Grand Campaign 1941 - JC vs JP

[caliJP]

South:
Big reversal of momentum in the South! I am on the attack now, in a sector I was working hard to keep from collapse a month ago.

[caliJP]

Turn 63, August 27th 1942.

I am switching to one post per month, as right now we are just in a slow grind.

So after stopping the German onslaught as of the end of July 1942, it was time to adjust my strategy.

From a combat standpoint, since the Red Army is still mostly made up of Rifle divisions, I can’t expect to be moving west too quickly. It will be snail’s pace for now. So my strategy is and will continue to be to grind the German Army by carefully selecting spots where I can setup deliberate attacks from 3 hexes with good chances of success. Only on units in open terrain and FL1 or smaller stacks (such as 2 or 1 units) will I consider a deliberate from 2 hexes.

The other part of my strategy is building Red Army 2.0 (kind of like that name...) for a more massive offensive to start in 1943. Some key goals:
- I want to end up in the first week of January 1943 with exactly 500APs. This will enable me to start the en-masse conversion of Rifle divisions into Rifle Corps as soon as their cost goes down to 10, and trick them with some SUs such as Sappers…
- So I built myself a little spreadsheet that predicts how many APs I will have in January 1943 based on today’s date and how many APs I have as of today. Each week I update the date and AP level to keep it accurate. This shows me exactly how many surplus APs I can spend in 1942.
- Things to spend APs on for the rest of 1942:
* Build up additional rifle brigades to exactly match 1 for 2 with Rifle divisions so that I can convert everything to Corps in 1943.
* I have about 1 army worth of Tank brigades which I will turn into Tank Corps, to create one additional Tank Army with 4 Corps.
* Replace a few leaders for frontline units that need upgrade
* Build some more Sapper Regiments. My goal is 8 per Army, so that eventually I have 2 per Corps with 4 Corps per Army.
* Build some more Cavalry Corps. I tend to build two type of Rifle Armies: ones with 4 Rifle Corps, and ones with 3 Rifles Corps and 1 Cavalry Corps.
* Artillery armies: I plan to build two Armies with 8 artillery divisions each. Those will stay under STAVKA and move around where I need to attack some well-dug-in Germans.
- Things that will wait until 1943 and after all my Rifle Corps are finished:
* Fun SUs such as Heavy Tank, Separate Tanks, Flame, Rockets, … Not enough trucks right now for all of that anyway, will be for second half of 1943 at the earliest
* More artillery divisions. I haven’t decided yet if I will build more artillery armies or just sprinkle some artillery divisions into Rifle Armies or Fronts. I am leaning towards the latter though to provide local firepower.
* Motorized divisions: I have never really built those before, mostly because of lack of trucks, but I may experiment with them.

Currently I am seating on an army of 7.5M and in general my OOB is 2X the German OOB in all categories

[caliJP]

In the North I am very slowly creating a little space in front of Moscow. The Germans are very well entrenched there, slow progress..

[caliJP]

T63 Center:

Making more progress in the open terrain of the center of Russia, good grinding

[caliJP]

T63 South

Around Stalino, despite a strong German defense, I am able to make some decent progress, thanks to open terrain and the presence of many Tank and Cavalry Corps.

[jzardos]

Predict Soviets partying in Berlin by 44 or German player throws up white flag before that. Soviet army looks incredible for 1942, well done caliJP.

[morvael]

Still on 1.07.11?

[caliJP]

Morvael, yes still 1.07.11
Jzardos, i am not sure about 1944. I have played two games against the AI, and despite starting 1943 much further west than this game, i didn't make it to Berlin until early 1945. Even against the dumb AI. Although it is not bad at defending. The Germans are hard to push with a red army with low MPs. I'd be interested in seeing a good AAR with russians making it to Berlin in 1944 while starting as far east as i am. I have some ideas, but interested in learning how to do that!

