Bread (Axis) vs Beethoven (SOV) Game #2: The Southern Strategy

[HardLuckYetAgain]

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

This cost Germany 400 vehicles! Also, 42 AFVs, including 23 Panzer III and 4 Panzer IVs. Routing German motorized and Panzer units is very very good to do because Germany will lose way more vehicles in a rout than in a retreat, so any time you have an opportunity to do that, try to do it if at all possible.

Germany should rarely be putting himself(The Fatherland) in a position to have this happen. German players need to rethink how they advance in WITE2. Personally I would welcome the strat you are doing here as a Soviet if I was playing Germany against you. You bring all the meat to the table so I don't have to chase it across the map hoping for a dinner.

By the way, Germany can easily play in the south too. Germany can send another FBD and set up for mass rail conversion. If you friend did that you would be in a hurt locker in the South. If the Germans also set up redundancy of those rails in the South Germany could supply units way past Stalino. Just something to think on if Germany had reconed your South and found no units.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

This cost Germany 400 vehicles! Also, 42 AFVs, including 23 Panzer III and 4 Panzer IVs. Routing German motorized and Panzer units is very very good to do because Germany will lose way more vehicles in a rout than in a retreat, so any time you have an opportunity to do that, try to do it if at all possible.

Germany should rarely be putting himself(The Fatherland) in a position to have this happen. German players need to rethink how they advance in WITE2. Personally I would welcome the strat you are doing here as a Soviet if I was playing Germany against you. You bring all the meat to the table so I don't have to chase it across the map hoping for a dinner.

By the way, Germany can easily play in the south too. Germany can send another FBD and set up for mass rail conversion. If you friend did that you would be in a hurt locker in the South. If the Germans also set up redundancy of those rails in the South Germany could supply units way past Stalino. Just something to think on if Germany had reconed your South and found no units.

The Germans can also take all the Ports in the South further strengthening their supply there. Tyronec is a very good master of doing that in his games. The South isn't a dead zone for the Germans if you know what you are doing.

[Beethoven1]

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

This cost Germany 400 vehicles! Also, 42 AFVs, including 23 Panzer III and 4 Panzer IVs. Routing German motorized and Panzer units is very very good to do because Germany will lose way more vehicles in a rout than in a retreat, so any time you have an opportunity to do that, try to do it if at all possible.

Germany should rarely be putting himself(The Fatherland) in a position to have this happen. German players need to rethink how they advance in WITE2. Personally I would welcome the strat you are doing here as a Soviet if I was playing Germany against you. You bring all the meat to the table so I don't have to chase it across the map hoping for a dinner.

By the way, Germany can easily play in the south too. Germany can send another FBD and set up for mass rail conversion. If you friend did that you would be in a hurt locker in the South. If the Germans also set up redundancy of those rails in the South Germany could supply units way past Stalino. Just something to think on if Germany had reconed your South and found no units.

The Germans can also take all the Ports in the South further strengthening their supply there. Tyronec is a very good master of doing that in his games. The South isn't a dead zone for the Germans if you know what you are doing.

FWIW, Bread said his supply is relatively good (at least considering how fast he has been advancing in the south).

When you say you would welcome this strategy, because the meat is presented, I am assuming you mean that in the north the units are available to be encircled? They are not really available in the south at least (at least not yet). If I were playing against you, probably I would do some things differently depending on what you were doing for one thing. The units are there in the north and fighting, but I think it is relatively harder to encircle them in the north due to the terrain than in the south. I am sure you would get your fair share of units, but if there is enough terrain movement penalties and combat delay penalties, that limits at least somewhat how far you can move in a single turn and therefore how many units can be encircled. There are some places where I am fighting in the north more than I would probably if I was playing an opponent that was clearly prioritizing trying to pocket units over advancing.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

ORIGINAL: Beethoven1

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

This cost Germany 400 vehicles! Also, 42 AFVs, including 23 Panzer III and 4 Panzer IVs. Routing German motorized and Panzer units is very very good to do because Germany will lose way more vehicles in a rout than in a retreat, so any time you have an opportunity to do that, try to do it if at all possible.

