Towards the edge of destruction with hooooper and Blubel

[hooooper_slith]

Turn 21
The last mud turn, and wave after wave of Soviet infantry crash against trapped German divisions. At the Valdai hills ...

[hooooper_slith]

And Vorenezh ...

[hooooper_slith]

Meanwhile, in the south, the Germans consolidate their position by shrinking the pocket and entering the Crimea.

[hooooper_slith]

Turn 22

Unfortunately for me, all of those attacks were costly failures, and it is now clear to me that I got a little bit carried away, and also underestimated the Germans ability to spring back into position despite several turns of isolation. It may be that the ultra-cautious style I adopted in my parallel game with Bomazz was influencing me here. Anyhow, the result is a disaster of the first water: Blubel constructs an iron-bound pocket around most of the Bryansk front. I am unable to get any units in position to make a deliberate attack, and am therefore forced tamely to allow my men to disappear into captivity. It is scant comfort that I am finally able to force 18pz to surrender.

[hooooper_slith]

At Stalino, the pocket is largely cleared up ...

[hooooper_slith]

Turn 23

Blubel makes good use of the second snow turn to make progress in the north ..

[hooooper_slith]

But, rather more effectively, another perfect pocket of formed, this time at Kursk.

[hooooper_slith]

This impressive performance by Blubel is worthy of Manstein in his prime. However, my opponent informs me that General Manstein has been killed for no particular reason. Unfortunately for me, the same fate begalls Malinovsky and Vasilevsky, which is a cruel buffet from fate.

These successful moves bring the Soviet OOB below 4 million, and I am forced to admit that the German have well and truly gained the upper hand. How should the blizzard be handled?

[hooooper_slith]

The south ...

[Scook_99]

Well, interesting. How many mobile German units has he lost? He is playing a rather high risk, high reward kind of game. It looks like for blizzard you are in position in the north to hammer him a bit, but of course that's the crappy terrain, and he knows that. In the south, hmmmm. I see you hold Kharkov, but would he go for a daring last minute encirclement in that area? I am thinking you are going to have to let General Winter take on the burden and be very careful on your attacks. This is a close one.

[hooooper_slith]

It has been a high risk game. Blubel has lost four mobile divisions and a brigade so far, but I think he's fairly happy with what he got in exchange, which was to unbalance the Soviet defence and wipe out about 40 divisions of mine. I've also been playing more aggressively than usual, and have come off second best in most of the battles. Which is historically accurate. And speaking of accuracy, I can't make any more strategic mistakes if I'm going to survive the summer 42 season, never mind taking Berlin. I'm planning to fight an attritional blizzard; the Red Army is like one of those baby animals you put in a shoe box lined with cotton wool and drip feed warm milk. My overriding goal is to get it up to 6 million men by June.

[hooooper_slith]

Turn 25

The blizzard offensive open with the Red Army reduced to a thin brown line. Happily my opponent (whom I understand has not fought a GC blizzard before) takes an overly respectful step back, which means that the first turn passes with little or no fighting required. As I'm trying to do as little fighting as possible, this is fine with me.

[hooooper_slith]

On the NW front, armies are mostly down to less than half strength in divisions, and divisions are seldom up to 50% of their TOEs. The armaments pool is, of course, exhausted.

[hooooper_slith]

Moscow is the only place in the line where I have a well entrenched defence in depth, and this was about the only sector that wasn't seriously attacked.

[hooooper_slith]

The centre is manned by scarecrow formations.

[hooooper_slith]

With the a Volga Front reserve army and a hopelessly extended SW Front holding most of the ground. These formations have little offensive power, and furthermore, many have substandard leaders. I have to save all my APs for the creation of rifle brigades to replace the units lost after the November resurrection watershed.

[hooooper_slith]

Here's the south, where I intend to make my main effort. Incidentally, I forgot to mention earlier that I managed to save Sevastapol by remembering that I could land troops there by ship. Three divisions were duly dispatched, and arrived in the nick of time. It now seems that the Axis have abandoned the area.

[hooooper_slith]

Finally, as we have entered a phase where the real war is being fought by our respective industrial bases, rather than through lightning manoeuvres, I will post odd numbered turns, complete with details of our respective OOBs. The first column is the Soviet total, the second the Axis, and the third is the difference between them. As you can see, we have now climbed above the psychologically important 4m threshold for men.

men 4064 3157 907
guns 35.6 32.2 3.4
armour 2981 1731 1250
air 9019 2427 6592

[Scook_99]

I really get a sense of what the Axis can do when I see this. Your AARs are very good, and I pull quite a bit out of them. I cannot in my thoughts losing four mechanized units as Germany and thinking it be a very successful campaign, but here it is, in living proof. I think your opponent understands military doctrine well and is applying it. I had a second thought about the TOEs, and that is about 60,000 men in those 4 divisions. Which brought to my mind the American TOE, which stuffed 20,000 into a single division, which led to me to think about wanting to see WitW, and what the CV value will be on those units. So, thanks for the random thought of the day.

[hooooper_slith]

Thank you, Scook. I'd have thought that losing four divisions would be a setback, but I don't know how long they take to re-enter the German OOB. I gather their morale is much lower when they do. It didn't seem to hamper Blubel's snow offensive. Losses were higher than usual on both sides, but my opponent seems confident that he will replace his in good time for the summer.