, first go with a normal 100 morale Soviet (I play the 41 scenario with a 110 Soviet, so I though I could manage 43 with a 105 one, guess I still have much to learn [:D]). Fifth, the retreat losses thing is ridiculous, tough to see a unit losing 20-30% of its troops when retreating, roughly the same amount (or even more) as the attacking Soviets, which is absolutely not representative of the reality of 1943-44.

[juret]

u will learn. I did that scen43 like 5-6 times. from normal 100-100 diff and nowadays i do it with 80axis and 120 soviet. Altough i get very mad in 44 when guard rifle corps have cv of 18 while my ss panzers have lower haha

U gotta learn how to retreet and give away a hex, to make defence tougher or not giving AI opportunity to attack from 3 directions with 9units+arty. Axis can take 6 unit+arty attacks with some reserve panzers.

Ye the reg things sucks CV wise but they do get + chance for activation so much better have low fatigue well supplied pz reg with alot of panzers and a support unit help the battle each turn then have a panzer div at the front getting slowly cut down from attrition and lower reinforcements then behind front reg.

When u have made the critical turns untill first mud u should check the cp of the army groups and try even it out and also removing the romanian units from german corps and groups.