Germany should rarely be putting himself(The Fatherland) in a position to have this happen. German players need to rethink how they advance in WITE2. Personally I would welcome the strat you are doing here as a Soviet if I was playing Germany against you. You bring all the meat to the table so I don't have to chase it across the map hoping for a dinner.

By the way, Germany can easily play in the south too. Germany can send another FBD and set up for mass rail conversion. If you friend did that you would be in a hurt locker in the South. If the Germans also set up redundancy of those rails in the South Germany could supply units way past Stalino. Just something to think on if Germany had reconed your South and found no units.

The Germans can also take all the Ports in the South further strengthening their supply there. Tyronec is a very good master of doing that in his games. The South isn't a dead zone for the Germans if you know what you are doing.

FWIW, Bread said his supply is relatively good (at least considering how fast he has been advancing in the south).

When you say you would welcome this strategy, because the meat is presented, I am assuming you mean that in the north the units are available to be encircled? They are not really available in the south at least (at least not yet). If I were playing against you, probably I would do some things differently depending on what you were doing for one thing. The units are there in the north and fighting, but I think it is relatively harder to encircle them in the north due to the terrain than in the south. I am sure you would get your fair share of units, but if there is enough terrain movement penalties and combat delay penalties, that limits at least somewhat how far you can move in a single turn and therefore how many units can be encircled. There are some places where I am fighting in the north more than I would probably if I was playing an opponent that was clearly prioritizing trying to pocket units over advancing.

Ya, I meant encirclement. I have always loved playing in bad terrain with the Soviets. I have always done it in my games to slowly gobble up Soviet Divisions. You look to be doing well. But yeah the player you are playing dictates that strat. Good game so far and you are handling it well.

[Beethoven1]

Start of Soviet Turn 7 ---


Infantry push is beginning in the Baltics... One good bit of news here is it seems like the supply situation is somewhat working itself out. Units are getting the supply they need (with a bit extra) now, probably due to retreating a bit towards the depots. The one thing I will need to still watch out for here is Totenkopf and the other motorized division though:



Around Pskov, German infantry unsurprisingly un-isolated itself. The good news here is that this bought enough time so that there are at least level 1 forts along the Sorot/Velikaya rivers, and I still hold some of the hills in front of Velikie Luki. Very good situation in at least this sector of the front for turn 7:



There was a large German push south of Smolensk. This very nearly broke through my defense in depth, but not quite. Unfortunately, it was only infantry and motorized that attacked, so the Panzer divisions still have high CVs. In any case, I think this shows that my use of 5 lines of defense in depth in the Smolensk area was NOT excessive. That is basically what I needed to stop them from advancing further in a single turn. If you have less than that, Germany can blow right through your defenses (at least if they are willing to burn some Panzers necessary to do so):



South of that, it was just infantry marching up to the front, without enough MP to really attack there yet:



In the Sumy area, Germany busted through my weak screening forces. There were plenty of battles, against the brave NKVD boys:



And against the Soviet cavalry:



And against the Airborne:



The bad news here is that infantry is already caught up to the front. They encircled Sumy and 3 cav divisions and 1 infantry division, but looks like I could probably break the encirclement.

The cavalry that had liberated Poltava is encircled. Surprisingly, Kharkov still holds, just with some infantry advance towards it. I ended up probably evacuating the tank factory a turn or two early in Kharkov, but probably better safe than sorry. Panzers are advancing on Stalino through the cavalry:



In the far south, Germany crossed the Dnepr. Looks like now I have to retreat into Crimea. Swamps across a major river are no problem for German infantry to cross, given Soviet leadership rolls (even with a relatively good corps commander here):

[Beethoven1]

End of T7 ---

Some minor retreats in the north, but not much. Totenkopf and the other German motorized division are not showing up on recon around Tallinn any more, they may have left. If they have left, then I probably have more troops than I really need in Estonia, but I don't want to reduce my forces there until I am sure they are gone and/or until the front is narrower there.



