TXX Events

[larryfulkerson]

It's been noted that the traffic for this section of the forum has dropped off lately so it was suggested that I start another game of D21 to encourage more traffic. It's an open secret that my favorite scenario is D21 and I usually play at least two games of D21 each year until about T40 or so and then lose interest to a significant degree so this time I'm going to try to get past that point.

Below are the start positions of the units and I've annotated where I plan to push and what my immediate goals are for the opening turns. I'm playing my mod of D21 in which I've endowed the Axis Corps HQ's with some RR engineers. That promotes rail repair to a significant degree and facilitates pushing the advance further and faster and makes my game more fun.

I encourage you all to ask questions and make suggestions and I'll try to make this AAR more detailed and more fun.

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[larryfulkerson]

I felt the need to prevent the escape of Soviet units to the east and so parked my paratroopers on the roads and bridges leading to the east. Hopefully they will survive long enough to be used a second time in a future turn.

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[Cpl GAC]

Larry, would you consider showing a "nested or embedded AAR" most turns within your big story AAR? Showing 1) a specific objective you are aiming for - say Riga in this case, 2) what axis of advance you see the tasked formation(s) approaching Riga, like Corps 1 with support of 18 Army and OKH units, and, 3) each turn an overview of how you'd like the turn to go and then it's AAR.

I could be as simple as;
1) 22.6.41 mission - advance on Riga
2) Divisions 1st, 11th, 21st spanning the Taurage-Siauliai-Jelgava road securing the adjacent rail line.
3) by turn details

Riga advance turn 3 - I'm bringing in 26th Korp's 667 Pionier regiment to assist in assaulting Jelgava because of an entrenched NKVD division and will rest 21st Div.
(local screenshot)
AAR - I needed hex 95,50 but didn't get to advance into it. used all three division HQs on tactical art support and KG53 & 54 in direct support.

Riga advance turn 4 - hex 95, 50 still unoccupied and the Riga port looks empty, will try to assault Riga with the 11th Div and 667 Pionier from the port side...etc, etc
(local screenshot)
AAR - took 97,147 Riga port as planned, probably didn't need to dig in the front regiment of 1st on the main road south of Riga. Not expecting the two remaining city hexes to be reinforced, 21st needs to come up to the front next turn for the last push into the city.

New mission
1) 17.08.41 mission - advance on Bryansk
2) 24th PZK; 3PZ, 4PZ, 10M, 1Kav on Zhlobin-Surazh/Klintsy axis

Bryansk advance - turn 19, Zhlobin - 3PZ will be in vanguard headed for seemingly abandoned Sozh bridge/town crossing due east, Soviet troops north of Gomel to be engaged and other three divisions race to bridge crossing.
(local screenshot)
AAR 3PZ and 10M entered town 137,192 and crossed Sohz unopposed at bridge, 1Kav dug in engaged with rifle division north of Gomel waiting for 2A infantry to relieve them, held two 4PZ regiments west of the 137,192 town in case (and because they are red health - rail line only just east of Osipovichi).

It would be very helpful to see the series of choices you make for a few pieces in the bigger picture; what you decide is important to take, how you advance those pieces tasked with the mission, how it played out, and what you do to adjust each turn. A micro-game we follow within your game.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what happened during turn one. The final image is what it looked like just before I ended the turn after 8 rounds of combat. I did 3 major airfield strikes and destroyed every Soviet aircraft unit within range but the bad news is now ALL my bombers are tired so, since there is going to be no enemy fighters airborne over the battlefield I'm going to set all my fighters on INT at a single-dot setting just to harrase the Soviets that move. I lost 21 friendly aircraft and destroyed 4250 Soviet aircraft, approximately. I lost 1458 HRS's this turn ( I'm building only 428 per turn, and only 2.6K HRS's on hand ). I destroyed a BUNCH of Soviet units but there's more to go yet. I've left some places where the remnants can possibly escape to the east but I hope not many.

