The Road to Leningrad: AtAtack (G) vs Beethoven (S), Soviet Viewpoint

[Beethoven1]

Turn 10 south:

Germany swatted away 2 divisions I had left in front of the Velikaya to eat up some movement points, but 3 separate attacks across the river all failed. My troops were holding up far better around Pskov than they were in the north. Presumably this was because of the forts, the river, and the fact that they were fighting German infantry rather than tanks and motorized divisions like in the north.

By this point in the game, I was also really starting to appreciate how large of an impact forts and terrain and rivers seem to have. Many of the Soviet troops that kept routing in the north were fighting on clear terrain (without forts due to the fact that they were retreating quickly). Light forest also seemed to be essentially no better than clear terrain. This seems to be a major problem you have to watch out for when trying to do any sort of fighting retreat. The problem is no doubt worse for Soviets in the Ukraine.

[Beethoven1]

Turn 10 north end:

Fortunately Germany finally seemed to be overextending (at least somewhat). In order to advance as far as he did the previous turn, AtAtack had split his Panzers into regiments, in particular in the south-eastern flank of the attack. This made them vulnerable to counterattack with large Soviet numerical superiority. I had managed to retreat a fair amount, but it looked to me like I was still at very serious risk of losing at minimum a few of the divisions in the rear, because it seemed like every time I was attacked, I routed, and that hadn't changed so far.

I was also concerned about the north, so over the past turn or two had been sending a few more reinforcements back there, which helped.

[Beethoven1]

Another thing to note about that last screenshot of the north -

Around this time I changed the view on my unit counters to show combat value rather than movement, so the 5=5 for example is the offensive/defensive combat value of a unit. This is a very valuable and helpful thing to do, as it makes it a lot clearer just how strong your units are defensively.

Notice that in one hex I have 6:38 combat value, and just to the north-west of it 1:1 combat value! Before I started looking at this, I would not have guessed the difference would be anything like that large!!! There were 3 divisions in each of the two tiles, but apparently a massive difference in their combat value, based largely on the terrain. This is really what made me realize just how important terrain and forts are. I knew that they were important, but I didn't know that they were THIS important.

This is not the default view, I would suggest new players try switching to it, especially if you are fighting on the defensive.

[Beethoven1]

Turn 11:

Unfortunately I forgot to take screenshots at the start of this turn, but you can see that Germany advanced, but only to a limited extent. Rather than trying to encircle a few straggler divisions, Germany attacked pretty much head on across the front. My rear units basically all routed or retreated rather than getting encircled.

In the south, not much happened. Germany made a few attacks, but the front line did not shift materially. When they beat my troops across the river, they subsequently lacked sufficient movement points to cross to the other side. This is presumably where some mobile divisions with more movement points could have presumably made a difference (especially if they had been in that area maybe 5-8 turns earlier or so).

In the far south, where my line was thinnest and my generals worst, I pulled back significantly to a line running to Velike Luki. It was only on turn 10 that I realized that Germany was getting a Panzer Corps of reinforcements, so I was afraid of possible exploitation/encirclement by fresh Panzers. The other reason I pulled back was because by this point I had realized more the value of terrain, and this was the first line where there was continuous river/swamp/city/heavy forest defense without clear terrain breaking it up.

I also had gotten a lot more reinforcements, and now there was quite a bit of depth behind Pskov. So while I was concerned about extra Panzers, I felt like I could handle them at this point enough to be able to retreat without collapsing.

[AtAtack]

ORIGINAL: Jajusha

Not criticizing anyone, trying to be purely constructive, but i believe the german attack lacked objective.
The panzer army was divided by turn one, and even after taking riga and crossing the duagava, half the panzer divisions decided to stay south of the river until turn 5, dreaming for an encirclement that never happened and letting you reach not only lvl 1 forts, but defending on a major river all over the line.

By then you had already a 2 to 3 hexes deep defense on the way to pskov and only now on turn 7 are the germans on the position they should be by turn 3. You capitalized on the divided spear head, you retreated as the infatry arrived, and i belive your delay tactics won you this game.

