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I stopped the Soviet turn to get an idea of how the Soviets were doing in their inventory and was startled to find less assigned Soviet Rifle Squads than I've ever seen so far playing D21. This may turn out to be my best game yet. And it's 23 November 1941 now which means that I've been suffering pestilance for a couple of turn now so I'll keep an eye on my losses due to that.

It's now T46 round 1 just before the first combat phase and I've just repaired another bridge over the river so now the Italians can stream across it into the environs beyond. This spot is NE of Rostov and contains the roads leading to Stalingrad.

It's now T47 round 1 just before the first combat phase and I've finally arrived at Voronezh and I'm in the process of shaping the battlefield so that I can eventually take the city. The Soviets have started getting a lot of reinforcements and they have started to arrive at the front lines so there's a lot of Soviets suddenly. I have 20.9K HRS's assigned, 717 HRS's on hand, and I've lost 40.4 HRS's so far and I'm building 428 HRS's per turn.

larryfulkerson wrote: Thu Apr 07, 2022 10:15 pm This is what it looks like early in T3 ... I have lost 1.7K HRS's, 30.1K HRS's assigned, and 2.7K HRS's on hand.

That's a big change from then to now.

Also, you've been entertaining us with this for over a month - thank you.

It's now T48 round 1 and I haven't done a panarama in a long time. I know you guys like to see stuff like this but I need to see it too, to give me a better idea where everything is since I want to keep it connected from north to south. The marshes in the north are freezing so it won't be long before the rivers do too. I'll have to prepare for that before it happens and catches me with my pants down. There has been a run on hot sauce in the chow halls and most of the front line units. Turns out that the troops are using it to keep warm(er) when they eat. Some of them are drinking it right out of the bottle. I'll see if I can't get my R&D department to develop something to drink that will warm up the human body ( besides Scotch Whiskey ). The troops have found out that it's best to leave truck engines running all the time rather than not being able to start it again after having shut it off. Which burdens the logistical chain with a demand for approx. twice as much fuel than was allocated for this section of the front. I'll have to submit an emergency resource request and soon. The Soviets have been attacking on the ground as well as in the air. The turns are starting to get a lot more bloody.

Cpl GAC wrote: Sun May 08, 2022 11:22 pm

larryfulkerson wrote: Thu Apr 07, 2022 10:15 pm This is what it looks like early in T3 ... I have lost 1.7K HRS's, 30.1K HRS's assigned, and 2.7K HRS's on hand.

That's a big change from then to now.

Also, you've been entertaining us with this for over a month - thank you.

At the start of the game I had planned on curtailing my attacking so that I have at least 25K HRS's going into the Soviet Winter Offensive and I had so many oppertunities for easy kills for so long that I just went blood lusty and now I find myself on the edge of the SWO and I've got something like 21K HRS's assigned and that is probably too low to survive the Soviet onslaught and my mistake was continuing the attacking for too long. We're about to see.

I've been entertaining you guys like I work for the USO. Hand out donuts, sing a song, tell some jokes, whatever the troops want. With some few limits. I've been up since 04:15 and it's 16:50 local and I'm trying to get to the start of the SWO to get some idea how bad it's going to be. I'll post stuff so you guys can watch it happen as it happens.

Miss Thelma Louise CottonMouth reports that our R&D department will have a working prototype in about "2 weeks....".

It's still T48 round 1 and this is what it looks like south of Rostov right now. I was in such a hurry to get troops across the river that the Romanians and Hungarians and Caucasians are mixed up in the front lines. The problem with that is that Romanians cannot take part in an attack that involves any Hungarians and vice versa. Whicn makes attacks clumsey and unsatisfactory. I need to sort out the different forces and let them do their own attacks separately. Looking at the image you might get the idea that the front lines in this area are fluid and dynamic. Soviet troops are mainly arriving from the south which is the direction I'm headed. So far so good.

The Romanians forced their way through the Soviet defenders in the Kerch Straits and are now pushing the Soviets backward slowly on the east side of the straits. The attackers in this area aren't extremely numerous and I'm already wondering how far these units can push before they run out of units to man the line. We'll see.

It's now T49 round 1 and I'm in the process of moving my units and I was surprised to find that I'm approaching Stalingrad. I'm hopeing to have the city surrounded in another 10 turns or so. The rivers are frozen over already so it's easy to walk across it. There's no supply ON the river however so it's best not to stop on top of one. Check the supply bubbles to tell where the supply drops off.

It's now T50 round 1 and this is the front lines before I have moved anybody. I didn't make the deadline at Sevastopol so I didn't get the use of the Bulgarians and rather than keeping them for who knows what I disbanded all of them. The Soviet Winter Offensive hasn't started yet and I've got 20.0K HRS's assigned so I'm still vulnerable to say the least. I've been letting my units around Moscow rest for the last turn or two and they are very slowly regaining their strength and supply. I received a directive from the Fuhrer to go to a defensive mode and just hold what I've got for a while to get ready for the SWO.

This is the Voronezh area before I have moved anybody. This city is proving to be a hard nut to crack. The supply levels are 25 on the rails and 4 at the front. The Axis shock is 100 and the Soviet shock is 98. It's about 8/10 cloudy but no rain and the rivers have frozen over.

This is the Yaroslavl area before I have moved anybody. Supply is 25 on the rails and 9 at the front lines. I've got a recon unit trapped behind the Soviet lines because I tried to drive around the Soviet lines to cut them off from their supply source and the Soviets decided that they couldn't let that happen and closed the gap behind me and now it is what it is. I'm going to see if I can't save that recon unit somehow.

This is the Stalingrad area as it is right now. I've run into a series of little Soviet unit groups between me and the city. I'm dealing with them with the troops I have at hand. There are more troops headed this way which will help out a lot. I have no accurate idea how long it's going to take to arrive at Stalingrad.

I'm collecting the game files as I go and that tells me how big the save game file is getting and when I finished each turn. My record is 3 game turns per day. I can't quite stay awake long enough for 4 games in one day. The last file on the list ( "Directive 21 lgf 49.sal" )game file has collected about 100K bytes of text in size already. I know that beause the News Summary panel contains all the text printed on it since game start so obviously it's saving that text in the save game file. One wonders how big the save game file gets on these longer games { ie. FITE2 }.

This is the Sevastopol in T50 round 3 as it is right now. I didn't make the deadline so I don't get the Bulgarians. Oh well. I think it's because I didn't bring enough arty to the party. That and using the RR arty at Odessa instead of here. I'm still trying to get at the city but losses are heavy and I'm having to rotate the troops to get fresh units to the face of the wall and rest the tired ones. I'll eventually get rid of all these defenders. I've got no way to prevent them using the port to retreat via the sea.

This is the Voronezh in T50 round 6 as it is right now. More and more Soviet units are arriving and I have to handle them all so I've set a screen to hold back the hordes. Some of them have leaked through and I'm having to dispatch units to deal with them. The Soviets are making more and more breakthroughs each turn. The map is starting to get busy. The troops are out there fighting in the wind and snow and it's getting hard to get a hot meal to them.

The 6th Panzer Division pushed it's way onto the bridge near Vologda. Supply is less than 10 for the Axis troops in the northern part of this image. They don't have a rail line to feed them some supply. I'll have to see what I can do to fix that situation.

The 10th Motorized Division pushed it's way across the bridge near Voronezh destroying the Soviet defender. There's only a small gap left to feed supply to several Soviet divisions on the screen defending Voronezh. Once I close that gap it will be easier to liquidate the infection.

This is the area near Yaroslavl as it is right now. I want to attempt to move south to cut off the supply to a rather large group of Soviet units. Elmer will probably detect enemy units in his rear and will probably try to evacuate the rapidly forming pocket. But, maybe not. Maybe I can wipe out about 1/12 of his ground force right before the Soviet Winter Offensive which I expect any turn now.

This is the area near Kalinin as it is right now. The 30th Inf Division has run smack into the entire Soviet 4th Shock Army and they are on the horn for some backup. Luckly, the units in the stack they are facing are having some internal problems. Their health meter shows values from 43 to 51 and they are orange in health. So this may not be as big a problem as it appears on the surface. Nevertheless, I'm going to see how hard it would be to fly some aircraft of all types to gather here and dedicate them to this area only and give them a three-dot setting and see what happens.