41 Grand Campaign Me(sov) vs ComradeP (axis)

[Encircled]

Quick question if I may!

Is the decision to apply the air base attacks as a house rule because of the current abysmal performance of the Luftwaffe after Turn 1, and that its clearly a massive soviet benefit to be having 1:1 air ratio losses in 1941?

[notenome]

To be honest I don't think the Luftwaffe's perfomance is abysmal offensively. If you turn on a message level of 7 you'll notice that for every plane destroyed you'll damage 3 to 5 times as many, so an airbase attack that destroys 10 planes may very well damage 50 more. If you combine that with the frequent airbase overruns that german players achieve during 41, you can easily destroy a 1000 planes in a turn. The problem is more one of air superiority, soviet planes can come in and bomb Luftwaffe aircraft while the BF pilots are blinded by the sun. Both me and P decided that this was crazy so we established a house rule where I couldn't bomb him as realistically a soviet bombing run in 41 should incur tremendous losses to Red Airforce, which ain't happening at the momment.

[Encircled]

Cheers

Makes sense

Can you still bomb his units if they are out of defensive air cover range?

[notenome]

Here's the situation roughly at the beginning of Turn 8. Mega pic to save time as I'm awfully tired.

The Red Army outnumbers the Wehrmacht by 1.1 million men. Only two soviet formations were destroyed last turn, and one of them was due to disbandment. It is clear von P's primary goal here is the preservation of the Wehrmacht, he is playing 41 with 42 and 43 in mind, persay. I disagree with this strategy, but we'll just have to wait and see.

Oddly enough we are in danger of paying for our sucesses. Stopping the drive on Leningrad cold has resulted in the shifting of von P's axis of attack towards the Center, and I will have to pull the lines back or risk the encirclement of 2 armies. In the south as well von P continues to drive ever eastward, and though southern front is paying a heavy price, his logistics must be awful and for what gain? The Dnepr has not been crossed and its turn 8, Kiev has become an absolute fortress. Even a bridgehead this far south would be of limted strategic gain as logistics would almost certaintly limit exploitation. Unless of course von P uses HQ buildup, in which case he could do a minor rampage in the south. Still, this is where I want him, ever more overstretched in this narrow corridor.

The biggest strategic threat is now in the center, and we've begun digging a second line. As long as we can avoid a major encirclement (and with two panzer armies, this is now a real threat. The danger of an immediate dash to Moscow has been averted for the momment, but I'm considering pulling troops from the north and sending them to Smolensk.

Bryansk front was activated this turn, and much to my chagrin I found it costs 50 (!!!) APs to reassign an army. I'm beginning to regret attaching so many armies to western, southwestern and southern fronts. I was given 200 APs this turn, and I loathe the thought of burning them on army reassignments.

[jjdenver]

Your strategic assessment makes sense notenome. The switch mid-summer is going to cause a delay in the German tempo, and playing this conservatively overall is not going to wound the Soviet bear heavily enough. Unless something drastic happens in the next 10 turns it looks like a long war for Germany.

[randallw]

There are times when the Soviet player doesn't have enough APs.  It'll happen on a lot of turns.
 
Any good-weather turn in 1941 where the Axis player is not attacking/surrounding is good for the Soviet player.

[Flaviusx]

Don't reattach full armies if you can avoid it. Rather, take an empty army HQ (you should have plenty by now) attach those to Bryansk Front, and reattach combat units to those armies. This is why you want to keep a few empty army HQ in the rear: they can hook up with new fronts as they activate.

If the new armies have bad leaders (admin of less than 5) then reattach the combat units to STAVKA first, and then from STAVKA to the new army. (I'm assuming you have either Shaposhnikov or Zhukov in STAVKA.) Reattachments from STAVKA are free. This should mostly avoid bad admin rolls.

That will cut down your AP expense to somewhere around 20 APs, give or take.

[notenome]

Woops, had forgotten to embed the picture in the post.

jjdenver- I agree. when I play Axis after the first turns as a rule of thumb I use a 3-turn timetable for each Army Group. 1 turn to set up a pocket, 1 turn to spring the trap, 1 turn to clear the pocket/rest. I try to stagger these so that the Soviets will always be under pressure somewhere.

flav- yeah I was thinking somewhere along those lines myself. Cheaper to attach units directly.