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[larryfulkerson]

Here's where everything is at the beginning of T2 before I have moved anybody. I've annotated on the map the proposed axis of my T2 attacks. I'm trying to trap as many Soviet units before they can escape across the next nearest river to the east. Now that most of the Soviet aircraft are eliminated I'm going to concentrate on dropping enemy bridges to attempt to stiffle the flow of Soviet troops and equipment into the front lines. I'd like to get an accumulation of at least 50% for each bridge strike. That will cut down on the number of bridges attacked but will tend to raise the number of bridges successfully dropped. That's the theory.

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[Graymane]

Glad you are doing these!

I’ve tried a few times to keep corps together, just too much work on a turn by turn basis.

I’m surprised you are using AGN armor to clean up the peninsula nw of riga. I use them to get over the rivers asap and on to pskov

I tend to use a wide pincer for Minsk meeting about 1/2 way between to Smolensk. Basically send the AGC 2nd PzGr via Slutsk then north and 3rd PzGr north of Minsk.

[larryfulkerson]

Larry, would you consider showing a "nested or embedded AAR" most turns within your big story AAR? Showing 1) a specific objective you are aiming for - say Riga in this case, 2) what axis of advance you see the tasked formation(s) approaching Riga, like Corps 1 with support of 18 Army and OKH units, and, 3) each turn an overview of how you'd like the turn to go and then it's AAR.

I could be as simple as;
1) 22.6.41 mission - advance on Riga
2) Divisions 1st, 11th, 21st spanning the Taurage-Siauliai-Jelgava road securing the adjacent rail line.
3) by turn details

Riga advance turn 3 - I'm bringing in 26th Korp's 667 Pionier regiment to assist in assaulting Jelgava because of an entrenched NKVD division and will rest 21st Div.
(local screenshot)
AAR - I needed hex 95,50 but didn't get to advance into it. used all three division HQs on tactical art support and KG53 & 54 in direct support.

Riga advance turn 4 - hex 95, 50 still unoccupied and the Riga port looks empty, will try to assault Riga with the 11th Div and 667 Pionier from the port side...etc, etc
(local screenshot)
AAR - took 97,147 Riga port as planned, probably didn't need to dig in the front regiment of 1st on the main road south of Riga. Not expecting the two remaining city hexes to be reinforced, 21st needs to come up to the front next turn for the last push into the city.

New mission
1) 17.08.41 mission - advance on Bryansk
2) 24th PZK; 3PZ, 4PZ, 10M, 1Kav on Zhlobin-Surazh/Klintsy axis

Bryansk advance - turn 19, Zhlobin - 3PZ will be in vanguard headed for seemingly abandoned Sozh bridge/town crossing due east, Soviet troops north of Gomel to be engaged and other three divisions race to bridge crossing.
(local screenshot)
AAR 3PZ and 10M entered town 137,192 and crossed Sohz unopposed at bridge, 1Kav dug in engaged with rifle division north of Gomel waiting for 2A infantry to relieve them, held two 4PZ regiments west of the 137,192 town in case (and because they are red health - rail line only just east of Osipovichi).

It would be very helpful to see the series of choices you make for a few pieces in the bigger picture; what you decide is important to take, how you advance those pieces tasked with the mission, how it played out, and what you do to adjust each turn. A micro-game we follow within your game.

I LOVE that idea. I'll do it. It would be more like you're watching over my shoulder and more funner. Count on it.

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[larryfulkerson]

Glad you are doing these!

I’ve tried a few times to keep corps together, just too much work on a turn by turn basis.
I agree. But I DO try to keep them together. A division that has all it's assets at hand is a fighting division and can span rivers, perform breakthroughs, defend when needed, etc. A division that has to scour the landscape to find the appropriate unit to employ is working at a disadvantage. That's the theory.

I’m surprised you are using AGN armor to clean up the peninsula nw of riga. I use them to get over the rivers asap and on to pskov
You are correct. My bad. I shall make amends forth with. I'd rather they break trail toward Leningrad come to think of it. After they help take down Riga of course.