I agree 100%

[Scarz]

"d) Prioritize pilots for the "good" planes (i.e. MiGs)."

Seems like a good idea... How are you able to do this within the settings?

[Beethoven1]

ORIGINAL: Scarz

"d) Prioritize pilots for the "good" planes (i.e. MiGs)."

Seems like a good idea... How are you able to do this within the settings?

As far as I know you can't do it on a macro level, but you can go into the commanders report, select the air units which are using MiGs, and set those to accept trained pilots only (TPI), or alternatively to prioritize trained pilots for those (PRI).





Also for anyone still reading the AAR, the game ended the turn after the last post with Germany giving up after trying to push and not really getting anywhere.

The main takeaway lessons I took from this game were:

1) It is very important for the Axis player to push as hard as they possibly can and be very aggressive especially on the first turn or two, and both eliminate Soviet units and advance as quickly as possible. If the Axis player doesn't do this, the Soviet defense can firm up fairly early and make it very hard for Germany to continue to advance (in particular in difficult terrain, this is less of a problem in clear terrain like in the Ukraine).

2) It is extremely difficult for Soviets to actually eliminate an encircled German division in the first part of the game. This means that it is not only necessary, but also possible for Germany to be very aggressive in the first part of the game, because at that stage, what seems like a big risk is not necessarily actually such a big risk, because the Soviet troops are so terrible. The most that Soviets may realistically be able to do is attack a German regiment or temporarily cut off some Soviet troops. But if Soviets do that, this leaves them in potentially an exposed position where Germany can come back and potentially rout or encircle the Soviets, which might (or might not) leave Soviets worse off than if they never tried to aggressively counter the German advance. German mobile units can continue pushing Soviet units very hard, at least in the very first turns, even when their CPP is no longer optimally high, and even if they don't have perfect supply etc.

3) Terrain and fortifications are very important and new players are well advised to turn on the (non-default) map mode which shows defensive combat value on counters rather than movement points in order to see these effects of terrain visually (doesn't work for rivers though). Soviets can (sometimes) successfully defend on rough terrain early in the game, but can basically never successfully defend on clear terrain (also mostly not on light forest), at least early in the game.

4) As a caveat to lesson #3, there are some situations when it may actually be more advantageous for Soviets to put troops in clear terrain than in rough/swamp/heavy woods terrain. The main situation where that might be the case for the Soviet player is if they are primarily trying to slow down German mobile units rather than expecting to actually win any battles (most likely to be the case in the first few turns). In this case, German mobile units either have to expend extra movement points (as well as CPP) in fighting the Soviet troops which are sitting in clear terrain (along with creating a combat delay), or else have to expend extra movement points going around the Soviet troops and traveling instead through rough terrain. But when Soviet players are looking to actually hold ground and expect it is possible to stop a German advance, bear in mind this will be far more feasible in good defensive terrain and/or with fortifications.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Beethoven1
....
3) Terrain and fortifications are very important and new players are well advised to turn on the (non-default) map mode which shows defensive combat value on counters rather than movement points in order to see these effects of terrain visually (doesn't work for rivers though). ....

interesting game and report.

Just a comment about rivers, in WiTE2 I find the gain of a minor river pretty minimal, you may as well have it as not but often the biggest factor is the extra MP can delay an attack or force your opponent to swap to a hasty attack.

The actual routine changed a lot between WiTE1 and WiTW and that has carried over. The manual (section 23.8.9) is accurate in what it says (of course) but the key words are 'a reduction in overall CV of up to'. Worth remembering this hits once the battle is resolved, so if the enemy is a smouldering ruin of disrupted and damaged elements, they are going to have dropped far more. Also an artillery rich attacker is less vulnerable to the cross-river disruptions.

The net effect is I reckon (as a crude rule of thumb) knock off 10% of the pre-attack odds for the minor river - or in other words they are not major barriers but they do add to the slow degradation of the attacking side over multiple turns.