German Supermen

[MButtsworth]

German Supermen.
After achieving no ability to inflict losses on the German army during the blizzards of 40/41 I am now confronted by Axis supermen at the start of 1942 summer. At a loss of 20,041 men and 10 tanks the Germans inflicted 168,649 losses upon the Russians and 987 tanks. In the previous turn, the start of their summer attacks, for a loss of 8,298 men they inflicted 102,477 losses upon the Russians and destroyed 459 tanks.
These were not destroyed by blitzkrieg encirclements, there was no mass destruction of confused encircled troops. Just mass frontal attacks upon entrenched lines of Russian troops causing repeated routs and a few retreats. When continued like this the Russian army will be destroyed before the Panzers are even unleashed.
8 to 1 and 10 to 1 losses of men, 98 to 1, and 45 to 1 in tanks in frontal attacks are impossible to fight against.
Surely attacks upon entrenched lines should inflict greater losses upon the attacker than the defender or at least equal crippling losses upon both sides which was the whole reason blitzkrieg was invented to stop world war one style mass attacks on dug in front lines being undertaken.
Emails of turns sent.

[Stamb]

Are you using supply priority 4? If not - you should.
But panzers seems to be super strong now. I agree with it.

[Joel Billings]

Yes, you will have some tough fighting ahead of you. You didn't put the hurt on the Germans in the winter (I'm not saying it is necessarily easy to do, just looking at where you are at now). Both sides are stronger in men than historically at this time. Unfortunately, your forces are short of guards units and at their worst morale of the war. Germans look very healthy, but they may have logistics issues as they move forward. The morale situation will improve in the summer as NMs shift in your favor, but you should hope for some more mud before than. Roger (loki) has been saying for a long time that 1942 is the real opportunity for a German win if they come out of the first winter strong. The game is on. Look at Kharkov and/or the early Case Blue battles to see Soviet forces taken down during this time period. If you could easily stop the Germans at this time of the war it wouldn't be much of a game, would it?

As an aside, when I first played the SPI wargame War in the East with a team of players on both sides (in 1975), our Soviet side stuffed the Germans in 1942. We had walls of fortified zones and Soviet units and the Germans couldn't make much progress. The Germans surrendered in mid-42. Months later after that game was over, I discovered that there had been errata put out by SPI re a rule that shut down on-map Soviet production in 1941 once a certain number of cities had been captured, IIRC. That would have totally changed our game, as we wouldn't have been able to build the Soviet army we put together by 1942. Unfortunately for our game, none of us knew about this post-release change until it was too late. Even so, the WitE boardgame was a great game.

[DarkHorse2]

German Supermen?

I want in on that action. How do I get some of those?

[Stamb]

you have supermen
German SS units. Attach RFSS brigades and it will be an unstoppable machine that barely takes any losses.

[gw15]

Yes, as a Russian player I NEVER attack SS units. Way too strong for reality.

[AlbertN]

I've attacked them and with success.
SS means 'stronger' not unwinnable.

But I -rarely- attacked them as in general there are more palatable targets -and- certainly they're beefer than other units.

In general I feel quite the opposite, Germans are less and have 'fewer' units. Which exhaust very quickly in attack and in '43 they get exhausted also in defence quickly, when attacked vigorously.

[DarkHorse2]

you have supermen
German SS units. Attach RFSS brigades and it will be an unstoppable machine that barely takes any losses.

They really do take losses, suffer from fatigue, lack of supply, lack of ammo, just like the rest of the units.

Are they good? Oh yes. But you have to use them appropriately and not burn them out.

Through 1941, the Germans only have the following SS elite units:

* 3 Motorized Divs
* 2 RFSS brigades
* 1 LSSAH brigade

the equivalent of roughly 4 divisions.

There are a couple more SS units, but not of the same quality and hardly any different than their Wehrmacht counterparts.

One thing I have noticed is that they seem to get priority when it comes down to replacements. They do recover losses pretty fast. But historically, SS elite replacements were always placed at higher priority, with them having a very generous TOE, and receiving the best in terms of quality of troops and equipment.

So yes, they take on replacement relatively fast.

However, there are only 4 divisions across the entire vast Eastern Front - hardly enough for their presence to be noticeable - other than the myths of their exploits.

But, perhaps it is useful to be aware of how much (unjustified) fear these couple of units invoke in the Soviet player. Now I know to run these units around before the Soviet line, and it would collapse before me.

[jasonbroomer]

SS formations took heavy casualties compared to heer units, I presume as a consequence of their arrogance and ideology, though this might have been something that happened more in the late war rather than early war.

[exalted]

If anyone is complaining about SS units of which there are at most 4 divisions worth, loose half their CV on each attack and usually a third of it by simply moving.

Then they should look at their own CV 70+ guard inf corps...as a mostly axis player I'd rather have guard inf corps

[Zebtucker12]

SS formations took heavy casualties compared to heer units, I presume as a consequence of their arrogance and ideology, though this might have been something that happened more in the late war rather than early war.

SS took the same losses as the wermacht elite formations lije grossdeutchland.

[loki100]

If anyone is complaining about SS units of which there are at most 4 divisions worth, loose half their CV on each attack and usually a third of it by simply moving.

Then they should look at their own CV 70+ guard inf corps...as a mostly axis player I'd rather have guard inf corps

which is why its good advice to play both sides, the gds Rifle Corps can get > 100cv but lose it fast in sustained actions