I tend to use a wide pincer for Minsk meeting about 1/2 way between to Smolensk. Basically send the AGC 2nd PzGr via Slutsk then north and 3rd PzGr north of Minsk.
You're worth your weight in gold. I'll see what I can do to execute that.

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[larryfulkerson]

Here we are to the far SW of Minsk still doing mop up from the remnants from T1's assault. You can tell that I'm using a lot of Panzer units from noting the mass of black units in the image. I'm in the process of replacing all the Panzer units with leg Infantry so that the Panzer units can zoom on ahead. I'd like to sack Minsk by T5 if possible and I'd like the Panzers in the point of the spearhead. Traditionally, this is the part of the game where there are sometimes highly traveled routes so that almost every unit travels slower than if they were on a deserted dirt trail by themselves.

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[larryfulkerson]

The rail destruction chance is 0% for the first couple of turns and I've been careful to convert all the rail I could each turn I've been fortunate to have repaired the rail almost all the way to Riga. I've got 3 RR repair units working this route. Other RR engineers are busy on other routes. As I recall there are three major routes so far and the RR engineers have been distributed among them. At least three RR engineer units for each route. I'll show the routes as I publish my way further south.

I've got a couple of divisions clearing out the west coast, the 291st and 61st Inf Divs. They have the support of the Axis navy just offshore within range consisting of 5 CA's, 1 BC, and 3 DD's. The SCTF has been making it's presence felt each combat rount.

To the SE of Liepaja, [ the port city being contested on the west coast ] [ there's a port but the bridge there is dropped into the river so I'll have to fix that ] there's a small TF that's charged with the destruction of a small Soviet unit ( 3-3 ) which has two light Security Divisions.

The 1st Armoured Division is strung out along the road leading to Riga except for the Pionier unit that just now repaired the bridge at Kaunas further to the south.

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[larryfulkerson]

In the area just north of the Marshes I'm running into a lot more Soviet resistance. I need to move a small Soviet tank unit before I can advance my RR engineers further east. Envision all the Axis units moving simultaneously to the east as fast as they can go except for those areas of mop up ongoing still. I'm hopeing that I can clear this entire area this turn or next. I'm on combat round two so a little progress has been made already but there's a lot more to do yet. I'm trying to blast through this network of roads and rails to get to the next major river to the east, the Dneper I believe. It's important that I capture at least one river crossing in order to be able to continue to the east rather than just pile up on the west side riverbank and shoot arty back and forth for several turns.

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[larryfulkerson]

This is the area just below the Marshes and you can see from the aircraft losses panel that the Soviets brought all their spare aircraft forward within range of my air force so I just had to do 10 airfield strikes and got 600 Soviet losses with only a single loss. There are more airfield strikes to do yet later on this turn because I'm attempting to clear the map of Soviet aircraft, all of them. So the bridge dropping missions will have to wait for a later turn. That first series of airfield strikes has rendered about 1 / 3 of my bombers to turn yellow and therefore are placed on rest status. I'm playing by the red green yellow rules. I'm trying to run a lot of my Panzer units down south because there's bou cou clear terrain down here.

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[larryfulkerson]

Here's what it looks like down south right now. I have more movement scheduled for a lot of these units so the front lines are going to change a little bit. The Hungarians and Romaians aren't active yet and already the Soviets have been pulling units out of Bessarabia blowing bridges behind them. I'm going to have a boatload of bridges to fix before the supply can flow efficiently. I would like to have cleared out the mountains by the end of T5 or so. Most of the Axis units in this image are moving to the southeast bypassing some Soviet units and surrounding others. The Soviet units are spread out in places and clumped up in others. My theater recon level is 35% which isn't quite high enough for me to see very far into the Soviet backfield. Often I'm moving my recon unit and run into something that appears in an adjacent hex all of a sudden. Even aircraft at an airfield. It's a way of making the game even more funner.

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[Graymane]

Maybe what I do is too gamey? I notice you are reducing your pockets with full divisions? I break my divs down to 3 for pocket reductions with maybe 1 full div as the assault group. HQ for arty. I even break down engineers, MP and Sec units if possible. I will usually have 3xinf regt and 3xeng/MP/Sec for each single pocket.

For pockets I think have a change of surviving the turn, I'll do 6 line regiments per pocket instead.

Each additional hex of a pocket only requires 2 additional counters so I use that to calculate how many I need in pre-turn planning. While that is going on, I use all the corps/army counters that are loaded with RR repair in a line near the pocket repairing railroads. Yes, I would like to use their arty, but the supply lines are more important, IMO, early on.

[golden delicious]

Maybe what I do is too gamey? I notice you are reducing your pockets with full divisions? I break my divs down to 3 for pocket reductions with maybe 1 full div as the assault group. HQ for arty. I even break down engineers, MP and Sec units if possible. I will usually have 3xinf regt and 3xeng/MP/Sec for each single pocket.

I don't think it's gamey at all to break down the divisions. Otherwise the Axis player will never have enough pieces. For the other units, I suppose breaking them down to convert hexes is no problem really. A broken down security regiment will probably be no good for pockets as it will just be pushed out of the way when the defender tries to retreat.

While that is going on, I use all the corps/army counters that are loaded with RR repair in a line near the pocket repairing railroads. Yes, I would like to use their arty, but the supply lines are more important, IMO, early on.

I don't know what this deal is with RR repair in the HQs- is this from Larry's mod? It would seem to make the Axis logistical situation far too easy.

[larryfulkerson]

Maybe what I do is too gamey? I notice you are reducing your pockets with full divisions? I break my divs down to 3 for pocket reductions with maybe 1 full div as the assault group. HQ for arty. I even break down engineers, MP and Sec units if possible. I will usually have 3xinf regt and 3xeng/MP/Sec for each single pocket.

I don't think it's gamey at all to break down the divisions. Otherwise the Axis player will never have enough pieces. For the other units, I suppose breaking them down to convert hexes is no problem really. A broken down security regiment will probably be no good for pockets as it will just be pushed out of the way when the defender tries to retreat.

While that is going on, I use all the corps/army counters that are loaded with RR repair in a line near the pocket repairing railroads. Yes, I would like to use their arty, but the supply lines are more important, IMO, early on.

I don't know what this deal is with RR repair in the HQs- is this from Larry's mod? It would seem to make the Axis logistical situation far too easy.

It does make the Axis supply situation 100% better so it IS ahistorical, a what-if, but seems to make the game more funner to play. There are only about 18 Axis Corp HQ units that have additional RR engineers but they DO make rail repair go a lot faster and the repaired rails can almost keep up with the spearheads as it is now. And yes, it DOES make a difference. And about breaking down the units to make more units to convert hexes, etc.: during the early game turns the Axis side seems to have enough free units to do all the converting of hexes and do mop up and so on but after about turn 10 or so the character of the game changes and the breakdown of the divisional units becomes necessary to have enough warm bodies to form a solid front line without gaps.

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[Cpl GAC]

This is interesting; https://www.hgwdavie.com/blog/2018/3/9/ ... r-19411945

The article is a REALLY deep dive on the Russo-German rail line topic, saying it was managing the flow issue, not a physical lines issue;

Apparently, the front wasn't sending empty cars back fast enough - violating American military railroad expert Herman Haupt's 2 rules; the military should never interfere with the efficient running of the railroad and that rolling stock should be emptied and returned promptly to enable their re-use as transport.

