A tale from '42 - AlbertN vs MSAG

[RedJohn]

I think the artillery patch played a fairly large role in crippling Soviet momentum, and is likely a large reason for the Soviets being unable to build the steamroller in late 42/43.

Good AAR.

[Beethoven1]

I'd be interested in seeing the graphs of total # of men and total #s of men in the field.

I do think that a lot of the Soviet problems are a result of the artillery patch. It would be interesting to see if we can see the effects of that in those graphs.

I also agree with MSAG that probably a lot of people are not aware that Soviets can have a (relative) manpower problem in 1943, I have seen that in StB also. However, in the case of this game that was probably especially problematic because of how far Axis pushed in 1941/42 with the artillery patch. Leningrad obviously fell, and the front was up right near Moscow rather than halfway back to Smolensk (as in StB), so naturally this hurts Soviet manpower yet further. And I doubt the front would have been there if not for the artillery patch.

[AlbertN]

@Lovenought:

Map Situation (Including OOBs)

The Axis line pratically descends from east of Leningrad to hug Moscow, spanning east to Rhyazan and descending down to Voronez, down to Rostov.
The Caucasus is in the process of being abandoned and the Summer '43 defensive line plan was the Don without the 'bend' pretty much there, anchoring on Rostov and Kerch and using the sea of Azov to shorten the line.

Situation of June '43

[AlbertN]

Casualties:

I'd like to underline the air war for the first part was pratically ruled out or limited by house rules til the Ground-Attack(Unit) converts in Interdiction was applied.
Even after that it was ... barely used.

I suspect once there is effective Ground Support, the air war will take different chromes and colours!

[AlbertN]

@Beethoven:

Total Men in absolute terms:

As reference from Start to April / May 42 we had 'Arty Patch'.
Then we had 'Defender Patch' across the '43.
I think early '43 we hit the more present betas that rebalanced a bit the game to the attacker not going to crash into a wall of massive HPE values.

I do agree though the 'Arty Patch' plus a honest way of playing from MSAG (as per not vacating the south) has got me in the well off position in 'number terms'.

[AlbertN]

Manpower on the Map:

[Gunnulf]

Ah, well done both of you. A very interesting contest, a bit sorry to see it wrap up as would be nice to see how played out into 44 with the tables slightly shifted, even if getting to a Soviet win looking unlikely. Certainly a hard fight with plenty of action and drama, especially the tantalising prospect of Moscow falling. What was the HWM in the end and what was the best guess of how far back the Soviets might have pulled things?

[AlbertN]

HWM is 753.

I do not know much of the game - I expected the Soviets to repel me already from the Caucasus in winter 42-43.

I think I'd have finished '44 in Poland frankly - a worry is the TB replacement system that as soon as the Allies land in Europe pretically sucks all the replacements for Italy / West I suspect.
The shrinking divisions also in terms of ToE ought to have less staying power I suspect.

[Gunnulf]

As much as the USSR might like to mythologise about winning WW2 alone does seem nice that the game does a great job of reflecting that neither the western allies or Soviets were likely to win alone, unless they started throwing nukes around. While I have been sitting nicely repelling Soviet attempts to break through until now N.Africa surrendering and the garrison requirements for Italy have sucked in many more divisions than I would otherwise be comfortable with, and the future Italian surrender and subsequently D-Day sucking in many many more divisions will absolutely make sustaining the Eastern front untenable. Likewise without the war in the east raging hard D-Day would be nigh on impossible.

[jasonbroomer]

A wonderful AAR AlbertN, containing much interesting and valuable information. I love too your turn of words and phrases which are both a delight and charming to this Englishman.

I enjoyed the negative tone as well. I can well picture Hitler ranting in his bunker about the ineptitude of his forces as divisions and regiments fail to stand up to Soviet corps which are 3 or 9 times their size. Take the doomed ‘elite’ Herman Goring Pz Division which failed to withstand a one-two punch by Soviet forces both five times its size, the second punch administered by the best Russian general who was directing 1,000 AFC’s against it. ‘Such people weren’t worthy of National Socialism’ I dare say would be his response.

Much enjoyed and many thanks for your labours.

[jasonbroomer]

Sometime many moons ago (Nov?) you lamented about the effectiveness of the German 75mm gun versus the 76mm Soviet artillery piece.

The 75mm infantry gun is a small barrel direct fire cannon, whereas the Russian 76mm could be used indirectly as well as with open sights. As such the latter would have been far more effective though much greedier with ammunition. I remember from playing Squad Leader years ago that the 75mm IG was pretty useless compared to artillery barrages!

[jasonbroomer]

I empathise with your frustration on logistics. From a programming perspective the logistic process must struggle horribly with the ‘travelling salesman problem’. Computers cannot do this well, there are just too many permutations to assess a good route - 30 supply depots will involve 30! (I.e. 30 factorial calculations which is literally an astronomically large number) to calculate the most effective route.

As it happens I think the system reflects the actual difficulty in running logistics (viz the Russians today showing how not to do it). There seems to be a dark art to it which I am enjoying unpuzzling. It is I agree very frustrating though

Note that an important extra dimension is added by the ability to set a units supply priority. You can set a corps at priority 4 which is fine if the supply is to hand, a nightmare if it is not as the unit will send out supply trucks wide and far in search of the demanded supply.

I am playing my first HtH against MSAG at the moment and in the midst of my first winter. I am finding that alternating unit supply to between 1 and 2 is enough to keep the troops happy(ish) while forcing me to curtail activity with them.

Supply in the army is usually a mess. It is of no coincidence that terms such as FUBAR and SNAFU all stem from the military

[ITAKLinus]

Thanks for the beatiful AAR.


I feel your statements about logistics closely resemble my impressions. Beware, I still play with the 1.02.25 but I don't think it has changed much?

The entire logistical system is quite skewed to be honest. There are many bizarre things happening, which is somehow fine in such a huge game, but what bothers me the most is the apparent impossibility to control a lot of very key aspects.


In general, I perceive the entire relationship logistics-economy totally wrong for the axis side. There is literally no influence of the economy in strategic decisions and most of the time you have extravagant logistical constraints which you cannot influence a bit. The whole business should be a little bit more balanced between logistics and industry.


WITPAE is a masterpiece precisely because it has an incredible amount of absurd things going on but the whole picture seems just right and puts you in front of many tradeoffs. When you reach october '44 as japanese as I am now, for example, the general choice is between 'bad' and 'very bad', sometimes with the option of 'awfully horrendous' and you have to cope with that.

In WITE it seems I can run tanks as if I were Saudi Arabia. Got the weekly production of the most forgotten MG, but no simulation whatsoever of the underlying economical aspects behind that MG being produced. And all this with a logistical system which is quite convoluted in its reasonings.