[caliJP]

Turn 68, October 1st 1942

Another month has passed. In the North & Moscow area it is an very slow grind.
I just banged my head on a strong German 3-stack in FL4. It usually takes 2 turns to move one of those. First turn to reduce FL to hopefully 2 or 1, next turn to push it.

[caliJP]

T68 Center:

I am making a pretty good push towards Kursk. Progressed about 3 hexes in last month or so.
In the the Voronej region, I am building some artillery divisions which will help me crack the strongest German stacks.
They seem to take a while to fill with guns though.

[caliJP]

T68 South.

I am making some progress here too, but JC has a lot of Panzer and Mot units here, and he gets some reserve activations, so it is tough going.

[caliJP]

T68 Casualties.

Not a bad ratio in terms of men, but not a good week in terms of tanks
The good thing is my Tank Corps are raking up experience and victories, and they get refilled with tanks pretty quickly.

[caliJP]

T76, November 26th 1942

I am skipping a few turns as some mud turns have slowed things down.
Also I am taking a pause to refill my units. I found that I have been running with an Armament pool of zero for several weeks and my units are starting to have a hard time filling back up to make up for losses, due to lack of weapons I assume, since my manpower pool is growing. Also in just a few weeks I will be able to build Rifle Corps for 10 APs, and I'd like to have them well stocked up with soldiers so I can immediately go on the offense with them.
Here I will show the progress I have made since going from defense to offense at the beginning of August. So about 4 months of offensive so far.

In the North progress has been pathetic despite having quite a few Rifle Corps in this area. In need to send some artillery divisions up there to speed things up....

[caliJP]

T76 Center:

In the Center, progress has been better, I am the gates of Orel and Kursk

[caliJP]

T76 South

In the south as well, progress has been decent, thanks to a concentration of Tank and Cavalry Corps.

[caliJP]

T76 Order of battle:

My army has grown to over 8.2M. Once combined into Rifle Corps, it should a pretty mighty military machine...

But JC's Panzer force has grown back up to over 2200 since he stopped attacking so I will have to content with that during my 1943 offensive...

[caliJP]

Turn 81, January 7th, 1943.

The last few turns have been quiet as I paused my offensive to refill my units which were getting low on manpower
As planned, I arrived at the beginning of 1943 with 500 APs and started the full conversion of the Red Army to Rifle Corps.
My OOB right now is:
~8.4M men
6600 tanks
12,500 planes

As far as unit types, I have:

36 Tank Corps, 14 of them Guard, with 5800 tanks
14 Cavalry Corps, 10 of them Guard
78 Rifle Corps, 8 of them Guard
248 Rifle Divisions, 111 of them Guards
124 Rifle Brigades
-> This should make 124 new Rifle Corps, including ~56 Guards
68 Airbases

Once I have completed my conversion of Rifle Divisions to Corps, I am not sure yet what I will build next. It seems I could use more Cavalry Corps? Those should be handy to help pierce the German line with their higher MPs. Or something else?

[caliJP]

Frontline at the beginning of 1943:

[caliJP]

T93, March 25th 1943

It's been a while since I posted an update, we just went through the 1943 blizzard and snow season which was mostly about grinding the German army.

Around Moscow, I was able to gain a few hexes, but it has been slow going since JC is well entrenched there with some armored and mechanized divisions.
From Tula down to about Kharkov, progress has also been slow as I did not have any Rifle Corps in this area until quite recently.
South of Kharkov and down to the Stalino area, I made much better progress with a good concentration of Rifle Corps, Cavalry Corps, Tank Corps, and some Artillery Divisions.

[caliJP]

T93 OOB

Our OOBs have not change too much since the beginning of 1943, so reinforcements have more or less replaced losses. Except for tank numbers which have grown on both sides.

For the next 2 months of April and May, I expect mostly mud, so the OOBs will grow back. Between refilling my current units and new units I plan to build, I expect my OOB to grow by 0.5M or so to about 9M for summer 1943 campaign.

I'll posy an update again after the mud season.