Have been playing WITE for about 9 months HvH. Been playing wargames for 45 years or so - boardgames, tabletop and my favourite computer games have been Steel Panthers, Total War, Civ, Panzer General but I think WITE stands as the best of the lot.
We are playing:
Sudden Death campaign.
Random weather, '+1', mild blizzard.
No para drops, No naval invasions before November 1941, none outside the 1939 Soviet borders before January 1943. In addition if Sevastopol is either isolated, or in German hands, none west of the Crimea,
New Patches will be used as soon as possible.
Server game, AAR running a few turns behind.
Grand Strategy.
Take Leningrad, Moscow and Rostov; with 4m Soviet losses before the blizzard. Leningrad is a must.
AGN rail line north to Pskov, then East and looping down to join the Moscow line.
AGC rail line splitting off the northern line, north of the Dvina to Smolensk and on towards Moscow.
AGS rail line running below the marshes to Kiev and looping up to link with the Moscow line; with help on T1 to flip Rova-Ruskaya.
Romanian rail line with the FBD's to D'town and onwards to Stalino. I attach the spare Romanian construction SU's to give it an extra MP.
Driving the railways forward at full speed is a must.
The next priority is to pocket as much as possible. Big pockets are good but any chance to catch a few divisions should be taken.
With the '+1' I need to be careful not to leave advanced units exposed to counterattack. I expect my opponent will reach his maximum Guards quota regardless of what I do but no need to help him.
My general style of play is to exert pressure at multiple places across the front and give my opponent difficult choices as to what to defend, then take advantage of any weaknesses. When he starts to form solid front lines try then disrupt them with deep penetrations or find a way around. Frontal assault is the last resort but if necessary there needs to be sufficient force to do the get through.
Administration.
SU's. The goal is to assign eligible SU's to armoured divisions, keeping a few pioneers back for the infantry. My logic is that the armoured divisions may have several combats per turn so that is the place to get best use from the stugs and pioneers. Infantry SU's go to the Pz, divisions and AT SU's to the motorised - don't know if this actually helps but it seems to make sense. It also keeps the motorised divisions light for doing air supply. Each infantry corps gets 6 artillery units. The AA primarily go to Pz. Corps and the Luftwaffe. Would welcome any feedback on this am not really sure if my logic is sound.
This game will try and set up a couple of 'super' infantry corps in AGN with the best divisions, leaders, artillery and some pioneers; and similar to a lesser extent in AGC. I also aim to group my best armoured divisions into corps with the best leaders and use these primarily for HQBuildups, but haven't fully been able to make this work in the past as events overtake the master plan.
So T1 set all Armies and higher to 9, all corps to 0 - to push the SU's up the command structure. Lock the three RHG armies and any corps that have nothing to push out. Also assign all spare construction SU's to the AGS RHG so that they don't migrate into corps.
Shift any divisions out of over loaded corps and assign the spare corps in AGN to PG4. Shift any infantry divisions out of Pz corps - am not sure if this is productive but it gives more flexibility to shift armoured divisions around later.
Set all airbases to Manual upgrade.
Set all armoured divisions to Refit.
Assign von Kluge to OKH.
Sequence of play for T1 is:
Any land combats that can be done without displacing any air groups - gives the fighters some easy targets.
Airbase bombing.
Remaining land combat, with some unit bombing in critical areas.
Air war.
I bomb all airbases within range with the Tac's, until they are empty. Then advance a little and take out the one near to Riga and another next to Stanislav. Then work the Romanians, rebase planes closer to the action and can take out Odessa, Kishinev and Proskorov without using the He's. Many of the airbases are so stacked with supplies that they can take a heavy load of bombers - later in the game you have to be more careful with moving bombers around. Then advance with level bomber airbases, rebasing airframes to save on movement, and get stuck into the more distant Soviet airbases. Moving these bases around is probably going to cost me some trucks but am hoping it is worth it - has anyone done analysis on the truck usage ?
5743 for 57 airframes which beats my previous record by about 300.
AGN
I do the right hook first to flip the towns on the way up to the Douvaga with the hope that more units will rout into my western Riga pocket. Then push through on the left, occupying both ports. Move the two Pz. Divisions up to Riga, attach pioneers, bomb Riga and assault. It fell at the second attack.
Have 12 units visible in the Riga pocket and 11 in the Kaunas one.
