2x3+ Team Side Game - BOTH SIDES

[Beria]

Unit losses to end of turn 37

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: Zorch
With the # of elite Axis units wrecked and # of Soviet Guards units created?

Here are the units lost in the blizzard - for the lesser and then greater Tambov pockets with elite units boxed.



They consisted a regiment of an elite division and a regiment that upgrades to a division. In some ways these are the best units to have lost. The Gross Deutschland will soon triple in size in manpower when it upgrades to a division and see its stats go down just from that. So this unit would have to spend time training up recruits to better stats anyway. There will be a long mud period to do this in. And crucially for both units they will go their bonus levels anyway eventually which are far above critical thresholds.

More painful were to lose the high quality infantry divisions which were not elite. These are usually the ones with low numbers. Typically they will have morale of 81 or more allowing them to travel one enemy clear hex for only two MPs. They can return and retrain up to national morale, but that is well below the 81 threshold and so will need 3MPs to travel through enemy clear hexes (50% more!). So for us they are a real irrecoverable loss.

[Beria]

41 guards rifle divisions. Funnily enough almost all of them came at the same time towards the end of blizzard. 14 guards cavalry corps. Also all the rocket support units are guards, but a few artillery, pioneers and a flak support unit are too.

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: Zorch
What were the total losses during the blizzard? What would they have been in a smaller offensive, or if no offensive at all?

Here for comparison are the losses at the start of the blizzard (Start of Axis Turn 25). Taking these away from the losses at the end of the blizzard it means about half a million losses for the Axis and 800k for the Soviet side.


Of the Axis losses about 13k surrendered in the lesser Tambov pocket and 60k surrendered in the greater Tambov pocket. Perhaps without the fighting to reopen and close the pockets again perhaps as much agan could have been saved. So without these pockets perhaps Axis losses would have been 150k smaller? Most losses always though are attrition - so even without an offensive the losses would barely have been smaller after that.

[Zorch]

ORIGINAL: Telemecus

ORIGINAL: Zorch
What were the total losses during the blizzard? What would they have been in a smaller offensive, or if no offensive at all?

Here for comparison are the losses at the start of the blizzard (Start of Axis Turn 25). Taking these away from the losses at the end of the blizzard it means about half a million losses for the Axis and 800k for the Soviet side.


Of the Axis losses about 13k surrendered in the lesser Tambov pocket and 60k surrendered in the greater Tambov pocket. Perhaps without the fighting to reopen and close the pockets again perhaps as much agan could have been saved. So without these pockets perhaps Axis losses would have been 150k smaller? Most losses always though are attrition - so even without an offensive the losses would barely have been smaller after that.

So the blizzard offensive did not have a large personnel effect on the Axis. But in morale, guns, and AFVs?

[Telemecus]

Let me first consider morale

Here below is a screenshot of non-frozen German infantry at the end of turn 37 - here sorted by the highest morale first. Many of these units have morale in the high 90s still, but they are the ones that have been garrisoned in the winter and as they are out of the action have been reassigned to OKH. They will be killers come summer!

[Telemecus]

Here on the other hand is the bottom. This includes some very low ones that are just recovering from having returned after their destruction in the Tambov pockets and still have very low morale turns later.

[Telemecus]

most of the other infantry are +/- 10 of the national morale which is going to be 70 in the summer. With replacements arriving, some rear refits and upcoming victories they should congregate back to around 70 morale pretty soon.

[Telemecus]

Here though is the bigger problem - experience. All those units destroyed in the Tambov pocket have returned with super low experience levels. Their combat stats are now worse than a Rumanian infantry division. And that same experience bug that the Soviet side has suffered from will also be affecting the Germans. It will be many turns on rear refit before they stop being useless green divisions and start being "German" divisions

Below you can see the same infantry sorted by ascending experience - and this is after many turns of recovery since the Tambov pockets already.

[redrum68]

Any thoughts on how these OOBs and loses compare to other games at this point? Or on how the loses during the blizzard compare to other games?

[joelmar]

@telemecus

They will be killers come summer!

you bet!

