GC 1941 - 821Bobo (Axis) vs PPetar (Sov)

[PPetar]

Infantry only:

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Vehicles:

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Fronts/armies:

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[PPetar]

T6

North:

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My opponent attacks again east of the Volkhov river, cutting another rail connection to Lenningrad. Only one rail line going trough Tikhvin + the one going trough the unplayable area (which might be cut by Finland eventually - i'm not sure) remains.
Supply will be a giant problem here. I manage to form some defense, and gather divisions so that i'm able to stop the advance to Tikhvin next turn, but still this looks like the death of Lenningrad. I will try to hold still, but i'm not sure that victory here is plausible.
I retreat the western part of the front - i need to shorten the line here as much as i can. On the positive note - this must be really detrimental to Axis supply and must be destroying a lot of trucks (i'm also bombing the not clear terrain on the Axis supply path in order to deny administrative movement).

Center:

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The Axis break trough in the northern section - this is fine - they needed to attack, i managed to orderly retreat to the next line. This part of the front looks solid - so Moscow is looking safe for now.
In the southern part the Axis close the pocket again, trapping a few more (good) divisions in the process. I try to reopen, but the attacks fail. I blundered here, lost a lot of men, and now this part of the front looks vulnerable with a lot of clear terrain in behind. My opponent seems to be pushing hard on this axis - more panzers are here than in the approach to Moscow. I retreat what i can and focus on new objectives - delay at Bryansk and prepare the defense of Orel.

[PPetar]

South:

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A major blunder here as well. I don't know why did i focus so much on the southern part of the front, but naively left the middle of the front so vulnerable. My opponent exploited this and made a huge breakthrough. Retreat is the only option here, this shape of the front is unsustainable for the Soviets in 1941. Good thing is i manage to retreat orderly (having good number of trucks really helped here), and i completely ZOC lock the whole breakthrough - hopefully this will worsen the Axis truck situation even further.
The southern part of the front gets pushed also, so i retreat to Crimea. Crimea will probably be just left to the Axis more or less - after Odessa i don't think i dare to try to defend Sevastopol properly.

[PPetar]

Air:

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Major blunder here (Yes, one more!). I tried to assist the bad ground situation with massive air bombings, but due to my lack of experience with air, my opponent properly defending, and me being a bit over zealous after my defeats i lose a massive amount of planes this turn (943 - of which 725 bombers). Nothing much to add here, just bad play by me.

General remarks:
I got too relaxed and managed to worsen my position significantly. I suffered defeats everywhere, big losses are expecting me over the next few turns, my army is lacking manpower and a lot of divisions are in a bad shape. Supply is really bad in some areas, army structure is not what it could be... The list goes on. I started retreating everywhere in order to get a moment to regroup and deny the Axis a finishing blow - will it work? do i have time? I do not know.


Statistics:

OOB:

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[PPetar]

Losses:

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Frontline units:

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Vehicles:

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[PPetar]

T7

Air:
Not the best air turn - mostly due to me trying to bomb two Axis infantry south of lake Ilmen hoping they are not covered by fighters - i was wrong and suffered level bomber losses here.

North:

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I finally manage to form a real line in the eastern part of the front. Hopefully this will be enough to stop the Axis advance here. If the final rail line is cut all is definitely lost - if it remains operational - there is hope.
I retreat to a shorter line in the west - i need to be careful here not to allow Axis infantry to start attacking Lenningrad too soon - so i still need to retreat slowly on this front.

Center:

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Some attacks on the Reserve Front this turn - it retreats a bit and some reinforcements are sent to Rzhev.
Western front makes two massive attacks on extended infantry regiment and division - gaining some wins - raising morale and moving towards guards status for the involved units.
Central front tries the attacks on two regiments - but is stopped by reserve activations of two motorized regiments. This weakens the troops by quite a bit - so a nice play by my opponent.
Elsewhere we retreat and hope that the weakened divisions will have time to rearm and rest before the panzers are ready to advance again. Kursk and Orel are the two major objectives here in the next couple of turns - both of them are surrounded by clear terrain.

[PPetar]

South:

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I retreat and try to make a defense that cant be exploited by panzers next turn. The panzers are currently sitting in place in their positions where they finished next turn and from here there are a lot of options for them to advance. I need them to commit somewhere in order to know which part of the front should i focus on.
Objectives here are to delay at Kharkov, Dnepropetrovks and Zaporozhye - and later at Stalno. Positive here is that the southern part of the front is concentric - this means my defense will stiffen the closer to Stalno i get. I just need to avoid encirclements.

General remarks:
I'm still retreating in order to try to remedy my blunders that happened on the last couple of turns. For now it is going ok, but what i'm not happy about is the fact that my army size is shrinking. If it continues i will be in a lot of trouble. I also feel that the degrading quality of my army is badly influencing the results of the battles that occur - losses are really bad in some of them, and also we are not hurting the Axis nearly as much as i would like to.

Statistics:

OOB:

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[PPetar]

Losses:

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Frontline units:

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Vehicles:

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[PPetar]

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I also have a savefile that was requested by my opponent after the game was finished and i will share it here if someone is interested to look at it.

endgame_save.zip

(2.11 MiB) Downloaded 11 times

If anyone has some feedback, i would really like to hear it.