On to 1943!

[thedoctorking]

Back in September of 2017, I was new to this game, and I was invited to join a newly formed multi-player game to be called the 2by3+ game. As the least experienced player on the Soviet team, I took the northern sector. My teammates were also inexperienced, and among the four of us we managed to screw things up quite thoroughly against an expert Axis team. The story of the game has been told in other places in this forum, so I don’t need to go into it at great length, but to recap:

By the beginning of the blizzard, in the north, we had lost the northernmost of the Volga cities, Yaroslavl, as well as Leningrad. My boys held the line of the Volga up to Rybinsk, and then an arc through the swamps (with no supplies) and up to Lake Onega.

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Farther south, the Axis had managed to cut off Moscow and reduce its garrison, wiping out most of two fronts as well as taking our capital along with much of its industry.

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In the south, a huge pocket around Voronezh saw the destruction of Southwestern Front. We were able to evacuate the critical IL-2 and T-34 factories, though only one point of each, in part because the Axis placed a lower priority on this sector. They did not get to Rostov or across the lower Don. A chaotic screen of our boys faced a similarly scattered Axis force in this sector.

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Deployed manpower for the USSR was 4.4 million, with 6800 AFV’s and 6800 aircraft. For the Germans, there were 3.4 million men, 4000 AFV’s and 2900 aircraft (and about 1.4 million Axis allied manpower with 350 AFV’s and 800 aircraft).

Most Soviet players would have lost heart at this point. I confess that I was merely hanging on out of natural stubbornness. Some of our players did leave. But we recruited some new talent, and those of us who stuck with it at least learned something.

I learned about guard farming. I learned about supply delivery difficulties. I should say that we started this game under 1.11.0 and by turn 38, we were using 1.11.03. Axis supply east of Moscow was nerfed in one of those patches, just about the time in our game that it became very helpful. I also learned about optimizing the Soviet air force. We had a long time with almost no IL-2 production, and so we used U2VS NBAP squadrons (set to day missions) as our principal ground attack weapon. They proved to be quite effective.

The blizzard turns were very productive for us. We were playing with reduced blizzard effect, but our counterattack was effective. We massed our cavalry in the south-center and managed to cut off and destroy about seven German divisions and the Gross Deutschland regiment. In the north, I pushed the Germans back from Yaroslavl and chewed up Finnish manpower south of Lake Onega. The Finns suffered especially because they were relying on supply from their own homeland and had few rail repair units to bring supplies down to their far-flung front. They were not in normal supply until quite late in the blizzard season. Since Finnish manpower replenishment is low, they never really recovered from the losses they suffered in December-February.

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In the center, our successful offensive around Tambov killed some German divisions and rolled the Axis lines back about 100 miles. We never really aimed to capture Moscow, and the Germans spent a lot of resources fortifying their position there to no effect.

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In the south, our lines were pretty much static, though we took the opportunity to punish the Romanians as much as we could. They get more replacement manpower than the Finns, though, so we were not able to weaken them permanently.

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You can see the changing fortunes of the two sides in the bulk of our lines at the end of February when compared to December. By the numbers, we were up to 4.9 million deployed manpower with 6800 AFV’s and 7500 aircraft to 3.4 million German manpower, 3900 AFV’s and 3400 aircraft (Axis allies had 1.4 million men, 300 AFV’s, and 820 aircraft). So we were up by a half a million with a very significant increase in quality against an Axis force about as strong as it had been in the fall.

It was at this point that the multi-player game broke up, as these things sometimes do. I was interested in continuing to play, though. I wanted to see if the Soviets could come back from such a bad start. One person who had briefly been on the Axis team, Weinsoldner, was willing to play on as a one-on-one game. And so, on March 1, 1942, I became the Chief of Staff of STAVKA and Weinsoldner took his place as Chief of Staff of OKH. I thought that some of the players in the former multiplayer game might be interested in knowing how it has played out through 1942.

My first task was to reorganize the Soviet forces. We had several Front HQ’s that were grossly overloaded, while one had no units assigned to it at all. We had promoted some of our best generals to Front command – Mr. Z, Georgi Zhukov, was in command of Kalinin Front and Ivan Konev was in command of Western – and given the enormous overloading of their fronts, their command abilities were wasted. Breaking the excess armies away from those overloaded fronts was a matter for several turns’ worth of AP that could have been spent on building tank corps. I thought it was worth the investment.

I also wanted a reserve mass that could face potential Axis armored breakthroughs once spring came. I used the empty Front, Crimean, for my strategic reserve. I gave it three shock armies (and ultimately one Guards army) and a collection of my best units. I put them back behind the front and put them on refit mode to build their TOE, morale, and experience.

I wanted to reorganize my air force to be able to concentrate my best planes in one sector to gain air superiority over the critical battlefield. I assigned one of the corps-level air commands to Crimean Front and gave it a good leader, Golovanov, and a selection of the best fighter and ground-attack bomber squadrons in my inventory. I used the “mad bomber” approach across the whole front, so there was plenty of churn, but as I developed new squadrons with high experience and morale levels, I would transfer them to 6 IAK PVO corps.

By the end of mud, turn 47, you can see how my units are better organized. In the north, three fronts face relatively weak Axis forces presenting no threat of offensive action. Our supply situation is still poor, though, with Northwestern Front in particular as much as ten hexes from its railhead.

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In the center, we are presenting a credible defense to the east of Moscow, but with our mass of reserves located to the south near Tambov. It was there that I expected the biggest Axis push, with about one Panzer Army located in the Lipetsk-Voronezh sector.

