Amoktrappen (FC, v1.04beta) / Bonners (Axis) vs Reconvet

[rominet]

Always great pleasure to read your AAR.

Be aware that your southern front (Barwenkovo, Losowaya) remains weak against a possible german counter attack.
I am very familiar to the small Kharkov scenario.

[wallas]

ORIGINAL: Reconvet


Brutal bloodshed, more for me than for him though (his casualties in these battles: 4000, mine 12'000).

you will replace 12,000 troops in 4 turns. the German will take 13 turns, so the bloodshed was his not yours.

How I see it anyways. [&o]

[James Ward]

^ In the Trappen scenario the Germans get a lot more replacements per turn than in Case Blue, at least at the beginning. It will take them ~4 turns to replace the losses through replacements. Still a good turn for the Russians.

[Reconvet]

ORIGINAL: rominet

Always great pleasure to read your AAR.

Be aware that your southern front (Barwenkovo, Losowaya) remains weak against a possible german counter attack.
I am very familiar to the small Kharkov scenario.

Thank you. [:)]

As you'll see with one of my next posts I definitely am concerned about the weakness of the southern part of the Izium salient.

This is my first ever AAR by the way, so I'm still experimenting with style, what to report and how much, what illustrations to use, which screenshots to make and process, so I'm happy if you guys have tipps about do's and dont's.

For example I have doubts if the size of my pictures is too large for the eyes, and if the number of the pictures makes loading the page a bit slow for some of the readers although I do compress them and take care to keep them under 1 MB.

At a later stage I'd like this AAR to switch into some sort of joint mode, where Bonners can comment each turn from his viewpoint.

[Reconvet]

May 16th 1942 / Turn 3 / Clear weather

German moves: Crimea

Turn 3 and my formations around Sewastopol aready show signs of malnutrition. Very few supplies arrive, readiness is suffering, ammo runs out. Battle results have to be seen in this context.

Costly air attack on my evacuation convoy:

[Reconvet]

German moves: North of Kharkov

My supply bridge gets bombed into pieces, and he tries to cut off my brave spearhead militia.

[Reconvet]

German moves: South of Kharkov

[Reconvet]

Soviet starting situation on turn 3:

My ponderings on the overall situation:
I have no clear idea what Bonners is up to outside the Crimea. There he has his obvious prestige targets Sewastopol and Kerch. But I can't read his intentions and options elsewhere as well as I wished. Without air recon at my disposal (this would be suicidal for my fighter airgroups at the moment) I'm virtually blind and can only guess that he is massing somewhere which may or may not start to force me to change strategy immediately during the next few turns.

I have to assume that Bonners is assembling a mobile strike force to start encircling or pushing back weaker parts of my front.

Trappenjagd really is an interesting scenario. Both sides have limited resources, both sides have their strong and weak front regions, so both sides are confronted with the dilemma if they want to commit reserves and reinforcements offensifely or defensively and what they are willing to sacrifice to achieve their shortterm/longterm goals.

On the organizational side a new general has arrived: Tsvetsaev with an org-level of 53 and with pretty decent skills cross the bank. He is immediately tasked with taking over 57A which has the crucial task of protecting the southern flank of my offensive 6A, so it's good to get a guy in charge there who won't draw "out of depth" penalties like Podlas did in this turn… I can't risk to have this exposed army destroyed because it's commander draws a movement penalty when tactically his divisions should run for the swamps...

[Reconvet]

Soviet offensive moves
I had to try to get the minor prestige objective at Debalzewo, which has to be in my hands on may 18th. The outcome of the attack: A very bloody defeat. Stalin won't be happy, so there go my first 2 prestige points…

Speaking of minor orders:
Stalin thinks it a swell idea to send my peasants to Amrowja with a deadline for may 22. Not exactly the direction my tanks have taken, so Stalin will steal me another 2 prestige points for handing out a real silly order.

[Reconvet]

Soviet moves: North of Kharkov

[Reconvet]

Soviet moves: South of Kharkov

[Reconvet]

Soviet moves: Crimea

Keeping Sewastopol supplied even over a few turns is impossible at the current state of the game. So I evacuate what I consider the most valuable units and set all the other formations there on disband. Might be considered gamey, but if no sailing boats get used to bring in supplies then all sailing boats are probably used by hungry soldiers trying to get to restaurants on the mainland...

If disbanding units here is considered gamey then letting Axis planes sit idly on their airfields and sink supply ships by doing so has to be considered exploiting an existing poor game mechanism too. Axis planes should have to fly, use up readiness and ammo to interdict supplies, that's not the case right now. Supply interdiction really needs a workover!

[Reconvet]

Overview of Kharkov front region after soviet moves

[Reconvet]

And to finish this turn report:

Some losses stats.

[schascha]

Your AAR is suuuperb !!

Which software do you use ?

[Josh]

+1 to the above, a nice read. What I am most curious about is your "potential problem nr 1 and nr 2"  now these could be a real problem very soon. It would crack the whole front open. 

[Reconvet]

ORIGINAL: schascha

Your AAR is suuuperb !!

Which software do you use ?

Thanks, dito to Josh. [:)]

Well, if I name products here it's simply because I like working with them, not because I make money in any way for naming them.

I'm using Snagit to take screenshots first when I get a turn in and watch the battle history. Really comfortable to take multiple screenshots without the need to save them manually or to go to the desktop between screenshots.

Then I use Photoshop Elements (v11) because it offers great options to organize and edit these screenshots. Snagit offers some of its functions too, but I just like Photoshop's options for working with layers (which allows easy merging of several pictures), for editing pictures and for saving them in a web-friendly format and data-size.

Then I use Snagit again for illustrations, it has way nicer arrows, text options and other gimmicks than Photoshop. So I use these two tools because I haven't found other software which can do by itself what these two offer me.

[Reconvet]

ORIGINAL: Josh

... What I am most curious about is your "potential problem nr 1 and nr 2"  now these could be a real problem very soon. It would crack the whole front open. 

Tearing up the southern part of the Izium salient is how I'd react as Axis player here, I agree. Question is if I can threaten Kharkov so much that he has to send his reserves and replacements there to keep me from seizing it, or if he feels safe enough to divert these assets to try and cut off the Izium salient or vital parts of it.

[Reconvet]

May 18th 1942 / Turn 4/ Clear weather

Axis moves:

[Reconvet]

Quite a surprise to see transport planes fly recon missions: