Ten Pearls of Wisdom for Soviet Players

[ToxicThug11]

Excellent guide. It's interesting how each player has different strategies and tactics. There's many things in this guide I personally might avoid.

[Stamb]

great guide
i copied a lot of info from it to my personal notes

[Veterin]

Excellent guide. It's interesting how each player has different strategies and tactics. There's many things in this guide I personally might avoid.

Curious to know what those would be. Always trying to learn something new on this game!

[ToxicThug11]

Excellent guide. It's interesting how each player has different strategies and tactics. There's many things in this guide I personally might avoid.

Curious to know what those would be. Always trying to learn something new on this game!

For example. I don't like to forward defend Vitebsk (against experienced players). But, as with everything, "it depends".

A good player will make his own decisions after carefully analyzing his army strengths and weaknesses, and also put himself in the enemies shoes, thinking about their fuel costs, driving through Soviet ZOC and how fatigue / CPP loss will affect them. Enemies are unlikely to lunge huge distances since their CV drops so drastically, so you can safely create "strongpoints" in some areas and cede ground in other areas. Often, in my Soviet games, I find myself having vast open spaces without divisions since I know if the Germans exploit it too much they will be very vulnerable to counterattacks.

Urban, rough, swamp. All force multipliers. Putting an NKVD detachment / Infantry Brigade / Airborne in this terrain exerts ZOC which repays far beyond the units value. If the enemy panzer division attacks you and routs you, good, they wasted CPP and fatigued themselves and cant do much next turn. You can set up highly effective checkerboard defenses with very small units due to the way CPP works. Even if they break through, you can have a bunch of brigades / NKVD behind the lines exerting ZOC and ensuring encirclements never get serious.

I find success in thinking ahead and imagining what impact each move will make not only on my enemy but also on my own divisions. Keeping fatigue low, avoiding rough terrain with AFVs to avoid attrition, all adds up.

I'd say ultimately what sets an experienced Soviet player apart from an inexperienced Soviet player is his aggressiveness early on.