Around Smolensk I did some bombing of the concentrated German Panzers. This mission for example destroyed 9 AFVs, and in total 84 Axis AFVs were destroyed in the Soviet air phase (mostly Panzer 35(t) and 38(t)s however). This is the most effective I have ever seen bombing be at destroying AFVs by far. I am not sure exactly why it was so much more effective, but this was bombing by IL-2s (partly) on clear terrain. Maybe it is either the clear terrain or the IL-2s, maybe the combination of both. Or maybe the Czech tanks are more vulnerable. Given those results I will try to look for other similar opportunities to bomb with IL-2s on clear terrain.



Around Smolensk I attempted to make both defense in depth and also to have high defensive CVs. It should be tough to break this defense entirely. Also I have a lot of units on reserve (highlighted in pink), basically all of which have 80-100 CPP or so. We will see how this holds up. In the worst case I think Smolensk should hold for at least another turn or two though, and hopefully the defense is too strong to be totally broken through in a single turn.



Also I noticed that one of the German motorized divisions south of Smolensk is called the "Light Afrika Motorized Division." This makes perfect sense, where else would one expect the Afrika Korps to be but in Smolensk? I didn't know that Smolensk was in Afrika, but you learn something new every day!



Retreated in the center. This was unavoidable if I wanted to have a good defense around Smolensk:



Rokossovsky and Vatutin attacked the Slovakian mobile brigade multiple times. It had only 2 CV, so it was vulnerable to counterattack. It retreated to the west (but had been advancing north from the south), which meant that I could re-attack it 2 more times:



2nd attack:



3rd attack:



Unfortunately it didn't rout though, I would have hoped it might rout after that many attacks in a row [:(] . According to Bread, after this, in the next Axis turn the Slovakian Mobile Brigade had 13/33 TOE.
[5:52 AM] Beethoven: I retreated most of the quality units from the area around Kharkov in front of the river. There are only trash units left, so Kharkov should not last more than 2 turns at most.



Rokossovsky counterattacked the 13th Panzer Division near Stalino, destroying 53 German AFVs for a loss of 133 Soviet AFVs. As I generally have been doing, the attack was preceded by bombing to soften up the Germans:



I did naval interdiction missions near Odessa. Hopefully (???) this might block supply flowing in/out from Odessa (???)



Finally, here is my Crimea defense. The best part about the Crimea divisions is if you look in the Sea of Azov, you can see two mountain divisions leaving Crimea and heading for the Rostov area. May as well go there since city forts are bugged and Sevastopol can't be defended (note this is from an earlier 1.03 patch, city forts may be quite a bit better now with the newer patch, I don't know).

[Beethoven1]

End of Turn 8 ---

I pulled back a little bit, but not too much, in Estonia. I sent a couple of divisions to the south on trains, and in general I am gradually moving more divisions from north to south. In the Pskov area, I am expecting an attack next turn probably on the hex that has 21 defensive CV. If I could, I would ideally reinforce that with one more strong division (it has 2 divisions and a fort), but the problem is if I move a unit in, that will flip ZOC and then the hex with 16=28 CV won't be able to build up to level 3 forts. However, I have a lot of units on reserve, so hopefully some reserves will activate and be able to stop the German attack.

The only real cause for any concern is the Totenkopf division, which is somewhere, and hasn't shown up on recon. It might have moved to the center, but it is possible it is lurking somewhere in the north also. But even if it is there, it is only a single division and shouldn't be able to do irreperable harm without more troops supporting it. Likewise with the other motorized division that was in Estonia, but that was just a regular motorized division.



My defense around Velikie Luki is gradually growing a bit thinner as I move more troops further south (and as forts are constructed which over time should make it harder for Germany to attack), but I still have 3 layers of depth around V.L. itself.

