Wargammer of the Year Attempt #1

[larryfulkerson]

I configured the aircraft squadrons for missions and locations and now I've
started moving units and I've come to the AGN HQ unit and I see that it's
got just about everything it's allowed except for trucks, I'm missing 4 of
the 9 allowed. So I looked in the inventory to see what's up and I've got
bou cou trucks on hand so that means that the replacement trucks aren't
getting to this unit in a timely fashion. This sounds like a symptom of
something but I know very little about the replacement system and I need
more data to disambiguate the solutions.

[larryfulkerson]

I seem to have surrounded a small Soviet group. I'm tryhing to mop them up
currently and it's slow going. So far so good.

[larryfulkerson]

Due west of Moscow is a spot where the supply is more than adequate and so
I've got high hopes for the area. I've stumbled upon an HQ unit that has
more trucks than it is allowed so I've been wondering for at least 1.5 minutes
now what set of circumstances could have caused that. Maybe it would be
interesting to see what numbers it had last turn and compare it to this turn's
numbers....it could have started the game with more than it was allowed and
just hasn't lost the overage yet. This is something for "SuperWarGamer" to
investigate. Stay tuned.

EDIT: SuperWarGamer works for the New York Times as a columnist and has a reputation
for being absolutely OCD, really anal if you know what I mean. Other than that
he's absolutely fine. No social skills, really, but smart. He needs to do something
about his personal hygene. He does an occasional article about Marijuana strains.

[larryfulkerson]

So I did a saved game and loaded the previous turn's file and looked up the
258th Inf Div HQ unit and it's got one more than it has in T31 so it's
possible that it DID start out with an overage after all. We don't have
proof yet though. I'll look up turn one's numbers.

[larryfulkerson]

Okie dokie....so now we have proof that it started the game with 12 trucks
an overage and it just happened to have 9 left in T31 even though it's allowed
only 6 trucks. We got to the bottom of that just in time for my nap.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T32 front lines before I have moved anybody.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the spot where the Soviets have blown a hole in my lines and now I need to contain it and plug the hole and restore the front lines. It's going to take a while now that the mud season is here.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the northern front lines currently and I've been attacking and there's been a lot of pushing and shoving going on with both sides and the resistance is terrific. I don't have the rails repaired all the way to the front lines yet so I don't have any RR arty support yet so it's slow going. The mud season has started and the supply levels are either zero or 1 everywhere. Operations are on hold here.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the game plan for next spring when the SWO ( soviet winter offensive ) is over and supply returns to normal and so on. I'm looking way ahead and I may not have the units to execute this plan or the Soviets may push me back this winter and conditions might change and anyway I'm going create Operation Shiny Chevy as a designation for it. Planning currently hopes for early March as the jump off date.

[larryfulkerson]

I've discovered that it's more fun playing an east front game
if you also have YouTube on in the background playing a documentary
about Barbarosa. Gives atmosphere.

[larryfulkerson]

There's a spot SW of Moscow that I'm worried about. The units were in a low supply area to begin with and weren't exactly at the tippy top of the health meter and now with the no-supply situation they are starting to turn red and further attacks by the Soviets might cause an even more embarrassing situation. I expect a breakthrough here in the next turn or two. And the Soviet Winter Offensive hasn't even started yet.

[larryfulkerson]

This is the kind of thing that's happening to my supply all up and down the front lines. This is no way to run a war. I'm wondering how long it's going to be before the supply net is back up and running.

[larryfulkerson]

This is the saved game file for the Axis turn 34. Just unzip it and load it as a saved game. You can check out the condition of everybody and where everything is and the dialogs like inventory and OOB and maybe move some units around and do some attacking and so on. Maybe take if from here on to see if you can salvage the damage I've done to everything already. Enjoy.

[larryfulkerson]

I've found an LCU that is missing over 100 troops from it's inventory and I'm thinking that's a symptum of the fact that I'm running low on them in the on-hand numbers. I see from the inventory that the number of assigned HRS's is 28K and decreading. I'm thinking I should go to a no-events policy to conserve the troops. The units are just about as weak as I want them to get.

[larryfulkerson]

The Soviets had big ideas about breaking through and running around in my backfield but I think I've contained it and now I just need to restore the front lines. This kind of thing is going on up and down the front linss. There's at least one breakthrough each turn. I'm straining to contain them and the front lines are just on the verge of collapse. I could use a lot more people.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's how hard the Soviets attacked me on their T34. It's T35 now for me and I'm still on a no-events policy and I lost my first unit last turn....a recon unit that got trapped behind enemy lines. I gotta quit pushing my recon units out so far.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the T36 front lines before I have moved anybody.

[larryfulkerson]

I thought maybe I could get more speed during the Soviet turn if I turned off all the graphical panels, etc. So I clicked on the white triangle in the upper left and used the pop-up bar to turn off everybody except the status bar, at the bottom of the screen. And then I started up the Soviets again and wow....it really cooks when there's nothing on your screen. Then it became my T39 so I thought I'd check out the losses in HRS's and they aren't too bad. I wasn't planning on doing any attacking from now to the end of the SWO unless I have an ememgency or something important to do. I'm expecting the Soviets to use a lot of three-dot attacks during the SWO and I expect a lot of them to evaporate so maybe we'll come out the other side in better shape relative to the Soviets because they will have lost so many troops and so much equipment. I need to get Leningrad by the end of the year and I'd like to make a bit more progress toward Moscow and the front lines need to be straightened out down south, take out the gaps and push up to the river everywhere. But for all this to happen I need the supply levels to return to sanity because there's still a lot of the front lines that has no supply at all still. I'm not sure I can operate with no supply at all....I'm pretty sure I can't.

[larryfulkerson]

I was wondering how the tanks were doing and I'm alarmed to find that I'm running out of some and I'm not making them fast enough to keep up with losses. I need to move the Panzers to the reserve for the area where they are now. I'll have to split the regiments into pieces to give enough units to physically have a solid front line from Leningrad to Stalino which is the goal.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the losses in the way of aircraft and down at the bottom of the list is some squads broken out by nation and it looks like the Hungarians haven't lost very much stuff yet and taht's a good thing. I've annotated the list on the left for me as I review this in the future but I'll let you guys in on the secret too.