Chaos(SHC) vs Pelton-T131- Game Over-Soviet victory.

[chaos45]

I think so to, but right now im causing him more trouble than he would like just did T36 and he pulled most of his armor from the line and it allowed me to gain a hex along almost the entire front to the west of Moscow. Managed to push back 1 of his units by novorissk this turn but not a hex I can take so just morale/inflicting losses. Tried to push a couple other hexes at leningrad but took like 5:1 in losses for no gain. He may take leningrad in 1942 but the damage has been done by him not gettting the finns in 1941 and me getting replacments out of the city for the critical late 1941 period and at 50x population points thats a ton of men. Also I dont think its fall is a done deal yet [:)]

Was surprised as my CVs werent low and he dropped down to 1 division per hex even with some forts when my base CV without support units/leadership is hitting 18+ per attack, and lots of reserve units available to roll to be committed. Managed to slam alot of his units back so hes either going to have to give up ground or put armor back in the line there. Also gained more ground in the vladai hills area and just for fun smashed back a bunch of German units in the Kursk area. I can see he is marshaling his Armored forces to re-group for spring but not so sure losing good ground in the hills/bad terrain in front of moscow is worth it guess Ill find out in a couple turns when he launches his spring offensive.

[chaos45]

Here are some of the Statistics for T33- end of January 1942. As you can see Ive maximized guards creation and my army is regaining strength quite nicely. Pictures will follow once we get a couple more turns ahead.

[Callistrid]

Pelton will start push your troops back after the end of january. And on march massive encircle operation will occour. Use your recons, to know where he concentrate his panzer forces, and prepare to fall back. On april you will suffer from the moral dropp, so try to send back your soviet guard unit, using them as fire brigades.
And survive the march-april turns somehow, and don't spend your admin points. You need 500 AP creating infantry, and armor corps.

[chaos45]

We are up to March now....he didnt push me back in January/february- in fact got both orel and kursk in february I was able to push him back pretty much clear up to the end of February in several locations. He is already massing for an operation in March just going to have to see what the weather is and if I was able to move enough to prevent an encirclement. As to admin points ya ive been trying to save them but creating 19 cav corps wasnt cheap. Also I decided to spend early on buying lots of rifle bdes that way they have time to train and actually be useful combat troops not to mention they could dig all winter and keep my rear entrenchments useable by spring/summer. I have a plan just gotta see if it survives contact with the enemy lol. You will see as I post more pictures I think i beat the German army up decently over blizzard for having a "weak" army at the start lol.

Up to 6.5m men now and his lines are pretty beat up in places going into March, as when he pulled all the tanks to rebuild for spring he left his lines by Valdai and moscow very weak and so for the last 2 weeks of february I pounded his infantry pretty well there.

Inflicted about 910k total axis losses by the end of February so pretty solid, abit below historical but for this game respectable. My losses only 3.8M if I remember right so abit below the 4M I was anticipating lol.

The air war is about to heat up as well the luftwaffe is flying again I noticed massive air battles over several battles on my turn 200+ aircraft from both sides.

[chaos45]

First turn of march painful as expected is just no stopping 15 C/M divisions and they are faster than soviets can run even in snow......lol

From reading the AARs I expected a German 1941 all over again and its pretty well the situation.

I can tell you the exact reason is that the Game isnt modelling German losses correctly. Fix that you you wont have barbarossa in 1942 every March.

http://ww2stats.com/Chart%201943_08.jpg

Shows a tracker of historical German losses on the eastern front you can easily see their losses far outweight their replacements except for a couple months leading up to operation Blue. Instead the situation in the game in almost every AAR is the germans start 1942 after the worst winter on record in a long time stronger than they started operation barbarossa.

This is with no "Stalingrad" situation, attritional warfare losses are way to low and to a huge benefit of the German player. After barbarossa fails the German army should be in a constant state of decline the game doesnt model that effect at all.

Me Pelton have a good game going but its going to be a long year of losing and rebuilding armies again which gets pretty tiring and is abit unrealistic as to the actual situation. An hell I could still lose...if you look at the 1942 situation historically you can see the effect the winter had which was a much stronger Soviet army and a much weaker German army short of the German player being a moron I dont see this happening.

Just like the Soviet player has alot of events that just happen and you cant do anything about- IE massive encirclements that you really cant stop period, the German player should have to deal with the historical attrition of the first winter and the irreplaceable losses the German Army suffered.

In effect the game allows the German army to go into early 1942 with about 60 extra divisions of combat power and thats why the Soviet army is taking an absolute drubbing right off every March time frame.

Rant over game continues lol [:)]

[Fishbed]

Run, keep on breaking pockets with your fire brigades while managing your flanks, blunt and slap his armored spearheads with overwhelming forces... I don't see how he could be much stronger than in 1941, you have what it takes to slow him down in his tracks.

[chaos45]

Lol, his OOB is somewhere around 3.6M so stronger than 1941 and I think ive inflicted the most losses on him out of about all the AARs Ive seen so far and it really doesnt seem to matter.

So as per game/historical effect there is 1 of 2 answers the problem- 1- German replacement rates are much higher than historical or 2- Losses for attrition and attacking/defending are much to low.

Those are about the only things it could be- all winter I was attacking fairly heavily so it wasnt from a lack of trying to kill off Axis troops and sacrificing Soviet troops to do such lol.

Most board games have also ran into this issue where German CV is just to high even with winter bonuses so most of them massively increase German winter attrition to represent the heavy losses the Germans suffered not only from combat but sick/wounded.

