Grand Campaign 1941 - JC vs JP

[caliJP]

Thoughts on 1941 summer campaign:

Even though I got beaten up pretty good and made some mistakes, I really enjoyed the fighting retreat strategy. My opponent has taken Leningrad and Stalino, but not Moscow, and I still have Tula, Voronej, so geographically I am fairly satisfied. Not a resounding defensive victory, but could have been worse. Except for Leningrad, which is a big one, I am doing better than historical I think. I think I under-defended Leningrad, but put up a good fight in the south. It seems impossible to defend all three Leningrad, Moscow, AGS. I think one can do 2. It would be interesting to try a different combination, such as defend Leningrad and Moscow and leave the south wide open and see how far east the Germans go, sometimes it seems terrain slows them down more than Russian ants in the south.
I can also imagine how a run-run strategy would be advantageous. The only strong units you have as Russian in 1941 are the one present on June 22nd. The units you get after that are mostly 1=1 ants that have only one use, their ZOC. So if one retreats quickly and far east until you can combine the strong early units with a sea of 1=1 ants, you probably can build a pretty strong defense in depth. And it seems the Germans sometimes get as worn out by terrain as by the soviet defense (not saying much for the Red Army…). That would be pretty boring though, at least to me.

Factory evacuation-wise, I started evacuating the wrong way though I think, trying to evacuate everything west of the Dnepr, including all the HI, which is prohibitive in terms of rail points. And after doing some calculations I think one can actually give up all the HI west of the Dnepr and be fine even if I save all the Armament factories and all the weapons factories I want to keep. I realized this early enough to figure out a recovery plan to give up a bunch of HI in cities directly east of the Dnepr to have enough rail points for Armament and weapons factories. But it was just-in-time, as I was evacuating barely ahead of the Germans arriving! Lesson learned for next time. Lucky! One big loss was the Stalino cities. I lost all of those factories in one swoop of panzers that I didn’t think was possible. Still, I think I end up in pretty good shape, saving:
- All the weapons factories I wanted to keep
- 205 HI, 328 Armaments, 135 vehicle (all)

[loki100]

interesting position going into the mud/snow period.

One good thing is 3 turns of relative inactivity will allow the Red Army to recover quite a lot.

Also, while most of your reinforcements are your dead units returning among them are the elite Siberians. These have morale 55+ and can get CVs of 3 even with the 1941b OOB, its hard to do it, but its worth trying to collect these and preserve them. Put them into your Shock Armies with a decent commander and you will decent MP and CV with (for the Soviets) reliable reserve reactions. I'm finding they can take on even a well organised German defense in the (mild) blizzard and you often have the MPs to advance even after a deliberate attack.

[caliJP]

Thanx loki, good suggestion on grouping high morale units into a single army.
I forgot: when you combine 2 Rifle Div and a Rifle Bde into a corps, how is the morale of the corps calculated? I am wondering if I could later get some high morale (thus high MP) Rifle Corps that way.

[bigbaba]

with so high casualties and a low moral greenhorn army i wish you luck for the blizzard. hopefully he decides to stay and fight instead of running so you can farm few guard divisions and cavalery corps and use them as strategic reserve to stop the 1942 "panzer ball".

[caliJP]

T24:
I am speeding things up a little bit, so I skipped the mud and snow turns. Nothing ever happens during mud anyway. During snow season, my opponents decided not to attack, but rather stay in place and dig-in. I tend to try to attack to take advantage of 3-4 more weeks of when the Russian Army is still in tatters and inflict more losses, and set the Russians back a little more on their way to build Red Army 2.0. But the down side is I don’t dig in ahead of the blizzard, so I tend to retreat more during that phase.

So in the 7 weeks of rest since T17, my OOB has grown nicely by about 1M men

[caliJP]

T24 North:
My opponent seems to have pulled back some of his units, so I move carefully forward to reclaim some hexes.

[caliJP]

T24 detailed view of Moscow sector
I am surprised my opponent's panzer and motorized units are still at the frontline, as I tend to put those in cities during the 41 winter so they are at full strength and morale for the 1942 campaign.

[caliJP]

T24 Center

[caliJP]

T24 south

[caliJP]

T29:
Despite not having been attacked during snow season, my army was still a mess at the beginning of blizzard. Many units were way short of manpower, and not all the armies had been setup with the right amount of divisions and brigades. So I could only selectively attack in December, which is a bummer since that is when I have the biggest blizzard bonus. I need to find a way to do better next time. So very little change in the front line.
But my OOB has grown by another 0.5M

[caliJP]

T29 North:
my opponent decided to abandon most of the terrain east of the Volkov river. So I reclaimed all that land without a fight.

[caliJP]

T29 Moscow:
A few fights along the Moscow frontline

[caliJP]

T29 Center:
I moved my stacks next to the German line to prepare for an offensive.
In the rear are mostly all the brigades (tank or rifle) preparing some fortifications for 1942.

[caliJP]

T29 South
As one can see, my opponent is prepared to fight for Stalino, with a lot of armor manning the front line.
I combined all my cavalry divisions into corps, and those will gain some experience with selected attacks during blizzard.

[comsolut]

Just a thought, the units South of Stalino are vulnerable to a German drive to Rostov and being cut off. Would pull back the majority of the defenders there and leave minimal defense. Nothing of value to defend there, and the Don will be a better defensive line come March.

[caliJP]

comsolut, thank you yes, after the blizzard that may be true. At this time the Germans are more hunkering down than in attacking mood

[caliJP]

T37:
I am skipping the turn by turn during the Jan/Feb blizzard which is a slow slog, and jumping to T37, end of February,
showing progress during the blizzard months.

[caliJP]

T37 Finland sector:
No real combat in this area, but my opponent retreated almost to the Volkov river, so I took the land back.
Also sending an army to block the far north in case my opponent decides attack my rear from up there.

[caliJP]

T37 North:
Similarly here my opponent has retreated to Torzhok and V. Volochek, so I grabbed the land back.
However his well entrenched stacks of motorized and panzer units in the cities prove impossible for me to push, even with 9 divisions.

[caliJP]

T37 Moscow sector;
Around Moscow my opponent has a line of 3 stacks, with mixed infantry, motorized and Pz divisions which he dug in well during the mud/snow weeks. Those have proven impossible for me to move with just division-level units with the mild blizzard, so no progress has been made in this sector.