"By the conclusion of the Smolensk battle in early August, it is clear that the supply situation was under strain, and despite over a month’s pause in operations, there were insufficient supplies to carry the units forward to Moscow. The underlying problem was clearly identified by General Halder on 3 August 1941 as being the Eisenbahntruppen conflict of interest, between building low-capacity lines quickly behind the advancing armies or building high-capacity lines capable of supporting Generalquartiermeister Wagner in his objective of building up a Supply District behind each Heerengruppe. The Eisenbahnpioniere had been rapidly changing the gauge and undertaking basic repairs of bridges but were not repairing signaling or telephone communications or restoring the engine depots because they were focused on keeping within seven days of the advancing armies. These tasks were being left to the FED and the HBD, who did not possess sufficient equipment to build this infrastructure nor an organizational structure to manage the work. In the operational files of Heerengruppe Mitte, there are three maps showing the progress of the re-gauging of the main double-track line from Brest: On 3 July 1941, it ran to Baranocwicze with an unloading point there, and it was drivable on Union gauge with a further unloading point at Minsk. By 31 July 1941, unloading was happening at Orscha, with a second Union gauge track from the border through Lida as far as an unloading point at Polozk, while on 28 August a Standard gauge track was unloading at Smolensk with the second Union line from Lida unloading at Vitebsk.61 General des Eisenbahnpioniere Otto Willi reported on 8 August 1941 that 16,148 km of track had its gauge converted, of which 4,414 km was in the Heerengruppe Mitte area. With the distance from Terespol on the Polish border to Moscow being 1,070 km, there was sufficient Standard gauge track converted to support the advance using German railway stock."

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what happened in turn two. I'm using the annotated begining image and the end of turn view as the second image to make this movie just to see if I stuck to the proposed axises and to see how far off I got. The second image also has the air losses panel in the upper left and shows the fog-of-war value for Soviet losses. I probably got only about half of that. And at the end of all the airfield strikes everybody is tired except for about a dozen fighters. And I'm going to leave them on AS just in case I missed some Soviet fighters somewhere.

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[Graymane]

Maybe what I do is too gamey? I notice you are reducing your pockets with full divisions? I break my divs down to 3 for pocket reductions with maybe 1 full div as the assault group. HQ for arty. I even break down engineers, MP and Sec units if possible. I will usually have 3xinf regt and 3xeng/MP/Sec for each single pocket.

I don't think it's gamey at all to break down the divisions. Otherwise the Axis player will never have enough pieces. For the other units, I suppose breaking them down to convert hexes is no problem really. A broken down security regiment will probably be no good for pockets as it will just be pushed out of the way when the defender tries to retreat.

While that is going on, I use all the corps/army counters that are loaded with RR repair in a line near the pocket repairing railroads. Yes, I would like to use their arty, but the supply lines are more important, IMO, early on.

I don't know what this deal is with RR repair in the HQs- is this from Larry's mod? It would seem to make the Axis logistical situation far too easy.

Basically, AG, Armies, and Corps (but not Pz Corps) have 99 RR units in each one. We also have the regular RR construction you are used to. Now, I'm not sure how all the automated repair really works underneath, I just line up all those HQ in a conga line and repair manually. I don't know if you still get auto repair on top of that? I'm not paying that much attention. I think RR in this scenario also breaks a lot more earlier for germans, seems from turn 2 or 3 on it is really high. Yes, it is Larry's latest D21.

You can't however break down Pz Recon any longer, so I'm a bit sad. I did that all the time to use them as Companies to scout ahead on 3 different avenues.

[larryfulkerson]

This is what it looks like early in T3 before I have moved anybody. I have annotated the proposed axises of advance for the different task forces. I have two divisions to clear out the west coast ports and two security divisions to clear out the peninsula. Most of the Axis units are in a footrace with the Soviets to arrive at the blue line before they do. I need to capture as many crossings as I can as quickly as I can to be able to continue the push to Pskov and eventually the port of Leningrad. I'm going to use my Panzers to break trail for the various advances going on all over the map. I'm trying to stay close to the roads and rails for the most part and let the little support units to convert the bypassed hexes. I have a Panzer unit pushing through the marshes because it has some engineers that can repair bridges. Starting in T3 the Axis rail destruction chance is now 25% so I'll have some rail to have to repair. There are only four bridges I need to fix before I can use them but for the most part the extent of Soviet resistance I characterize as "light". Supply levels are in the mid-20's at the tip of the spear. I have lost 1.7K HRS's, 30.1K HRS's assigned, and 2.7K HRS's on hand.

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