The Sky’s the Limit- PBEM GC 41 jubjub (Axis) vs. M60A3TTS (Soviet)

[PPetar]

Hey M60, just wanted to say well played and thank you for sharing the game with us, it has been really enjoyable to follow.

Thanks, but in truth there was a whole lot I could have improved upon. After having played the Soviets so long once the game came out, I switched over to the Axis side for a while. That got me out of practice with the Soviet side and that along with a bunch of game changes that were introduced left me not in the best position. To his credit, jubjub played a unique game where he seldom created pockets, seldom ventured out and attacked after the tide turned. This forced me to keep assaulting his positions and racking up the casualties. His counterattacks when they came often generated lots of losses for me as he frequently combined attacks with SS and GD units with panzer divisions. That cost a lot of T-34s that might be exposed in tank corps that were not covered by rifle formations. It also cost thousands of casualties to rifle corps when my attacks failed.

If I had it to do over, I would have used more tank brigades and regiments and fewer tank corps. T-34s often end up with higher HPEs than even heavy artillery regiments, and the tank SUs use fewer vehicles, so that is an added bonus. I never really tried a mass breakout because it was usually over a bunch of combat delay 3 hexes where I wouldn't get too far, be out of cover of the rifle corps, and would have just been whacked by junjub with his nearby panzer and motorized divisions that despite my frequent sallies against them never seemed to run out of AFVs. There always seemed to be more StuG battalions on the horizon.

The artillery use could have been better, and given the ever increasing need for vehicles by the artillery park, that needed to be managed efficiently. Maybe fewer heavy artillery regiments and more mortars might have helped. Even cleaning out a lot of vehicle hungry units in the TBs didn't keep my army from suffering chronic vehicle shortages.

One thing I have subsequently tried after some of Wiedrock's postings is to assign Zhukov's front some Naval infantry Brigades directly and giving the front HQ some artillery support units. By combining a brigade to a rifle corps attack belonging to an army of the front, you keep the value of the assault force to 20 (under the 28 limit that reduces fires) and get the benefit of additional artillery support beyond the army's from Zhukov who of course has excellent leader values. It can be done with all sorts of fronts, but obviously a leader with better numbers gets better results. Once you get on map artillery divisions, they can go to the front HQ as well for more flexibility and capability.

Leningrad was nice to hold until mid-1942 but that cost maybe 400,000 troops over the long haul to hold, so maybe not worth that cost.

All in all, Berlin might still be in my sights if only I had another half million men. But 'twas not to be. C'est la guere.

I would actually like to thank you for sharing this with us even though you thought you were a bit rusty, it has been really enjoyable to see your thought process and question/learn things along with you. I learned so much about the game reading this, I think you really helped the whole community learn a lot about playing the Soviet side.

Regarding your performance, I think most people would agree you played really good, but of course you are the final judge on that. In the end it doesn't really matter how the game ended since the journey was interesting to follow and we learned a lot of things on the way there. I hope you have the same feeling too.

The tips for the late war are really helpful, I'm sure to test it out in my own game if it reaches late game.

[EwaldvonKleist]

Quite close to the IRL history in terms of front lines, except for Leningrad being captured.
But the Germans avoided the heavy winter 1941 losses and weren't Stalingrades, so managed to out-grind the Soviets in the end?
I wonder if it would have been better to limit Soviet attacks tonthose with good loss ratios until the Sovjet-German army ratio would have improved (because without fighting, the Soviet army will grow faster than the German army relatively and absolutely).