There are realy two operational and one strategic questions this turn. 1) How far back do I pull western front since von P has made the river defence line untenable. 2) How much do I pull out of the main defensive line near Kiev and send south to shadow von P's panzers. 3) Do I weakern Leningrad's defense and shift that abundance of troops to the center?

[notenome]

So turn 8 is done and here's a report.

Much as it pains me to abandon lvl 3 forts, the smolensk landbridge was abandoned. Made no sense to let 2 1/2 armies get encircled by Hoepner, a new line has been remade in front of smolensk, and from now on things in the center tend to become much more fluid as the terrain becomes clearer. That's the thing about deep penetration, you destabilize the frontline and force a mass withdrawal. Considering the alternative to this was the almost certain encirclement of 20 odd divisions, anything less than is profit, in Soviet thinking. The goal here is simple, delay him as long as possible until the Rzhev-Vyazma- defensive line is ready. Whether that line will extend south to Bryansk or snake east towards Kaluga depends on his progress. All reinforcements from here on out go here, barring a major catastrophe in the south. The axis only have 9 more clear turns.



Speaking of the south, von P's dilly dalying with the panzers ought to come to an end soon. There's really not much space west of the Dnepr to wander about it in. This continues to puzzle me, and it seems a waste to concentrate force in such a manner only to use it for what has been tantamount to a 3 week reconainescense in force (and not the Guderian kind). Of course maybe von P's goal is simply to storm into the Donbass and the Soviet industrial heartland, but even then, those factories will be evacuated long before he gets there, it takes some serious carelessness on the Soviets side to actually loose a factory (something I have qualms with, by the way).



That said, if one looks at the map there is still one possible catastrophe awaiting the Red Army. By concentrating Hoth and Hoepner in the Center, Kleist and Guderian in the South, von P has effectively created two super panzer armies. He has enough mps and mobile units that he actually could, one turn after crossing the Dnepr, encircle all of southwestern and bryansk fronts, well over a million men by my reckoning. Its what I would do if I was him, as it honestly presents the only real chance to maul the Red Army before winter.

[notenome]

Some operational analysis:

Continuing the Red Army's longstanding tradition of inovation and experimentation regardless of the situation (sometimes dangerously and irresponsably so), I have experimented with several different defensive set-ups in front of Smolensk.



The topmost sector is a strong frontline defense. Two units in each forward stack, one unit behind to stop a breakthrough.

The second sector is a reserve defense. One unit per frontline but with 3 cavalry divisions behind in reserve mode.

The third sector is a river defense. Everyone in wooded terrain behind a river, terrain does the fighting for us.

The bottom sector is fort/carpet defense, both lines are manned in equal strength, but with stronger forts than the other sectors.

What allows me to this kind of experimentation is the checkerboard I have deployed behind my defense. Should any sector turn pear shaped, 54th Army should contain any exploitation.

Lastly in the south we can see the example what may have been my most succesful experiment, setting pickets in front of the main defense. If you look closely at the screenshots in past turns, I have always deployed cavalry or mobile divisions in front of my river defense in good (swamp/rough) terrain. This generally forces a deliberate attack by 2 or 3 divisions, which delays the attackers timetable by a turn (major river crossings are not something you want to do lightly). The pickets normally get mauled, but its a trade-off I'll happily take.



On a strategic note, I've come to realize that I made a bad mistake on my earlier turns. In my drive to restablish command and control on turns 3 and 4 I badly overloaded south, southwestern and western fronts. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the large AP costs it takes to reassign armies (if you consider what it takes to reassign a leader to a new HQ, plus the units, its not much better than just reassigning an army). This makes shifting troops around prohibitevely expensive. As such from now on a LOT more troops will remain assigned to STAVKA, and I've begun to create firebrigade armies that I should be able to quickly shift around the front.

On a side note, how the hell does ComradeP have more replies than I do??? I'm the noob here! This is my first PBEM game, I'm the one who needs the feedback!!! I should be getting daily briefs from my STAVKA liasons: BigAnorak, Flavius, Sabre et all. Let's all hop on board for the big win fellas.