In the Smolensk area, I have a pretty strong defense, with 3 pretty good divisions in Smolensk itself, and 2-3 on many of the key hexes nearby, as well as having up to 5 layers of depth in places. This one swamp by what I call the "Yelnya gates" (the path of clear hexes between the swamps that goes to Yelnya) has a defensive CV of 81, even without the fort yet having been built up to level 1. This has my best infantry division (the 15 CV one with 62 morale). There are some other strong defensive hexes nearby which hopefully should be sufficient to stop a large scale breakthrough.

In the last turn, the 15 CV infantry division did a reserve activation in one battle and got a hold on one of the clear hexes along the entrance to Yelnya. Hopefully the same will happen this turn. But even if not, that hex and the other strong ones will have ZOC and should hinder German movement significantly:



I am also adding more troops (thanks to reinforcements and troops moving down gradually from the north) between Smolensk and Bryansk, because I expect Germany may want to attack there. If so, they have a lot of depth that they will need to plow through. My line is weakest in the Bryansk area itself, but that should be too far away to be reached in a single turn. And I will try to add more depth there next turn (depending on what Germany does). I also have been retreating from the south towards Bryansk:



Moving to the south... Well... I guess since the south is being pushed north, it is starting to become more like the center...

Anyway, in the Kursk-Voronezh sector, I put as many troops as I could in front of the German spearhead to try to slow any further advance towards Orel and/or Voronezh. These are a mix between mostly very low quality troops (lots of paratroopers, NKVD, cavalry, weak infantry divisions, etc) and some very strong troops (Vatutin's and Rokossovsky's Tank Assault Armies). I will be looking for opportunities to counterattack German Panzer divisions here as they continue to move forward over time. Hopefully the Panzers will gradually become weaker due to attrition and poor supply. I did one such counterattack this turn (my only attack this turn), which unfortunately failed, but gradually is helping to wear down the Panzers. In this battle I lost 73 AFVs, Germany lost 28.



In order to get that many troops up there, I had to pretty much abandon Kharkov unfortunately. I only have some light screening forces there along the Donets river apart from two infantry divisions which are remaining in Kharkov itself:



In the Stalino area I don't have too much more than a screening defense either. It is inevitable at this point that Stalino will fall over the next turn or two. What I want to avoid is getting all my troops here encircled, so I tried to make my deployment pretty cautious. I also have continued bombing Panzer divisions. This destroys some (normally small) numbers of AFVs, but also should lower the MP, so it reduces the danger of large scale encirclements. I also am keeping at least a few tank/mech divisions nearby to be able to counterattack if needed and if there is a good opportunity. The threat of that will also maybe make Germany slightly more cautious with the Panzers.

I also manually evacuated the industry from Stalino this turn.

[Beethoven1]

This game has been abandoned (Red Army too biggggg), but I already wrote the AAR for the last turn a while back, so may as well post it.

Overall there is some obvious downside here to losing population centers like the Donbas earlier than necessary, but I would guess a lot more manpower was saved by preserving units than was lost by losing some cities a bit earlier than otherwise. As to what would have happened if it went in, we can only speculate. This game might provide some further evidence of how important it is for Germany to be able to get some significant encirclements in 1941 and that running away might be too good of a strategy for Soviets. Probably with such a large Red Army it would have been possible to do a good winter offensive and take back some of the lost territory in the south. Who knows then how 1942 would have gone.




Start of Turn 9 ---


I forgot to mention, but last turn I sent a bunch of Siberian reinforcements on the way to the front... namely these 10 tank divisions due to arrive in the reserves 2 turns from now. They are basically fully equipped, so that amounts to a tank army with probably around 2000 AFVs:



Also I have a pretty nice large amount of infantry reserves to deploy this turn and next turn. This is to a large extent troops I sent earlier from the Far East and maybe Transcaucasus, although I think I am also starting to get back a handful of the divisions destroyed on turn 1. So the Red Army is pretty big, and it is going to be getting bigger:



So far, in total I have suffered fewer than 1.4 million losses:



More than half of those were on the first two turns. Since then I have been taking less than 100k losses a turn basically quite consistently:



My # of men on the map as a result is still keeping on growing, now to 3.65 million, which seems like a pretty good/large number for this early in the game. While I am not happy about the pace of the German advance in the south, the fact that the Red Army is this strong offsets a considerable amount of any unhappiness with not putting up more of a defense there:



I am also up to nearly 5.3 million men in total (including the theater boxes)

Here is my supply situation. For the entire game, I have had my entire army and air force set on supply priority 4. As a result, they have been getting plenty of supply in general, and every single army other than the 30th got more supply than it needs. Having lots of supply is good, especially early on I think, because you have better CVs. And with better CVs you can get more retreats and fewer routs and slow down the Germans more at this time in 1941 when they have the opportunity to gain the most ground.



In Estonia, there was some slow grinding forward with infantry. The main action in the north was in the Pskov sector, where the Germans attacked EXACTLY the hex where I was expecting an attack this turn. I did get two reserve activations, but that is a lot less than the number of divisions I had on reserve (and these are the only reserve activations I can see anywhere in any battles on the map, actually, although I had a good # of divisions on reserve elsewhere, none of them joined). But the two reserve divisions were not enough and the hex fell. From there I should be gradually pushed back to Pskov.

There was no sign of the Totenkopf division. If it were still in the north, there is basically no way he wouldn't have used it again by now, so it has very likely headed to the center-south:



However, I do notice a lot of air supply at Daugavpils, which seems sort of strange. There is also a small amount of air supply on the hex where he attacked across the river south of Pskov.

Also, there were no attacks at all in the Velikie Luki area and no attempt to push there. But at the same time, he doesn't have infantry there everywhere just entrenching for winter. Maybe there is some chance of a mobile attack in this area, because it is hard to imagine that he wouldn't bother pushing V.L. at all, to at least take the city, since it has a railyard that can help with supply. But there was 0 recon anywhere in the Pskov/V.L. area, so maybe no attack will actually come.



170k Germans took Smolensk by direct assault. 50k Soviets under Bagramian (one of the best 5-6 Soviet generals) were defending, but the leadership rolls took a dump. Other than that, there were only infantry attacks in this sector, no Panzer/motorized attacks.



No attacks further south around Bryansk, as the infantry first marched up to the front. There were a lot of attacks around Kursk, but basically all of these were just clearing away low quality cavalry/NKVD detritus by motorized divisions. No Panzers did any attacks, as he probably does not want to weaken them any more than he has to.



Kharkov was re-encircled, but it was sort of surprising that there was hardly any advance around Stalino, despite it being barely defended. The German units do look relatively weak and they have red supply factors though, so at least to some degree they are having supply issues. At least, I would HOPE that they would be having supply issues, having advanced this far this fast. But Bread says his supply in general is not that bad:



The gates to Crimea have been reached, and I only have three divisions there. Looks like it is time to run to the Kerch peninsula.



One last thing. The previous turn (and the one before that), I did naval interdiction missions on Odessa, to try to block supply in/out. However, Bread said that this seemed to have no affect on his supply. Anyone know why? Was I doing anything visibly wrong here? The interdiction map mode seems to show that indeed I should have had "control" of continuous hexes blocking the way in/out from Odessa. ???



These were the mission settings I was using to get that. Anything wrong there???



One last last thing. In total, Germany has lost 21,956 trucks (1966 this turn). Soviets have lost 24,627 (999 this turn):



In the logistics tab, there are 9,838 Soviet trucks captured by the Axis, and 276 Axis trucks captured by the Soviets.

I have 6315 unit trucks used, 805 trucks lost in freight, and 30,682 total freight losses:



In my previous Soviet game against Bread, by comparison there were:

21,964 German trucks lost (3010 in the last turn).

29,524 trucks lost (1,449 in the last turn).

So the truck losses overall are pretty close to the same.

There were 12,040 Soviet trucks captured by the Axis and 791 Axis trucks captured by the Soviets. So overall I am doing slightly better at denying the Axis captured trucks.