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In the south, we had an early clear turn and a broad-front German offensive is developing in the Donbass aiming at Rostov. The earlier Soviet team had already built a powerful defensive line around Stalingrad, and so I aimed to channel any German attack in that area to the north if I could, strengthening Southern Front with good units and plenty of support and thinning out Southwestern (soon to be Stalingrad) Front to the north.

Behind the lines are hordes of STAVKA divisions at 20% TOE max. My goal was to have these guys dig fortifications while their EXP and Morale go up. When they get to Morale 40, I march them up to the front and merge them into front-line divisions that have fallen below 70% TOE. This way they don’t pollute the front-line units’ morale too much, and I can direct the replacements where I think they are needed. You must spend all your AP in a turn before you do any merges, though, because if you don’t the system will charge you the AP cost of the division you merged immediately. But this proved to be a very useful way to keep Soviet units up to fighting strength. The destroyed division will come in a few turns later and can get back to digging and training up.

Turn 47 numbers were 5.5 million Soviet soldiers with 6300 AFV’s and 7100 aircraft against 3.6 million Germans with 4100 AFV’s and 3500 planes. So the mud allowed us to go up another half million.

It was just about at this point that we shifted over to 1.12, and the German supply problem got a lot worse. Our supply situation was challenging as well, but we were retreating onto our supplies while they were advancing away from theirs. Always the German problem in the early game, but much worse when you are well past Moscow.

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The 1942 summer battles did not feature a lot of armored breakthroughs. We got no use at all out of the fortified lines that my predecessors at STAVKA built during the winter (at Stalingrad, Gorky, and north of Baku). Instead, the Axis big push in the south turned into a World War One style slugfest, with two months of fighting moving the lines maybe 40 miles to the east, from the Mius to the outskirts of Rostov by July 4th. To the north, Axis forces and my big Crimean Front fought a series of bruising tank battles east of Voronezh. At the end of June, I decided that the situation there was not too threatening, and I withdrew Crimean and repositioned it to the south for a counterattack across the Don.

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In the center, Kalinin Front absorbed some German shoving and built its strength near Ryazan. The German offensive north of Lipetsk was making some mileage, but I judged that Bryansk Front could afford to give some ground until the counterattacks to the north and south distracted the German armored mass of maneuver.

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The northern sector was very stable during this period. I used it as a place to train up new air squadrons and to continue to harass the Finns.

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On turn 58, though, I launched my planned offensives in the center, recapturing Ryazan, driving ten hexes to the west across the Don, and wiping out ten Axis divisions including three German Panzer divisions and 6th Army HQ. Early Stalingrad. Kalinin’s offensive was able to capture Ryazan but could not go further. There were still powerful German defenses in the vicinity of Moscow, including a huge anti-aircraft trap. Without air superiority and facing equivalent numbers of German armor, we were happy to just distract and regain an important city.

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In the north, much to my surprise, my harassing attacks against the Finns succeeded in breaking their front and allowing me to advance to Lake Ladoga and cross the Svir River to the north and the Volkhov to the west. German armored reinforcements stopped my advance towards Leningrad, but the Finnish army between the lakes barely escaped being pocketed in its entirety. If I had known how weak they were and sent some more mobile assets up there, I might have bagged them all and knocked Finland out of the war.

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We’ve played up to the mud in 1942 and are currently on turn 72. In the north, we’ve rolled the Finns back to close to their 1939 borders and are massed to push on to the west south of the lakes. The supply situation in the far north is critical until we can repair the rail line. Holding the critical rail junction at Volkhov is essential in this regard – we cannot even harass the enemy up there until the rail lines are rebuilt. The Finnish air force is down to 37 planes, though – our fighters are not going to get much live ammo training in up here any more.

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In the center, we have an arc around Moscow. Several important cities lie within that arc and could be targets for a winter offensive.

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To the south, our offensive into the Donbass ended just short of Stalino. The Germans are giving up their hard-won gains near Rostov, though. I hope to regain the Donbass cities in the coming winter, as our production is now most limited by resource shortages.

This is an interesting and unanticipated development. When I realized on turn 25 or so that we only had 236 armaments factories left, I assumed that we would suffer from armaments shortages for the rest of the game. There have been some shortages. We didn’t build nearly as many artillery SU as I normally would. Occasionally, looking over the logistics phase record, I would see that some aircraft or tanks had not been built because of shortages. But much more commonly, the shortage is in resource production. Recovering the big resource factories of Stalino and vicinity holds the promise of restoring that situation.

Manpower and armaments appear to be pretty well balanced – on turn 72, I have 70000 manpower and 10000 armaments in my pool. I’ve got a moderate vehicle shortage – about 40k in units and 10k in the general pool. Starting in 1943, the Yankees will be giving me 4500 a turn, so that means about 10 turns will resolve that problem. I built three mech corps for a new tank army, that ate up a whole bunch of vehicles.

The numbers for turn 72 are encouraging: 6.9 million Soviet soldiers with 10700 AFV’s and 10800 aircraft confront 4 million Germans with 6500 AFV’s and 2200 aircraft (and 1.5 million Axis allies with 450 AFV’s and 470 aircraft). My biggest gains have been in the air, as I have now gained effective air superiority across the entire front. There is still a long way to go before I get to Berlin, though. I’m excited to see what comes next. I’ll keep you informed.

[Fetterkrolle]

I am excited to see more of this! Could you also show a list of units destroyed and losses in total?

[EwaldvonKleist]

Respect for continuing in this situation.
[&o]

But much more commonly, the shortage is in resource production.

You explicitly mean resources, and not supply (produced by heavy industry factories)?

I am very surprised there are resource shortages given the wrecked industry leads to lower consumption.

[weinsoldner]

Will show losses for the Axis as soon as I open the game later today