Matrix Games Forums

Here's an attack South of Smolensk where I'm hoping the south attack will draw any tactical reserve away form the western attack so that the western attack will succeed:
 

Here's a question for the community:  the unit circled in green has just enough movement points to move one hex to the northeast to occupy the river/rail hex adjacent to the enemy but there's no arty to support him and his supply and readiness isn't the best, I'm not ready to press the attack yet, there's no compelling reason to move him there yet....I'm debating whether or not to move him in there and I'm thinking no, it would cause unneccessary losses since he would just be pushed out of the hex in the Soviet turn.  What do you guys think?

Supply considerations are not just right for assults on Dneprpetrovsk and Zaporozhe yet but they soon will be:
 

Regarding SSE of Lenningrad. Go South. You can then swing around north and take that rail/road bridge, anyways.
 
Regarding moving the regt. onto the bridge. Don't move him yet, since the only advantage you woudl gain would be to put the Russians out of entrenchment, and that would only be usefull if you were ready to press the attack.

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

I think the problem the soviets face in the early war years in this scenario is simply a lack of sufficient units on map. A large chunk of those 2000 Soviet units arrive as reinforcements much later, so the designers have given the Soviets tons of replacements to assure them the ability to rebuild destroyed units as soon as possible to try and keep as many units on map in the early part of the scenario as possible.

Sorry for hijacking this AAR, but that is exactly my experience aswell, a good Axis will simply surround and annihilate every soviet opposition he runs into, the soviets simply dont have enough units to stand and fight, and if they do, they will lose.

This is a screenshot from my last FitE where I played the Axis, it was abandoned at turn 12, partly due to real life interferring, partly TOAW burnout syndrom, but I guess that game was won already at this early stage.



As you can see the soviets have almost no defence left, Leningrad is surrounded and cut off from supply, so the entire pocket is unsupplied, the frontline is mostly held by militas anyway and I guess the city would have fallen in 2-3 turns. Moscow is somewhat good defended, but even here the soviets lack divisions they lost early on, the frontline is held by only one divison with very little deepth, and as the majority of the german army advances into this direction the city would have fallen soon.
The south is completely hopeless, only at Kharkov are some dvisions left, but they cant secure their flanks, would be surrounded next turn and than annihilated, with them gone there would be nothing left from that point forward up to the Ural.

Friendly:Enemy loss penalty: 40:298

FitE's opening stage plays very different compared to DnO, where the soviets have a far better stand, thanks to the countless units they get to throw into the Axis path to slow them down, and I agree that the unit limit should be upped considerably (why is there a need for a unit limit at all??).

Oh well, guess I should try FitE as the soviets once, to see whether I can do better and stop the Axis drive

ORIGINAL: Industrial
Sorry for hijacking this AAR....

No problemo. Good comments and I loved the picture. This AAR needs more comments like that. I love it. Keep 'em coming.

My AAR is already in turn 15 and I haven't made nearly the progress depicted in the picture....maybe I'm sandbagging or something. I'm playing it hotseat and pulled the Soviet stuff, as much as I could, back to the "river" and tried to play it as a good Soviet player would have. Maybe that's why it's lasted this long? And too, I'm trying to keep the Axis stuff in good supply stopping to rest when the rediness circle is orange. I try not to let the important units get below about 40% in rediness since I don't want desertion to take place.

The Germans have forced their way across the river in several spots north of Kiev:
 

Here's some of the costs to the Axis so far:
 

Here's the Axis moves for turns 12 thru 15:
 

Here's some Soviet losses so far:
 

The Soviets had a partisan appear in Poland that the Axis wasn't ready for.  Now he's busy busting up railroads and headed for Berlin:

Here's some Axis losses so far:
 

The partisan problem seems like it would have to be more extensive to have a large effect on German plans. How annoying have they been?

ORIGINAL: TheBloodyBucket
The partisan problem seems like it would have to be more extensive to have a large effect on German plans. How annoying have they been?

So um.....they are a pain in the backside. I know if I don't do anything about them my railroads will start to develop "outages" and so I need to do SOMETHING but I don't want to slow my main attacking advance just to chase down a couple of units that will probably be Soviet throwaways at best. I'm letting my security forces ( MPs ) and the third world guys ( Italians, Slovics, Hungarians, etc. ) run them down for me while the main German dudes continue on business as usual at the front. The reason for using Third World stuff is that they have no Heavy Rifle Squads and would be second string fighters on the front line anyway. Sort of like the Romanians, no HRS's but on the other hand there are a lot more Romanians than any other Third World stuff so I suppose I can use the Romanians to try to capture a river crossing or two but not to go after anything important.

You may have noticed that I used the Romanians to hold the Soviet Odessa garrison in place while the main German formations were making their way down there. And once they arrived I replaced the Romanians with Germans to make the take down, moving the Romanians to other adventures further east.

So all things considered, it's something useful for the third world stuff to do, chasing down partisans. No major change in German plans, at least for me, for now.

We have a situation here:  here I have captured two bridges one hex apart from each other so that the firepower from one Axis stack cannot help out the other Axis stack.  Without calling up additional forces neither stack alone has enough umph to force it's way onto the shore on the other side of the bridge.  But I don't want to pull either stack back and give up the bridge just to help out the other stack.  The only answer is to introduce another engineer ( to facilitate a river crossing ) and some other divisional force to help out either/both stack(s):
 

I dropped the FJ division behind enemy lines to help interfere with enemy reinforcing the point of attack hoping to facilitate the capture of a bridge across the river at some point:
 

The Axis is attempting a daring daylight river crossing 30 kilometers wide near Leningrad:
 

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson
And too, I'm trying to keep the Axis stuff in good supply stopping to rest when the rediness circle is orange. I try not to let the important units get below about 40% in rediness since I don't want desertion to take place.

That is your big mistake, it's called Blitzkrieg for a reason All my units are constantly in red supply, because they are always moving forward at max speed and are probing aggressively, dont allow the soviets to retreat in good shape, no matter what. Kill every soviet division he throws at you ASAP, divide your units, encircle him, only use the bare minimum necessary to kill his roadblocks and let the bulk of your army move forward. Use recon to probe agressively deep into his rear to clear the roads for your next turn advances.

Speed is of the uttermost importance, closely followed by killing his divisions.

If you fail to do that you will soon run into a red human wall, which will be (thanks to the huge soviet reinforcements and replacements) impregnable.

Retreating from a German attack a Soviet armour division retreated to the wrong side of the river above Kiev:
 

Here's what the front lines ( north half ) look like after the Axis turn 16 second combat round: