The Bear and the Wolf - Keunert vs. Olivier

[Keunert]

i got one but i needed to place it as a firebrigade down south.
this would be a good unit in the 5TA. maybe a good idea to replace
it with the next infantry division and send it up north.

[James Ward]

They seem to have a little more staying power than a tank corp and they are great on the attack. I think I'm going to try to build one from scratch because I like them so much. I'm not sure how many you get in the game.

[Keunert]

Turn 41

After the devastating attack we are again low on supply. this is something i have seen several times by now: if the Axis launches big attacks and makes a lot of my units retreat with low readiness, the readiness recovery obviously makes my supply situation go down. as an axis player this may be something to consider, maybe this could be exploited.

But this turn there were only few attacks. Looks like my opponent needs some rest too. Looking at my stats, i am surprised to see not more of jump. Since mid august soviet infantry gained 110'000 men. that's great. my armies guarding the Don are completely filled up and replacements now go exclusively into the combat zones.

[Keunert]

Turn 41

Replacements come in big numbers: 25 tanks, 70 guns, 4700 infantry, 40 planes and 200 trucks.

[Keunert]

Turn 41

Axis air numbers hit a new all time low while our divebomber units sonn will reach the level of the beginning of the campaign. They already started to do airmissions again and destroyed some tanks. After having seen a drop in Luftwaffe activity in the south, we brought our Iljuschins down there and we plan to attack axis spearheads there.

Meanwhile we created two new army HQ. as the front is geting longer and longer we will try to keep our units within HQ command range. Future reinforcements will be sent to those new HQ. they are placed away from the hotspots in order to have some time to build up experience and gather enough staff and equipment. By now our leader pool is a lot better than in the beginning of the campaign. We have assigned two commanders with each gaining two command points per round.

North of Stalingrad i probably went a little too far with the 5TA rebuilding program. there are now over a dozen new units building up and forming once again complete TC's.

[Keunert]

Turn 42

The Axis attacks on several fronts and Soviet forces fall back in several places!

[Keunert]

Turn 45

In a single turn, Olivier once again proved to be the better player. He not only broke through several lines due to poor positioning on my side but also cut the railline connecting Stacka with all southern Front Commands and this put all those armies out of supply. the entire southern front is now out of supply and lost. i was able to fly air units out but half of my army is immobile including the entire navy. i should shoot myself before someone else does.

There is a card to build a new supply center in Tiblisi. But i have not the necessary PP to buy it now. A few turns back Stavka gave the infamous 'no step back' order and from then on my prestige went down every turn. i didn't see that coming, i had the pp ten turns ago to buy the card, but i somehow believed i could fight Olivier off because the place where he cuts my rail is way off his supply net. i did kill a few of his units but i guess he somehow managed to improve his supply situation and broke through at several points.

This is really disappointing. i hoped to have the game going far but this will not happen now. i will stick to playing it but my estimate is that within a week the south is cleared from soviet troops, oil production will be zero and my northern front will be immobile and air units grounded. in hindsight i got way overconfident five turns back. axis attacks were way less efficient then a few weeks before. together with the build up of the army i felt the moment to start some attacks. the result was the disaster of 5TA. in the south i still don't know how he suddenly became that effective again. There sure was some Von Mansteinian card magic involved. but it must be more than this.

[Bonners]

Will be a real shame if it is the end of the game as I've really enjoyed reading both sides of the AAR. Not too sure how you can go on though if you lose all those units, even if you do decide to play on he'll end up with the automatic victory if he takes Baku along with Stalingrad (IIRC).

EDIT, just looking at your previous map, where de he break through? It wasnt with the Romanian panzers was it!!?

EDIT EDIT: Just read the other side of the equation on Olivier's AAR...ouch!

[Keunert]

looking at my last map i really have to say that my positioning was very poor. 47 A should have moved north west to stay within roads. 46A did not pull back because i believed that the crossing of german units will put them that low on supply that they will soon sit immobile on the wrong side of the river (sigh), 18A believed that the Viking SS was burned out and could be prevented from breaking through (stupid again), 2A was also too slow on it's move back. here i intendet to put in some more infantry divisions.

