Tips & hints for 1943 campaign

[Morphy]

Guys, I'm about to start out 1943 campaign as Germans. I printed a report on forces of both sides and it seems Germans are much weaker - they have less troops, less airplanes, less and worse tanks...

What should I do as German commander? Do you have any hints? Any clue how to carry out the war?

I've never played 1943 campaign against a human opponent.

[EvilWeevil]

I've never played this scenario against a human before. I've had a quick game as both German & Soviets against the AI.

For the Germans, what I found was that there are areas where you can go on the offensive within the 1st 6-9 turns and put the AI on the back foot. On the first turn, you need to organise the North Part of the front, if you can reorganise the Panzer Units in this area to the area North of Smolensk, the Soviets are weaker than the bulk of their army around Kursk. Your going to need to concentrate your air groups in this area.

Depending on the agreed Rules regarding the Finns, withdraw the Units defending the rail line in the North and use as reinforcements for the attack on Leningrad.

Against a human, any offensive should be spearheaded by the SS Panze Korps and limited in '43. The offensives should be designed to slow down the Soviets while you give your defensive lines time to dig in.

One thing I found annoying was that the game starts at the time that the Italian Front is begining to shatter and the German Production centres are starting to be hit hard by the USAAF. In my game I started to change the production to give me equipment which give me tons of top notch equipment for late '43 onwards, that is loads of Tigers & Panthers, FW-190a's in the pools and plenty of Ground Attack.

One headache is trying to formulate an effective air defence of the German Industry. Tried using my normal strategy from the '41 game, but it is difficult to achieve supremacy over the USAAF which you can do in the '41 game.

[Morphy]

Thanks for the tips.

I wonder wheter it is possible to capture Moscow in 43 campaign...

[JagdFlanker]

unless the soviets retreat from the center bulge around kursk, germany can easily isolate a massive chunk of the soviet front line by simply cutting off the rail intersection just above voronezh and another east of rostov. very gamey, but the rails are very poorly done in that area of the map.

[Josans]

ORIGINAL: Morphy

Guys, I'm about to start out 1943 campaign as Germans. I printed a report on forces of both sides and it seems Germans are much weaker - they have less troops, less airplanes, less and worse tanks...

What should I do as German commander? Do you have any hints? Any clue how to carry out the war?

I've never played 1943 campaign against a human opponent.

Good scenario selection. I think the most strategic as you be aware of the other fronts!
Take Moscow? All depends of your skill or surprise of your strategy. If you play against a 1st soviet 43gamer maybe you can do. If you know your opponent play defensive, counteratting, you can get the draw or victory depending your house rules.
Very important, even erased in wir 3.1, the automatic events will working now in 3.3,. So , the 1st clear in 44 will shattered all your units in the west front...time to go to the east before[:)]
I dont know how to maked but I think maybe is interesting you take a look AAR against K62 (He winned) page 9 from forum.
And also the next threads about shattered level fronts...

I hope this helps.
Josan.

Happy New Year for all you guys, 1 year left for wir4[:D]

[Morphy]

Thanks for the tips.

Any other suggestions how to carry out 1943 campaign?

[pyguinard]

I never played against a human opponent in Camp '43. However, from my short experience against the computer I can tell that taking Moscow is going to be very very hard against a skilled human player. I would plan to take it in the summer of '44 and this is how I would try it:

First, I would feint the classical pincer manoeuver against Kursk hoping that your Russian opponent would commit (at least) some reserves in the area. Many attack against many units should help do the job since unlike the Germans, the Southern russian HQs start the scenario litterally packed with a bunch of Mechanized Corps. Elsewhere, you could also cut the supply line going to Velikye Luki but don't expect too much out of this since you will probably have your unit surrounded and eliminated.

In the mean time, I would start transfering some of my best units (ex. Gross Deutchland) towards Stalino and on the 3rd or 4th turn, I would go for Rostov. If Rostov falls, you can be sure that your opponent will commit many strong units in order to take the city back since this will make his ressource level fall at 95 (below the 100 psychological mark). Hopefully this fight will take some russian divisions away from the Center (Moscow).

In the meantime, I would start entrenching some units. in preparation for the Soviet winter offensive as soon as end of August and since I would encourage my opponent to outrun his supply lines during the winter, my main defensive line might be set as far as Kiev in the south and Vitebsk/Mogilev in the center. Since we can expect the Western Front to shatter by the end of March/beginning of April, I wouldn't hesitate to pull some strong units out of there in order to counter attack on the first clear weather turns. By the way, I found out that the 43/44 winter was not as lethal as the 41/42 for the Germans. It was half snow, half blizzard so I was often able to counter attack here and there and that caused the A.I. lots of trouble.

Some words about air supremacy:
In 1943, I found it rather easy to protect the German Industry from strategic bombing by leaving some strong FW-190A (JG 54 and JG 51) and BF-110G squadrons in the Western Front. I found that BF-110s are quite good at shooting allied bombers down but they got depleted pretty fast due to combat against US fighters; I had to rotate them in and out (until they got replaced by better FWs and Me-410s). Don't forget to also protect Ploetsi and Bucharest!! (but I forgot when the bombing started... was it when the Allieds conquered Sicily?) I was also caught pants down when new fighter units appeared in O.K.H. without me noticing it. I was wandering why my Focke-Wulves were not intercepting at all and that was the cause. On the Eastern Front, total air superiority was very hard to achieve against A.I. especially since my best fighter squadrons were flying on the western side. The La-5FN and some experienced Yak-9 squadrons proved to be quite efficient against my BF-109s and this allowed some P-39, P-40 and even Hurricanes to pass through to my bombers which were falling like flies.