@redrum68

Any thoughts on how these OOBs and loses compare to other games at this point? Or on how the loses during the blizzard compare to other games?

@telemecus will probably have a more precise answer, but what I can say is that we had some successful spring offensives as will be told soon, and had no problems to attack everywhere we wanted when the weather permitted.

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: Zorch
So the blizzard offensive did not have a large personnel effect on the Axis. But in ... AFVs?

AFVs is a particular success - and here is why. The map below shows bordered in red where motorised units are. And many are stacked three high in blizzard protected hexes in the rear. Often they are in such hexes near the front so that they can be used quickly in an emergency. Around Moscow they remained in the city hexes and also the size 4 towns near the front and so were able BOTH to be protected from the first winter rules AND fight. Many SUs however were used in the unprotected hexes and some motorised had to be used in emergencies - but the picture overall remains true.

End of Axis Turn 37 (motorised bordered in red)

Mamluke, Soviet South Commander
to be blunt, the reason [for] such success is because the Germans were very reluctant to use Motorize divisions and refuse to send out panzer divisions
not to mention keeping very high quality Infantry in the back.
coming February, that is going to change, drastically.
in one of my games , I played my winter offensive well, however as it it March, the Germans lost the 1st winter penalties and went on the offensive. he caught the red army with its pants down and the Soviet front in the South disintegrated. and I had about 5 Million men, a much stronger army then in this game.

[Telemecus]

And here are the German Panzer divisions at the end of Blizzard. Just look at those morales. These divisions have not been beaten down by the morale sapping blizzard but are at the same super high morale levels they had in June 1941. I would consider this to be the number one difference between this game and what will come up in 1942 and what happens in many games where the panzers are left out in the first blizzard.

[Telemecus]

And similarly although less so with the motor infantry units.

[Telemecus]

Refit A from log report of Axis Logistics Turn 37

[Telemecus]

Refit B from log report of Axis Logistics Turn 37

[Telemecus]

Normal replacements from log report of Axis Logistics Turn 37

[Telemecus]

And the beginning of the pools for the German side in logistics turn 37.

We have lots of tanks ready as replacements. So when we do start unchoking the Panzer divisions we are going to have tanks to fill the replacement needs. This will not last forever. But we will be able to start with reasonably well equipped Panzer divisions.

The tank destroyer support units which were left out to fight in the blizzard on the other hand ...



To a great extent the AFVs, and especially tanks, did not take part in the blizzard war. So they are what they were at the end of snow in 1941 plus the production of them since.

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: Zorch
So the blizzard offensive did not have a large personnel effect on the Axis. But in ... guns ..?

Right back on turn 1 we turned down the maximum ToEs of gun SUs, and any others relying on arms points, to 20%. This did not mean they would shrink to 20% ToE, just that they would receive no replacements so long as they had a ToE over 20%. This was to make sure we banked as many arms points so that there would be a pool at the end of blizzard with which to rebuild the infantry divisions. Not doing this can me you end up with lots of guns and no arms points to make the infantry squad replacements you really really need.



The side effect has been until now there have been fewer guns and fewer gun losses.

Now that the infantry divisions are being filled up we will soon coming to the point when we have spare arms points and a lack of manpower. At that point the gun SUs will be preogressively moved back to 100% ToEs.

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: redrum68
Any thoughts on how these OOBs and loses compare to other games at this point? Or on how the loses during the blizzard compare to other games?

It is hard to make a definitive comparison as all you have to go on are the games you particularly happen to have seen. My sense is the Soviets had a good blizzard, better than average given the Tambov pockets. And their OOB grew in the blizzard

Darojax, Soviet Centre Commander
Not bad, +1 million

Mamluke, Soviet South Commander
a mere 3 months later, We recover So much Strength!
I'm curios, are you guys surprise on the Red Army quick Recovery? when I was analyzing the results for turn 18. even I though the Soviets would only make meager progress in Winter.
the Strength of the Red army, compared to how it was, even surprises me! of course a good part of that is because of the many rifle divisions we receive as reinforcements before the winter months.
I am surprised about it. Considering the losses the Soviets took it baffles me that such offensives are possible at this time