I had 6509 Unit Trucks Used, 430 trucks lost in freight, and 6761 total freight losses:

[Beethoven1]

End of Turn 9 ---



Reluctantly, I pulled more units from Estonia to cycle units further to the south. More units are needed in the Bryansk-Kursk-Orel area, which seems like the critical part of the front. This means I have to pull back to narrow the front in Estonia. I am digging into the swamps and will roach it out in the swamps in front of the Narva river for as long as possible. Hopefully I can still maintain a bridgehead until winter, but we will see.



Around Pskov Germany left some areas open last turn to gather troops to attack across the Velikaya river, so I flipped some hexes carefully back and advanced slightly south of Pskov. I may retreat back here next turn, because this is a bit more exposed of a position than ideal, but we will see what Germany does. But this hopefully complicates their efforts here, as they should need to protect their flanks at least somewhat. If not for the fact that it would give Germany captured trucks, I would suicide some mech/tank divisions deep into enemy lines. I don't have any cavalry in this area, which may be a mistake. Might need to deploy some in the north for suicide purposes.



Depth was increased south towards Bryansk to stop a potential Panzer breakthrough in that area. Apparently I forgot to move the 43rd army HQ back from the front. But if the commander (3.5 skill) gets killed, maybe I will get a better leader without having to pay AP. 🙏🏻



In the Kursk area I did the usual mass bombing. This was the most successful raid, destroying 8 AFVs (overall 38 Axis AFVs were destroyed in the Soviet air phase). In those two hexes north-east of Kursk, 5 German units are isolated. They are the Lehr Mot BDE, LAH SS Mot BDE, 18th Panzer division, 1st RFSS Mot BDE, and 16th Mot division.



Cavalry also surrounded the Wiking SS division. It had no hexes to retreat to, which meant that it could be routed just by beating it in a battle. Rokossovsky did this, attacking with about 10:1 CV superiority. From routing, the Wiking division lost 529 vehicles. However, we lost 76 AFVs in the process and only destroyed 4 German AFVs. That is the unfortunate thing about attacking Motorized divisions rather than Panzer divisions, you seem to destroy a lot less valuable equipment. But I expect/hope it should still be worth it because of the vehicles. I am counting on the lack of captured vehicles (and some vehicle losses like this) to eventually put a logistical stop to the German advance in the south.



I dropped air supply to the troops in Kharkov. This was more than 1000 supply in total, so theoretically they should not be "isolated" when Germany attacks them next turn. In order to get enough troops defending around Kursk in depth, there is hardly anything defending behind the Donets river now. Germany can advance there if they want... there is basically nothing there except empty land, and it should be difficult to supply and hard to defend in winter:



I am continuing to gradually retreat in the Stalino area to hopefully avoid an encirclement. The only thing of interest was an attack against a weak Romanian cavalry division to keep them honest:



I pulled back towards Kerch and am starting to dig fortifications in the port city of Kerch. Also, I am building some airfields around Novorossiysk for future use (including for ferry interdiction if needed to help stop a strait crossing):







Final note - Despite basically abandoning the entire southern half of the front, I do not appear to have been on course for a 1941 VP loss or anything like that, because although I was losing a lot of cities earlier than historical, that was limited to the south. I was not in any real danger of losing VPs in the north/center like Leningrad/Rzhev/Moscow/Tula - probably would not have lost any of those at all, much less losing them earlier than historical.

[Stamb]

What happened in the end? Axis gave up?

[Jango32]

That is correct, IIRC.

[Beethoven1]

Yeah, Axis gave up at this point.

[RedJohn]

Yeah I surrendered after it became clear I wasn't going to do much of anything and would collapse in winter to a super soviet OOB. I made a lot of mistakes, and have since gotten much better - especially with supply.

I was also unfortunate enough to experience the abandon the south strategy in a game where I deliberately reinforced AGS with a good chunk of PZG2, further hindering efforts in centre.