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T19 revisited

It occurs to me I may have jumped the gun on the last T19, what with the most recent German turn being T19. So...some other items of interest:



You may notice that most of central and southern Russia are only receiving moderate rain, as opposed to drenching, crushing heavy rain.

I am less concerned with this than it might seem I should be. That's because the heavy mud will stick around. Heavy mud takes a moment to "dry out", even after the heavy rain goes. In the fall, it is usually the November freeze that returns everything to clear and light snow that does it, not a gradual reversion to light mud and eventually clear like the spring. Since I'm expecting a freeze anyway, all that matters for now is that the mud is still around.

Which it is, for now:



The other big item to talk about is the OOB.



The biggest item of note is the soviet OOB. Conventional wisdom has it that so long as the soviets are below 3M, they Germans can advance everywhere, but after crossing 3M things start getting geometrically harder for the Germans in chunks of 300-400k soviets. By 4M life is going to be difficult in many places, and by 5M the Germans will likely only be able to operate effectively in one AG's area. By 6M the war is going the other direction, even if a few bright flares make it seem otherwise for a moment here and there.

The mud season will represent the Soviet's first real chance to drive their fielded numbers above 3M against an aggressive opponent, and the higher the better. My apparent OOB is lower at the moment because I've been taking advantage of the mud to rotate some of my battered units into the reserve where they can refit and recover far better than on or near the line. I am confident that when the mud ends, I'll have more than 3M on the field and be able to mount a much stouter defense. On top of which, at the end of November Stavka releases half a million men for the winter counter-attack, which generally combines with the weather to put a nail in the coffin of German operations until spring. (This game with it's Leningrad situation may see a rare exception to that.)

My own goal is to build into the low-mid 4M range in December, outpacing my historical counterparts for build up. With the situation sitting as it is in terms of VP and Leningrad under threat of a winter campaign, I certainly need to build up effectively and well or this war will end in '42.

The other major item here is the panzer count. While the German overall strength is a little low due to the bleeding of this offensive, the most notable item is the panzers. While they aren't the ultimate gauge of German power, they are a decent marker for German explosiveness and worth keeping an eye on. On the up side, the overall count is lower than it often is the case, so the PGs got pretty worn down - which, given they've quite handily outdone their historical counterparts seems like a pretty good trade.

The downside is that the mud season is giving them time to recover, bot in terms of replacements and in terms of getting damaged and broken down tanks running again. 1500 already and more to follow, November will see the panzerwaffe at it's strongest since the early days of the invasion. For the obvious reasons, I find this less than thrilling.

This is fascinating stuff! What would you rate your chances at holding Moscow and Leningrad, and what are your preliminary plans for the winter counter-offensive?

Moscow will hold, probably without any serious threat. The last belt of heavy woods and swamps to the west is safe. Having had time to to dig in and reinforce, it wouldn't be impenetrable (nothing is at this point in the war), but would be very slow going and would end with the panzers and supporting infantry burnt to near nothingness when the blizzard hit just for a few hexes. A drive out of Tula would be possible, but both risky and unlikely to do more but gain vanity points for seeing the Kremlin through the field glasses. Crossing the river would be rough, then a drive up through the light woods and snow, dragging an expanding flank behind, only to be caught out away form the logistics base come winter. Not to say the Germans couldn't throw a pair of sixes so to speak, but the odds are strongly against a three to five week campaign - and that's all the Germans have before the snow gets very heavy - producing anything. Bobo knows this as well.

Leningrad, if it were anywhere but Leningrad, would be in a similar boat. As it stands, if the Germans really want it they have a decent chance. It'll cost. It'll be a slow, gradual, tank and casualty burning affair that might not even pay off with a capture until January, but as the one spot in Russia I can't simply smother the offensive in troops to join the snow it can be done.

As for my winter offensive...well...three can keep a secret if two are dead, right?

T20

In an extremely odd weather pattern, low pressure fronts move pver northern Russia, drenching it in heavy rain and keeping it in a state of heavy mud. This is a bit of a double edged sword. The German offense isn't stopped by time so much as it's stopped by the snow building up to the point where supply and maneuver become close to impossible. The snow can't start building up until, well, it snows. Now, on most of the front I'm more than happy to keep rebuilding formations - we cross the 3M OOB mark - and start laying the most tentative of ground work for a winter offensive in a month or so. But up north near Leningrad is the one place the germans can build faster thanks to me not having enough divisions on the isthmus. Which means they'll be hitting their attacks with extra time to prepare the spearheads for the inevitable mile by mile slugging will be, and still have the same amount of time before the snow gets thick. Enough that they can probably continue - slowly, so slowly - to push once the blizzard comes. Which means the end for Leningrad in time.

Down south, the snow and cold comes, and with it rock hard ground with little more than a dusting of the white stuff, ideal for panzers and trucks to move over. This is the moment of danger. If any of Bobo's spearheads were exposed they'd be key targets for spoiling attacks...but alas they're not.

I wait with trepidation to see where he'll move. Well, besides Leningrad.

-------

But that isn't great for AARing, so, a look at a little used tool that can in many ways tell you why you're falling apart even though you think you're doing the right thing:

The logistics phase report! (Cue Monty Python cheering)



There are people who read this religiously. I don't. I don't think it requires a review every turn or anything (then, you can see how this match is turning out, so maybe my habits aren't the ones to emulate?), but it is a useful way to look under the hood...at EVERYTHING.



