Wargammer of the Year Attempt #1

[larryfulkerson]

Ninty three battles during my turn. I'm getting all my oats sown before the
mud season hits. I want to gain what ground I can before it becomes much
harder.

[MikeJ19]

Larry,

I have seen weeks in my games without 93 battles. Wow.

I have no idea how anyone can track all those air units. Half the airplanes have names that I've never heard off...

Keep sowing oats...

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: MikeJ19
Larry,

I have seen weeks in my games without 93 battles. Wow.

I have no idea how anyone can track all those air units. Half the airplanes have names that I've never heard off...

Keep sowing oats...

Hey there Mike man. Um....so I don't have them memorized or anything. I try to distinguish the different aircraft types by their range. I set a different range for each aircraft type for each unit and it becomes easier to tell the bombers from the fighters. I have trimmed the range of the bombers to 50 hexes instead of 83 to restrict them to the areas my fighters can reach. I usually park the fighters as far forward as they can go and the bombers are a little further toward the rear. We've had a rash of Soviet airfield strikes, about three per turn, and the Soviets always lose more than I do. I've learned to park a fighter where the bombers are parked for a CAP for that field. Elmer especially likes to strike Stukas. I've been saving the AA units for the most forward airfields. I'm debating with myself whether or not to set some of the fighters on INT since there's so many on hand and I've lost so few so far. I can use the INT services and I've got plenty on hand, I can't see the downside.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T28 front lines before I have moved anybody.

[larryfulkerson]

I did a save game and zipped up the file and attached it here below so that those of you that want to check out the dialogs and reports and move some units around maybe. This is turn 28.

[larryfulkerson]

I have pushed further south in the Crimea and the Soviets are moving north
from the port to contest the Axis units. I've got bou cou arty and my units
are fairly rested and progress is being made.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's Kiev currently and you can see that I'm driving south on the east side
of the river and I'm still pushing at the Kiev crossing and the supply levels
are great and things seem to be okie dokie right now.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T29 front lines before I have moved anybody. Note the progress in the south.

[larryfulkerson]

I've found it possible to drive around the Soviet units and cut them off
from their supply lines in order to give my troops an advantage if I can.
The Soviets are probably going to break my LOC somewhere and I'll have to
do it all over again. But if it works then it'll maybe break up the logjam
in the progress of the advance. There's only a couple of turns until the
mud season when progress will likely halt.

[larryfulkerson]

I'm getting ambushed in slow motion. A couple of turns ago there weren't
very many Soviet units in this AO and the people I had available were
enough for a light screen but now a couple of turns later there's Soviet
units coming out of the woodwork. Coming from multiple avenues, they are
rushing toward my lines like there's no tomorrow. I'm not sure I have the
numbers I need here and that the breakthrough the Soviets made is probably
going to get worse real quick. D'oh.

[larryfulkerson]

This is the T30 front lines before I have moved anybody and you can see that I have several hot spots that need attention and at least one of them is going to be a rock and a hard place. And this right before the mud season too. I'm not sure what's going to happen but I'm going to try to sort it all out and salvage what I can of the positions and the troops.

[larryfulkerson]

The front lines has advanced faster than the rails have and I can't find a
suitable place to spot the RR arty with a short range. There's one RR arty
unit that has a range of 7 and he's busy supporting but this arty unit can't
reach anything important. I'll have to move him to the Kiev area where the
rails are at the front lines currently. As soon as I can I want to use the
RR arty on Sevastopol to help speed up the take-down. I'd like to be able
to use the Bulgarians for all the good they are to the game.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the RR arty with a range of 7 and so far I'm able to keep it busy and
the RR engineers are there to extend the rails, hopefully enough to keep the
arty tubes in range. I've been giving him direct fire missions to do three-dot
attacks on the Soviet HQ units and their arty pieces, whatever is in range and
is important. I need more of these RR arty units but this is the only one that
has the range needed to reach the Soviet units.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the supply situation just to the NE of Kiev currently. It's still
adequate for operations but just barely at the fringes. But progress is
being made and the forcast is for more progress as time passes. Wait, the
winter mud season is about to start and that will but a damper on progress.
D'oh. And then the supply net will collapse and I'll have to adopt a
no-events policy for a couple of weeks, maybe more. I'm thinking that the
mud season is going to run from T32 until approx. T42 and that during that
time period the progress will be little or none and I'll need to start getting
ready for the Soviet Winter Offensive (SWO). I've been observing the
red green yellow house rule so my units are in relatively good shape but
I need to start looking for ways to put up a better defense by giving way
if necessary to get into better defensive terrain, a better defensive
configuration and swap out formations to get the Panzers to act as a
reserve.

[larryfulkerson]

There were several breakthroughs in this area toward the middle and I think
I may have successfully contained all the berserkers and now I just need to
push them back to the east to restore the front lines to their original state.

[larryfulkerson]

On the east side of the river near Kiev is the crunching of the two front
lines meeting in the middle. I'm hoping to be able to catch all the Soviet
units before they get away, kill them, and them head east with everybody.

[larryfulkerson]

This is what the Crimea looks like now. I'm calling it the Crimea but I have
no idea if that's where they are. Anyway, the Rumanians are gettikng a lot
of good help from the 11th Army formations and progress is being made. The
Kerch Straits are bottled up so far. Things are going well here.

EDIT: Yeah, I just noticed that Rumanian unit stacked upon another by the
Kerch Straits. I'll fix that.

[larryfulkerson]

There's a spot to the WSW from Moscow where the Soviet units are sparse and
I think mayhe can get some units on the east side of them to surround them
to help the take down a lot. Also, there's some mop up going on south of
there and those units will eventually be free to move into the void and take
up places on the front lines to move east with everybody else.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T31 front lines before I have moved anybody. Note there's one
more Soviet breakthrough, a new one, this turn as well.

[larryfulkerson]

This is the northern front lines as they are currently and I haven't moved
anybody yet so there's possibilities in front of us here. I'm still pushing
in the middle, that's why the line is so broken in that area, and I'm hoping
to be able to use the RR arty to help the push because it's going to take
all the arty I have to make it go and keep going.