[chaos45]

Moved the post on casualties and the historical facts to another area of the Forums- This to me is a critical issue as its allowing the German army to be much to powerful for 1942.

[chaos45]

T34- North- pretty static except for a couple local attacks.

[chaos45]

T34 Center-

[chaos45]

T34 Center south Brave Soliders of red army retake Orel and Kursk about the furthest extent of our advance.

[chaos45]

T34 South- more attacks for guards/morale

[chaos45]

T34 was about the extent of the Soviet offensive and as seen in Peltons AAR I stayed at Kursk one turn to long and lost a mountain division and a cav corps...only real losses of the pocket Im maxed out on guards units so even with those losses new ones were promoted the next turn, So only those two units werent replaceable so to speak. Game is heating up and getting interesting Leningrad is about to fall- I blame a crappy combat system in the game....as its ridiculous how low the losses are to gain what would be hold to the last man type terrain in real life. Only good news is a unit or two retreated out of the port to my MLR to the east soon to be sent to face the finnish since they can attack soon now......

However my overall strategery may be paying off, to be determined still but I may have just pushed back 3 stacks of panzers- 8 total divisions-was a close fought thing but the fact the Soviets did it in March 1942 amazing.....[8D]

As Im sure Pelton now knows I decided due to possible truck shortages I might have to take a different route to building the Soviet army- I have lots and lots of Cav Corps about double what the Soviets historically built by this time frame then I backed them all up with tank battalions and sapper regiments- this turns all of my cav corps into decently effective Soviet armored divisions in effect with more engineers than 3x soviet infantry divisions which allows them to dig in quickly and assault things. Yes it took some AP but so far its proving to be worth it. Also Cav Corps at least up until later 1942 have the same CV strength as Soviet tank/mech Corps with support units and take a fraction of trucks 1/5 to 1/6 as many trucks. Plus they can do a dedicated attack for only 6 MP instead of 16.......makes them way better at this point in the war than any of the Soviet Mobile units. Plus they hit 6-7 CV when rested and close to full strength.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: chaos45

Lol, his OOB is somewhere around 3.6M so stronger than 1941 and I think ive inflicted the most losses on him out of about all the AARs Ive seen so far and it really doesnt seem to matter.

Pelton has a morale fetish, now I think he overplays this as other variables are also important but you can use it against him.

The point is its not about numbers - for the most part raw numbers in this game is the least important part of the leadership-morale-experience-equipment dynamic.

The point is that most German infantry divisions should have been battered over winter and shed a load of morale ... and you seem to have done an excellent job on this. Now, at best, those can make progress against a weakly held area but the Germans in 1942 don't really gain from that sort of slow/casualty intense march east. So they will go over to the defense.

His offensive army will be a small number of rested and protected infantry divisions, stuffed with support units and the Pzrs. The game captures this shift quite well. That means he has to concentrate (and Pelton is very good at this) and he'll start pac-man style attacks to weaken you - most Germans will go for the Red Army in 1942 not territory as such.

One advantage you have over 1941 is that you no longer need to stand and fight, your industry should be long gone and Moscow is the only thing worth really defending at the cost of your army. So recon*recon*recon, find where he is preparing and simply don't hang around. You are right at the merits of cav corps, a few stacks of those and some Gds rifle corps to the rear will not just allow you to re-open pockets but really hammer over-extended Pzrs.

One problem you have is with NM at 40 you simply can't hold anywhere (apart from Moscow), so don't try to. This stage is all about accepting some losses and trying to keep out of the way.

[gingerbread]

It's a lot about mindset and how to defuse the shock caused by opening the turn.

Check the map. Lots of pockets.
Check the CR and set filter to 'Isolated'. All that will be lost. Worst case, of course.
Change filter to 'Non-isolated'. All this is left so it's OK. Can build more to replace the losses.
Then do the turn.

Rifle Brigades are a Soviet player's best friend. [:)]

[chaos45]

Our game is still ongoing just finished up T50 as his summer offensive develops more, will post more recent pictures. So far Ive lost about 2-3 armies due to encirclements March-end of May. So not to bad and my army is continuing to grow so not enough to stop further build-ups of Soviet equipment. Also I have successfully hit the Panzers back on two large scale operations. Not bad enough to completely save the situation but enough to inflict a fair amount of casualties.

Also every turn of non-mud my forces in the center at moscow have slowly gained ground against an extremely weak german defense there. I have noticed he has shifted a fair amount of infantry reserves to the center to try and slow/stop these attacks which means they had the intended effect and pulled infantry from what otherwise would have assisted operations south of the Oka. Also helps to stop my morale loss as im getting successful attacks against the Germans after April.

[chaos45]

With the pull out of German Armor on T36 I swing over to a full offensive in the moscow sector.

[chaos45]

T36- offensives continue in the south.

[chaos45]

And continue all down the line T36 south

[chaos45]

T38- North right off against 3x 50+ morale infantry divisions in Lvl 3 fort with soviet reserve activation the Germans get a hex towards leningrad- To me this is very unrealistic period and no arguments from German players can justify how easy taking this hex was. For a measly like 2k losses the Germans took a super critical hex that had been fortified and as heavily manned as the soviets can at this point in the game. Also leningrad is completely in supply as the port is 100% operational. It does end up take about 2 months for him to take leningrad- but this was the start. German engineers should not be able to drop lvl 3 forts to zero in one attack sorry- could understand the first attack dropping a lvl and part of another but dropping a 3 to 0 in one assault is abit beyond belief by this stage in the war. Just my opinions and I think historical combat results would support this.