[Flaviusx]

German threads almost always get more traffic than Soviet ones. I've only posted once in Pieter's topic, for whatever that is worth.

I like the experimentation and especially agree with the idea of throwing out skirmishers in front of a major river to delay crossings.

I think you've overcomitted in Southwestern Front. You've got more forces there than necessary to defend and yet can't really do much of an offensive nature due to the river barrier. I think you could easily cough up a dozen divisions from this area and send them to the center or center north.

Don't like the gaps in the line between Lake Ilmen and the Valdai hills. I'm a big believer in running a continuous line through this region and then launching cavalry raids from it and forcing the German to deploy enough forces to prevent such raids.

I would have left a line of skirmishers by Vitebsk. It is almost never a good idea to runaway and leave nothing behind. This gives up ground far too easily, make the German work for it. That way when he advances, his infantry will be separated from the panzers as they have to clean up the skirmish line and gain control of the empty area. Which creates opportunities to counterattack.

And speaking of which: you are not counterattacking anywhere near enough for my personal taste. None of our novice Soviet players are, in truth. I would have gone medieval on those bridgeheads near Mogilev, for example.

[notenome]

I'd love to counterattack but von P is just too damn conservative. Even during the first turns he would pull back after advancing to stack his units. And he deploys screening infantry divisions everywhere (which is slowly sapping his offensive capability as the front widens). The bridgeheads near Mogilev have defensive values of 32, 62 and 82. Assuming no Luftwaffe support, a 100 % predictable battle and an average offensive power of 2 per rifle division, it would take 16 rifle divisions doing a deliberate attack to push one of them back (for 1-1 odds). The weakest division has a frontage of 4 hexes, so thats a maximum of 12 rifle divisions, assuming all of them could get there and still have enough mps to do a deliberate attack, which would still be insufficient. Plus I'd compromise any chance of setting up an organized defense.

The gap between Velkie and Lake Ilmen is intentional, much like the lack of defences in the south. I do this to try and goad him to shift his axis of attack (which he has already done twice). Northern Front is by far the strongest and best prepared of all fronts, with three well dug defensive lines and plenty of awful terrain. If Comradep switches up north again it will effectively dissipate the last major strategic threat in 41, and set up a possible catastrophe come winter for the Germans.

And the rant at the end of the post was more of a joke, to be honest.

[Flaviusx]

There are places you could take a shot at here, imo. Depends on how good your CC is, I don't know what your situation is in Western Front or the leaders in place. But there's at least one stack there that could have been hit on 4 sides and quite possibly mauled if the leadership was there.

I'm always looking to smack panzer spearheads in the center. Especially if they are in open and unfortified terrain and quite obviously have moved and attacked in their prior turn. Panzers are very vulnerable after forcing a major river crossing.

[randallw]

You are bound to have overloaded Front commands early on, unless you suffer masses of division-death.  You simply have to wait for the Reserve Front to arrive, and perhaps if your opponent captures enough ground then Kharkov MD converts to a Front.  Trying to not overload the Front commands up to Oct/Nov 1941 may be a waste of APs, better used on something else.

[randallw]

Defending the area SE of Smolensk always looks like tough trouble to me; there is often not a huge pocket of isolated units for the Axis player to clean up after the 1st turn, and retreating Western front involves a few rivers before reaching the Dnepr, then there is a good bit of clear terrain east of the river, which is Panzer Fun, while Western Front is thin on armor.  The best plan, by terrain, would be to hold the river but the Soviet player just doesn't have the time and resources to do it.
 
My best recommendation is a modified checkerboard, using rivers, light woods, and the occasional swamp to defend in/behind.

[Flaviusx]

Checkerboard is the wrong way to go here. Reinforce heavily (strip SW front they've got more than they need) deploy en masse, go ape on his spearheads, and fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.

I love a good bloodbath by Smolensk. Smells like...victory.

[randallw]

Construction battalions are nice cheap assistance for digging in.

[randallw]

Those mobile divisions don't seem to be very vulnerable, being in multi-unit stacks.  Units on their own, maybe.....

[Flaviusx]

I've made such attacks work numerous times, Randallw, subject to certain conditions, which I think could be met here.

Panzers are not invincible. No, not even in stacks.

[randallw]

Does fatigue show up in the CV on the unit counters?