Grand Campaign --- Q-Ball vs Sertorius21

[Wiedrock]

As Sertorius said, we also opened a larger push around Smolensk....this was more of a serious push I had planned, but not THE main event. He has back-up units and defenses everywhere, so limits any breakthroughs. As you can see, even successful attacks had really high loss ratios; this is kind of a pyrric victory, as we had to overcome the RESERVE activation of a Motorized Division:

This looks like the basic Soviet prestige attack into Urban terrain without advancing Snolenks's outskirts first.

The Vatutin attack has good losses imo. Only followup attacks can improve that.

it's GUNS. Except for Light Artillery, all the ACTIVE pools for important artillery types, including Mortars, AT Guns, Artillery, Heavy Artillery, are EMPTY. Not all Rifle Divisions have a full complement of Mortars and Artillery. Of course I have enough for "attack" units, but this is a problem......I'm especially surprised by the lack of AT Guns, despite disbanding nearly all my independent AT units

...with the missing small AT guns you rly created a mystery. Any idea how the "Transit Pools" look/looked? Maybe it's just an accounting issue/bug and you have/had thoudsands upon in Transit.

[Sertorius21]

The attack shown was not on Smolensk itself, just on the hex to the east. I had not withdrawn to the city itself so I could continue to use the rail freely until the forward position was overrun.

This offensive was fairly big as Q-Ball indicated. Just on the first turn, I counted no less than 8 Guards corps engaged in 5 attacks. A large array of infantry corps, Guards cavalry corps and mechanised or tank units took part.

This proved to be costly indeed for the Russians, as an initial assault just south of Smolensk was repulsed with odds around 1:1, after an infantry and a motorised divisions reacted. 20,000 men were lost in that failed attempt and the next one on the same hex scrapped just above the 2x bar. The other 3 attacks were more comfortable although still in mid-single digit odds. As I had depleted the defence in this area by a couple of infantry divisions, the initial miscarriage did not turn out to be catastrophic for the Russian offensive. The Pz divisions were not placed in reserve as I preferred to counter attack, which was duly done on one Russian stack. The line was then withdrawn to a second set of level 3 fortifications.

Besides the sheer weight of the onslaught, three leaders showed that this was a serious effort: Vassilevski, Zhukov and Rokossovsky. So more troops started to be railed from Army Group South. 6 Pz arrived from Staraya Russa where its presence was no longer critical, with most of the fighting in marsh terrain. While the ratio of losses was in German favour, several units had seen their combat worthiness badly reduced (combination of losses, CPPs, fatigue and to some extent supply consumed), so not exactly a comfortable situation.



The HQ and the units belonging to 3 PzG are clearly visible. What may prove puzzling is the light blue for units scattered at the top and the bottom of this picture. These are essentially corps attaching to Army Group Centre, as there were not enough Army HQs at this point, hence some corps were semi-independent to avoid overload at army level.

[Wiedrock]

The attack shown was not on Smolensk itself, just on the hex to the east. I had not withdrawn to the city itself so I could continue to use the rail freely until the forward position was overrun.

Oof, thought this was Q making a Soviet Smolensk LARP into the City itself....men, losing 11k KIA with only 3 German Artillery SUs is grim.