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Army Group South:

General von Rundstedt straightend his tunic. His palms were sweating.
He waited on a bench outside the Fuhrer's personal office in the Wolf' Lair.
Keitel opened the door, looked him straight in the eye and said ' The Fuhrer will see you now'.

Rundstedt entered the office. Inside the office were Jodl and Keitel.
Goebbels stood looking out of the window smoking a cigarette, while Bormann sat in the corner behind his desk staring at him, expressionless.
Goring smiled, that great shark smile, and Rundstedt knew he was in trouble. Hitler sat behind his desk in the centre of the room, his eyes smouldering with anger.

Rundstedt cleared his throat.
'Mein Fuhrer,' he began, 'I have brought you Army Group South's situation report that you req...'

He was cut off in mid sentence by Hitlers brusque tone,
' You promised me Kiev, yet you have only captured half of the city.......explain yourself!!', and he eyed Rundstedt malevolently.

'Mein Fuhrer, the Soviets have dug themselves in all along the Dnepr all the way to estuary. Fortunately we have breached the Dnepr in the far south and have expanded to the entrance to the Crimea.
We have also cut off the Soviet 215 Rifle Division, and the 16th Tank
The Dnepr will be crossed around Kiev next week, as we successfully attacked them south of Kiev and we will be able to cross.'

Goebbel's looked up. 'You made the Soviets retreat at one hex, yet after all that German blood was spilt you never advanced across the river.... Why??.
Everyone leaned a little closer and von Rundstedt started to visibly sweat.
'Well,' he stammered, 'as you are aware Mein Fuhrer, a major river in an Enemy Zone of Control costs 18 MPs for a Motorised unit and 5Mp's for a non motorised, +4 more Mps for being in another EZOC.
After the attack, the six infantry divisions had used all their MP's in the attack to shift the Bolsheviks, but......

'Go on,' said Hitler, and again everyone moved a little closer to von Rundstedt.

'But, Mein Fuhrer, I hadn't prepared properly with a unit ready in reserve to cross over after the attack.' He gulped and thought, here it comes.

Hitler exploded, ' You mean to tell me that you did'nt adequately prepare for the crossing!!!!!'
Rundstedt grimaced, 'Yes Mein Fuhrer'.

Hitler sprang up in a rage.
Everyone felt that Hitler would strike von Rundstedt, but instead he ran around in circles and fell to the floor.
He gripped the rug and started chewing on in it like a maniac, his eyes bulging.

Keitel and Jodl looked at each other. They would need to replace many more rugs for the Fuhrer before this campaign was finished.

Rundstedt left the room. He thought, no one would believe him back at Headquarters.

And here is AGS part II. Dnepr properly breached and about to close one of the two isthmus's to the Crimea

That Rundstedt - Hitler bit was funny! [:D][:D]

Just trying to put a spin on yet another dreadful mistake by me

Not really a mistake to be honest. You may have gotten a unit or two across, but if the Russians have a fair amount on the other side to counter attack with, your units that crossed would at the very least take heavy losses retreating across the river and it could also be possible that they would rout with no place to retreat to if you were not careful.

The big thing you accomplished is getting rid of the fort there. You now have a soft spot in his line.

ORIGINAL: Klydon

Not really a mistake to be honest. You may have gotten a unit or two across, but if the Russians have a fair amount on the other side to counter attack with, your units that crossed would at the very least take heavy losses retreating across the river and it could also be possible that they would rout with no place to retreat to if you were not careful.

The big thing you accomplished is getting rid of the fort there. You now have a soft spot in his line.

Thanks for the encouraging note, I'll let von Rundstedt know......it will make him feel a bit better. [8D]

Will update tonight as I'm going out now.... but great news, 18th Army is over the river into Leningrad, and AGS rampages in the Crimea and and over the Dnepr.

Army Group North

Situation Report:-

Troops are into the suburbs, and have captured the vital port of Osinovets.

Panzers being diverted to AGC. Leningrad is now indefensible. I was amazed how poorly defended it was compared to the sterling fight my opponent is putting up on the rest of the front.

He left the 'back door' to Leningrad open apparently. This is not an uncommon failure of an inexperienced PBEM Soviet player.

