It occurs to me I may have jumped the gun on the last T19, what with the most recent German turn being T19. So...some other items of interest:
You may notice that most of central and southern Russia are only receiving moderate rain, as opposed to drenching, crushing heavy rain.
I am less concerned with this than it might seem I should be. That's because the heavy mud will stick around. Heavy mud takes a moment to "dry out", even after the heavy rain goes. In the fall, it is usually the November freeze that returns everything to clear and light snow that does it, not a gradual reversion to light mud and eventually clear like the spring. Since I'm expecting a freeze anyway, all that matters for now is that the mud is still around.
Which it is, for now:
The other big item to talk about is the OOB.
The biggest item of note is the soviet OOB. Conventional wisdom has it that so long as the soviets are below 3M, they Germans can advance everywhere, but after crossing 3M things start getting geometrically harder for the Germans in chunks of 300-400k soviets. By 4M life is going to be difficult in many places, and by 5M the Germans will likely only be able to operate effectively in one AG's area. By 6M the war is going the other direction, even if a few bright flares make it seem otherwise for a moment here and there.
The mud season will represent the Soviet's first real chance to drive their fielded numbers above 3M against an aggressive opponent, and the higher the better. My apparent OOB is lower at the moment because I've been taking advantage of the mud to rotate some of my battered units into the reserve where they can refit and recover far better than on or near the line. I am confident that when the mud ends, I'll have more than 3M on the field and be able to mount a much stouter defense. On top of which, at the end of November Stavka releases half a million men for the winter counter-attack, which generally combines with the weather to put a nail in the coffin of German operations until spring. (This game with it's Leningrad situation may see a rare exception to that.)
My own goal is to build into the low-mid 4M range in December, outpacing my historical counterparts for build up. With the situation sitting as it is in terms of VP and Leningrad under threat of a winter campaign, I certainly need to build up effectively and well or this war will end in '42.
The other major item here is the panzer count. While the German overall strength is a little low due to the bleeding of this offensive, the most notable item is the panzers. While they aren't the ultimate gauge of German power, they are a decent marker for German explosiveness and worth keeping an eye on. On the up side, the overall count is lower than it often is the case, so the PGs got pretty worn down - which, given they've quite handily outdone their historical counterparts seems like a pretty good trade.
The downside is that the mud season is giving them time to recover, bot in terms of replacements and in terms of getting damaged and broken down tanks running again. 1500 already and more to follow, November will see the panzerwaffe at it's strongest since the early days of the invasion. For the obvious reasons, I find this less than thrilling.
