The germans almost manage to cut off some 20k troops south of Kharkow but fails at the last attack. No c&c problems this turn so I manage to withdraw most of them behind the chokepoint and also do a counterattack to somewhat widen it further back.
In the north and south the germans continue to falling back a hex or two per turn.
The germans finally manage to cut off about 10k troops south of Kharkow but I finally get the chance to cleanly disengage so im not that sorry about the outcome.
In the north and south my attacks continue to pick up pace since a successful attacks usually leaves some thrashed German units that he will have to thin out his line elsewhere to replace.
Germany surrenders. Probably the correct decision after the heavy losses he had taken and also I think Italy choose to leave the war since all Italian units disappeared. Total losses ended up at about 160k germans to 115k soviets with 432k germans to 647k soviets still active.
All in all I would say the germans have to somehow grasp the initiative early and get the front mobile so that they can exploit the soviet c&c problems. If the soviets can do prepared attacks in their own tempo like I was allowed to do on many part of the front the Germans will just be slowly grinded away and after a few weeks they wont have enough left to hold the front anymore.
That said I dont think the german situation is hopeless and would like to try my hand at playing them in this scenario against someone.
Oh and finally I'm not sure if the fact that all units start at 0 instead of full entrenchment is a bug or not but it really make the opening turns a lot more interesting.
All in all I would say the germans have to somehow grasp the initiative early and get the front mobile so that they can exploit the soviet c&c problems.
Give ground as the Germans and suck those russians into unfortified positions and keep them moving west away from there big rivers. if the germans lose units early in this scenario after Turn 1 its due to there poor decisions in my opinion. The germans can easily move away from the russians so they cannot hurt them, and as added bonus suck them west into open terrain not fortified away from there rivers as the Germans get more and more reinforcments.
I have to say that I was thrashed in this game, with the German line so thin once the Russians started to make holes I had nothing to patch them up again as I also had to contend with keeping Kharkov and taking Kerch... my Panzer units were concentrated at Kharkov other wise I think I would've lost that quite quickly. I think I had one panzer Division and two infantry as reinforcements for the first 13 turns, I'm not counting the Italians reinforcement units!
Once I started bombing Kerch down to zero I didn't really notice any drop in the Russians readiness in the following two turns, perhaps Kerch had to be isolated for longer? Also moving all of my fighter units south, and actively attacking Russian fighter units made no difference to supplies reaching Kerch.
Also my strategy of attacking bridges deep in the Russian side seemed to make no difference to supplies reaching the Russians front units.
The bridge bombing became quite painfull at least for the forward units in the Kharkow salient. I choose to not emphasise it too much in the aar in ordet to not give you any ideas
It seems like bombing the Kerch harbour will bring down the soviet to about 50% supply (less away from the roads) which mean they won't start losing readiness but they won't be able to regain lost readiness from combat/movement either (but remember that they have a local supply buffer worth 40 readiness when full).