Now that you have captured the port in Lenningrad all his forces there will be out of supply & if you can quickly capture the remaining hexes of Leningrad you will be able to alow the Finns to attack across the no attack line.  I don't know how close your Finnish forces are to the Svir river line but he only seems to be holding it with NKVD regiments & if you attack there you could unhinge the entire Volkov Line. Also once Lenningrad finally falls consider withdrawing the panzer armee & use it to continue your offensive towards Moscow or to wherever it is you want to capture next. 
Mansten63  

I've been too slow [:(]

Army Group North

Situation Report:-

Leningrad has fallen!!. Now vital assets are being diverted to AGC, but my time is nearly up. Bad weather will be here in a couple of turns. [:(]

Army Group Centre:

Situation Report:-

AGC have hit a brick wall, and cannot make much headway. My inability to encircle early on as the Soviets just kept falling back is now so serious that that even with the fall of Leningrad, my morale is low. I have'nt even hit 2million casualties yet, so I think I'm doomed.

AGC part II, again slow progress against massive Soviet fortifications.[:(]

Army Group South

Situation Report:-

This is where I'm doing depressingly worst, and I am now regretting naming this AAR 'Crushing the Soviet Hydra', as the reverse is true.
Soviet defences are so massive that it burns all my mps very quickly, so no encirclements.
My opponent has played extremely well in timing his fallbacks while always planning lines of defence well in advance.....
I don't know what to do as the bad weather is close and I have performed so poorly that I'm close to awarding my opponent total victory and leaving the stage with my tail between my legs.

The only light for AGS ( and a very low light I might add ), is they across the Kerch straits

The most depressing screen of all, with only large encirclements at the start, I have miserably failed to inflict enough casualties on the Red Army.

Welcome to September when massive numbers of Russians show up and forts sprout like weeds all over the front. It is a big issue with the game right now imo.

Also, please turn on fort levels when you do screen shots so we can see who is dug in where, etc. [;)]

I don't claim to be an "expert" anything on this game, but a few observations from what I have also learned, etc.

First, I think you are correct in your assessment that your advance was slower than it should/could have been. Congrats; this is what newer Axis players generally do. It takes experience and work to learn what to do when, etc for good results. I have no doubt your next campaign will be better from the lessons learned in this one.

Second; I would urge you to hang in there. One of the most important lessons for the Axis is the first winter. While prep work and plans are helpful, there is nothing like going through it first hand and learn what happens. Should you resign now, you will not get that experience and will have to face it in a future game.

Third: While you have not caused a lot of Russian casualties, you have not taken much for casualties either. The winter can change that, depending on what your opponent does and how well you make it through the winter.

As far as winter itself goes, there are several other AAR's to look at for tips on what the Axis may do along with War Room threads. For this particular situation, some suggestions I would have would be to pull a "Pelton" and start digging for winter. You will want multiple lines of level 3-4 forts and fort digging doesn't work as well in bad weather. You want your lines as straight as possible, etc. The other thing is to identify some elite moral level (86+ moral) units to withdraw and winter in Germany. This should include mostly panzer/motorized units (those that are not withdrawn are preferable over those that get withdrawn), but having some infantry units there as well is helpful too. I would also look to withdraw your two German mountain divisions to refit up to full strength and then add in 3 support units to each. Pioneer and/or Stugs work the best. These will be the only two German units not blasted by the blizzard effects and can actually be beasts during the winter to help counter attack Russian spearheads. The Rumanian mountain brigades and Hungarian mountain brigade should be pulled, put on refit and rested as well. While they can't have support units attached to them, they are more than a speed bump to deal with since they are not affected by the blizzard either.

Hang in there and welcome to the school of hard knocks on the Eastern Front. The advance course (blizzard) is just around the corner. [:D]

Thanks for the pointers Klydon, good stuff.[:)]

I will soon face my first PBEM blizzard too, and blizzard advice is something you can't get enough of.

Quick question, would you recommend changing TOEs during this time? For example, support units and airbases get 50%, while panzers/mot and infantry stay at 100%?

Some like changing ToE values. I don't to be honest.

Part of the issue is "refit" doesn't really work that hot in Russia during mud and blizzard. If you want a unit brought up to strength, then I would send it back to Germany, put it on refit and let it rest a turn. Rail cap limits this a lot. Even panzer units sitting in cities don't really get much benefit except from rest in terms of getting replacements, etc.

For winter, I probably do something that many would decry as "gamey" but I set all HQ units to 0 support and funnel support units back to OKH in Germany. They suffer blizzard and moral attrition like anything else in the open blizzard and there isn't enough room in towns/cities for combat units, let alone HQ units, so this is a way I try to reduce the amount of overall attrition, especially since many support units are armaments rich units that include artillery, etc.