3A guarding the rail connection was reinforced with two tank brigades and a mechanized division, i thought that here it will be me that goes on the offensive. another not so great Lagebeurteilung.

yes you are right about auto victory. the game is over soon.

[Vic]

Hi Keunert,

Can you send me savefile to vic@xs4all.nl?
Or if you play PBEM++ the downloadedfile.dc2?

If both players agree i can manually activate the Tiblisi HQ in a turn of choice (provided you still have the turn file)?

best,
Vic

[Keunert]

i will send you the file later today.
if you play pbem++ you only have the
latest turn as savefile, right?

[Isokron]

I thought the south would get supplied by boat over the caspian sea or something? (never played a game this far)

[Keunert]

yes it does get some supply this way. the two armies nearest to the port are still in supply, everything further west has a red supply sign.

[James Ward]

I created the Tilbisi supply source in a game againt the AI just to see what it did. I didn't get much supply there, less than a 100 points per turn. I did not attach a lot of units to the HQ (only 1 rifle div) and Tilbisi was still connected by rail to Stavka and I don't know if that had any effect on how much supply was provided.

Also I did not give the Tibilsi higher HQ. I assumed if should not be linked to Stavka but was not sure.

[olivier34]

Hello ! Keunert told me I could read his AAR. So many things to discuss about our game but it seems that we have both made mistakes.
I have done a few ones and I could have spent more time micro managing my army (the officers, the reinforcement).
I think that I have done a major one that may geopardize the course of this game. I have been abble to lose the air superiority by the end of summer. I open a thread about it in the war room.
The weird thing is that I have not encounter any oil shortage...and most of the times my units have been very well supplied (I had thought to play with the DC1 supply rules, much harder but maybe the thing to do)
I think that the faith of the 5TA up north is a major victory for the axis because before launching it I was very pessimistic. I had take Stalingrad but a time will come where the soviets will have so many planes that it will be their turn to chase my troops. I can't rebuilt my luftwaffe, the cards are now too costly (94 pps to get 20 fighters...)...again this air war that I have lost too quickly. I was very pleased to see that the 6A could destroy the threat of the 5TA and 40th soviet army.


Soviet situation from my axis point of view (I have not study the soviet side at all..don't know the name of their officers, Zhukov ??, their problem of supply, their reinforcement...) :
Reading this AAR, It seems that playing the soviet side is more difficult than playing the axis one. You have to micro manage a lot, even build new units ? or fortified area (that my soldiers can use after that [;)]) and so much more. Now I see that the soviet has to play a card to have another supply source when the axis finally reach this famous rail line and cut the south front from the Stavka HQ...This should be an event instead of a card to be played.
Vic, great to hear that you can activite the Tiblisi HQ so Keunert and I could play some more turns and see what happen. Otherwise we will have to start again [:'(].

[Bonners]

Seeing as Olivier and Keunert are both on here, they both deserve a great deal of thanks for their respective AARs. As a brand new player I've found them really instructive as there have been loads of things that I hadnt considered.

[Vic]

I mailed an edited savefile back that should enable Keunert to continue. Altough even with Tiblisi HQ his supply situation is in places still terrible.

I also made a note for v1.04 to reduce the ap cost of sea supply from 3 to 2 to allow a little bit more to arrive through Caspian ports when the rail is cut.

best,
Vic

[James Ward]

ORIGINAL: Vic

I mailed an edited savefile back that should enable Keunert to continue. Altough even with Tiblisi HQ his supply situation is in places still terrible.

I also made a note for v1.04 to reduce the ap cost of sea supply from 3 to 2 to allow a little bit more to arrive through Caspian ports when the rail is cut.

best,
Vic

A question on the Tilbisi HQ.

Does it need to be subordinate to Stavka or is it an equal to Stavka?

[Keunert]

Vic: all units still were attached via front commands to stavka. tiblissi hq will only next turn start to send out supply.
the game continues, but the situation in the south will still lead to a collapse very soon. i will keep you posted.

[Keunert]

ah and hearteliks danks, Vic! great support, great game!