The Sun Also Rises ( D21 )

[larryfulkerson]

Here's combat round 5 and I finally captured Smolensk. I'm guessing the supply level
will rise a bit now. That's going to enable the advance to continue toward Moscow.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T22 front lines before I have moved anybody. There was one spot where some
Soviet armor got past my perimeter and into my backfield but I've got units ready to
surround him.

EDIT: I've got a notation on the image about the Soviet supply point being gone but
the truth is that the zoom-out has made it invisible. Zooming back down one level makes
it visible again.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's that spot where the Soviet armor unit went berzerk and got into my backfield
and is a threat to my comfortable sleep so I'm going to surround it and destroy it.
I need more than a light screen obviously, so I'll see what I can do to scrape some
more units from the nearby countryside. I may have to rail some in from the south.

The clearing of the territories is concluded so all those troops need fresh employment
and I was thinking of sending them to the east side of the Dneper river, the one that
runs through Kiev, to clear out the Soviet units down to D-town and then head east.

I'm going to run the Rumanians into the Crimea and areas south and see if 11th Army
can arrive in time to help with the Sevastopol take-down.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the northern flank near Leningrad and I'm happy with the progress of the RR
engineers because the railhead is close enough for just one unit for these. I've
got a group of three units haaded northeast from Minsk and one group of three
nearing Kiev. The south is going to feed off the rail line from Sofia through
Bessarabia, passes near Odessa and thense I'm planning on running it into the
Crimea for the Sevastopol operation.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the supply situation near Smolensk right now. It has improved a lot and the
units are happier, greener, but there was a news string that said that the Axis side
was experiencing supply difficulties; I'm guessing they are refering to the situation
dowm south which was poor as of my last scan. As soon as the rail reaches Smolensk
I'll have to transfer the RR engineers to the south route to give those folks some
relief, in probably another 20 turns or so. By then we will be almost through with
the first mud season.

[larryfulkerson]

I just now discovered that I'm going to be losing a lot of aircraft around T37 or so.
Just about the start of the first mud season. But the western front has needs too.
So I guess I'll share. I can't disband them early, planes and naval units can't be
disbanded, too bad, so I'm wondering if I should take them out of service early so as
not to depend on them any longer, or put them into the thick of things where they will
at least contribute some of their equipment to the pools through loses. I think I'll
move the bombers to Berlin and use the fighters I'm losing to garrison some of the
more important home country cities. That way I won't miss them when they are gone.
The reason I want to move the bombers to Berlin is to lessen the losses of the bombers
which have been heavy heretofor.

[larryfulkerson]

The force movement bias is now 50%. I was wondering why I couldn't move anything very
far. There must be an event that controls that for each side. Well, this is rather
unhandy. How am I supposed to win the war now? I'll see if I can't carry on with
the advance, just slower yet.

[larryfulkerson]

I'm moving my forces in the north so as to try to isolate Leningrad from the rest of
Russia by cutting all the rail lines and roads leading to the city. That way no more
reinforcements can be railed into the battlefield from Moscow. I've noticed that Elmer
is railing all his reinforcements to the Moscow area and from there they travel to their
final destination out in the field. They don't even get a turn of rest first, they are
just thrust into the thick of things once they respawn. Which means that they get to the
front faster but they are in really poor shape when they get there.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a spot in the lines where my units are really sparse and there's not a whole
lot of Soviet resistance yet. My units are spread out and not self-supporting. I
need to get organized in this area and deploy the troops better. Supply is poor and
there's no hurry to get a front line formed in this area by the Soviets yet so the
going is good.

[larryfulkerson]

The Soviets must have had a change in their strategic bias or something because they
seemed to go berserk with their attacking. All over the map all up and down the line
they went crazy attacking. 80 battles in their turn. They gained some hexes and
caused several Axis units to back up. The character of the war has changed. I'm
thinking that the winter offensive is going to be a dozy.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T23 front lines before I have moved anybody.

[700851McCall]

The winter offensive should not be taken lightly. They come at you like lunatics. Make sure you are well prepared for it. BTW I also thought I could take Sevastapol 'on the bounce', but it was too tough.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: 700851McCall
The winter offensive should not be taken lightly. They come at you like lunatics. Make
sure you are well prepared for it.

How hard could it be you ask....in my immediately previous game of D21 I did sort of
take it lightly and paid the price. I hadn't dug anybody in past 'D' and didn't have
any reserves standing by and the supply system collapsed so nobody was supplied, they
weren't overextended......they were out of supply. Nobody could disband as a result.
And like you said the Soviets came at me so hard about 25% of them evaporated on attack.
But I was driven back and lost a lot of stragglers and the slower units were caught and
destroyed. I estimate I lost about 1/3 of my army retreating. It was then that I
looked at the tracks for Elmer and misinterpetred what I saw and abandoned the game.
I have since learned to dig everybody in to 'F' at least, have some reserves handy for
those times that the Soviets actully break through the lines, and if possible have
more then one MLR....defend in depth.

ORIGINAL: 700851McCall
BTW I also thought I could take Sevastapol 'on the bounce', but it was too tough.

In a previous version of this scenario Sevastopol was empty, no garrison, no defenders
so I took a chance and launched some paratroopers to the hex next to the port to recon
what was in the hex and then dropped some paratroopers in the port hex capturing it on
the cheap. Rick has since produced the version I'm playing now that has defenders in
the port hex. D'oh. But it's still early September and the Bulgarian release isn't
until December 4, so I'm optimistic that the port shall fall with the help of the 11th
Army. Whose units are streaming to the Crimea as we speak. Some elements are already
there.

[larryfulkerson]

This is a view of the Sevastopol situation right now. I've got units pressing toward
the port but I'm going to have to branch off to the east to force the Soviet units
into the narrow isthmus to bottle them up. THEN concentrate on the port. It's
probably going to take more units than are present for what I have in mind so I'll
take a look around for some more divisions. I can run some of those superflous divisions
from around Z-town into this AO.

[larryfulkerson]

I finally succeeded in forcing the two main river crossings where the river bends,
D-town and Z-town. This is a good thing and opens a new theater for operations.
The Rumanians and Hungarians and Slovaks are going to head for Kharkov and the
11th Army will attempt to take out Sevastopol and bottle up the Soviets in the
narrow part of the isthmus. I'm optimistic about the operation to take down the
port.

Elmer has been launching airfield strikes here lately. I had some Stukas parked near
Odessa without any fighters in the hex with them and lost about half of them to
a particulaly harsh airfield strike. I've since learned to park some fighters with
the bombers.

I sank the BB's near Sevastopol but there's some DD's left to target. The Soviets keep
running units into the AO through the narrow part of the isthmus so I really need to
stop that if I'm going to have any sucess at all. So that's my priority.

[larryfulkerson]

I stopped the Soviet turn to get a peek at the losses screen and judging from the
number of rifle squads Elmer has on hand, I'm in for quite a ride this winter.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T24 front lines before I have moved anybody.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's some of the Axis losses so far. I'm going through HRS's like there's no
tomorrow but I've still got 2K on hand to play with. It's going to cost that and
more to take down Sevastopol probably.

[larryfulkerson]

What started as a little hole has expanded into a bulge in the front lines as I try
to roll up the Soviet front lines in both directions. So far so good. I may be
able to destroy quite a few Soviet units this way. Maybe I should rail in some more
people to really follow up on this.

[larryfulkerson]

I forced the river crossing at Z-town recently and now I'm streaming units across
the river and into what used to be the Soviet backfield, now a new front. I've got
the Rumanians headed east toward what I'm hoping is Kharkov. I'd like to take that
down next. Then Rostov and eventually Stalingrad.