You probably don't need all of that, but I would like to call attention to the freight tab. You can, at a glance, see if your armies are getting the supplies and replacements you think they should be getting. You can see here that most of my people are (I'm just losing the old fashioned way), though the 29th army is a bit short. They're in a field of mud with crap roads and no nearby rail net for depots, so no surprise there, but this tab can both draw you eye to problems on the quick and let you know the overall health of your supply network. Hint: when you start the war, it sucks.

You can also take a look at what your theaters are consuming, if that interests you (the continuation war has settled down a bit, but is still eating away every week.)



And look for items of production interest - I don't find this as helpful as the production screen, but it does show you things that aren't captured there, like the arch-imperialists paltry lend lease contributions and the fact my Leningrad truck factory is not producing anymore, what with the whole "we're relying on men in boats to feed us" situation.

T21-22

"Alea Iacta Est"



The inclement weather finally breaks as we go in to the tail end of November, with the ground freezing hard (the weather flips in the soviet phase, giving them a historically accurate prediction advantage on conditions...they know the Germans will be fighting in the current conditions, while the Germans can only take a best guess at what will come next) and the armies facing each other.

Whatever moves were going to be made to set up the entry to winter have happened. Formations are where they're going to be, committed now to whatever major decisions each of us made. 2,000 ready panzers bring the panzerwaffe to a strength not seen since early August, while 3.2M men in the field represents the Red Army reaching a strength not yet seen in the war.

At this point I don't know where PG4 is, or if PG2 is considering a final thrust. I can't fo anything more about the first, and suspect I don't have enough to stop them, just to slow them down badly. The latter I've been screening and defending out of immediate reach, leaving him with the poor option of advancing off his bases in the heavy mud, sucking away combat power and supplies only for me to get the first crack at his exposed formations come the freeze, or sitting still and letting me build strength while putting a buffer in place that will burn the panzers early in a drive.

It doesn't really matter any more. I placed my bets as best I could and Bobo placed his. What's in motion now will fight into January before it faces any significant change. Now all that's left is to see where the dice land...

T23

And the shots have been called. A renewed northern German offensive for Leningrad, which I will lose in due time. Not quickly, not cheaply, and it'll keep PG4 and plenty of infantry busy for a couple months, but I will lose it in the end.

Elsewhere, it looks like German ambitions will be limited to grabbing Kalinin and then setting their lines for the winter. They are admittedly some pretty impressive lines to set. Kerch closes off the Crimea, Rostov and Voroshilovgrad form a strong anchor in eastern Ukraine, and the temptation of the apparently more weakly held central steppes is tempered by them being a bit of a supply desert for everyone. Tracing north, PG2 has built a strong defense near Tula and will likely have a few weeks more to get into fighting trim before I can really assemble a powerful winter counterattack, while PG3 does the same for Kalinin. Up north, the last advances before I could solidify the front put the Germans in Valdai.

Dug to high fort levels, the chances to catch and overturn German gains on the cheap are fading (likely faded) and this winter will become a deliberate paced affair rather than a sweeping storm of retribution on over-exposed Germans.

So we wait. And we build. And we are relieved to see that we don't need as many troops in Iran.



But at the same time, a few attacks go in. Not for any great strategic ends or to herald the coming of a winter storm, but for more prosaic reasons.

First, I know that at some point I'll have to crack some German lines. Germans in the open are meat for the grinder. Germans in level one forts are real positions. Germans fortified to two or above require a deliberate operation to move. The fewer positions fortified to 2+ when the blizzards come, the more exposed the German line as a whole is and the greater my immediate tactical options. So when I can knock a position down cheap today to save doing it expensive tomorrow, why not?

Second, these little attacks should help cement Bobo's decision to stay on the defense. Each one means a unit that will take two to four weeks to regain it's CPP, which means less assets to attack with.

Third, it get's me a head start on blooding the Red Army. A chance for divisions to gain some confidence and build towards being awarded the coveted Guards banner is always helpful. The earlier you can get to work on the victories that bring reform, the better off you are.

And of course, when it comes right down to it, in the long run I have far more men than the Germans...trading at two to one is a net win for me, even more so as the retreating Germans leave behind precious and hard to replace heavy weapons.

T24

The single most important part of any T24 is this:



500k men on the eve of the offensive can turn even a terribly battered red army around. It will soon be accompanied by troops arriving from Iran and the Far East, which will combine to rapidly build up my forces. I had been quietly preparing for this by moving several formations into refit status on railyards (M60 is the master of this; see his work for better examples) and by the much simpler expedient of spending a good deal of AP keeping some division shells ready to receive in the strategic reserve. The result should be, depending on how well I've done, that those 500k men will efficiently fill fighting formations and not get dissipated across the front and into dozens of less relevant support units. You might say setting this up is the most important admin task of T23...

I actually have this set up as a phased release over the next few weeks to be able to conduct some final local pivots after I see how Bobo responds, but still, a decent amount of troops are coming forward for use by mid-December. Combined with the relative rest period of November, my blood and tears budget is going up and should be able to support the initial brutal costs of breaking down the position the Germans spent a month and a half buidling.



Initially I didn't plan on beginning operation Temnyy Les until December 7th or so, but...



Strike while the iron is hot. Or in this case bitterly cold.



The initial moves aren't major; they're not intended to be. Just to punch some holes in the line and force the redeployment of German mobile formations through the blizzard. That movement will deadline more tanks than I ever could directly. Most attacks knock back a regiment here, a division there, with hopefully no immediately discernible pattern yet. Some fail, but in failing the German reserves coming forward ruin themselves as well:



Near Tula we are altogether more dedicated. It takes three attacks, 4500 dead, and a boatload of burning BT class tanks, but by the end the 18th panzer division and some of the 17th panzer division's reserve regiments are in tatters, their frozen tanks left abandoned in the snow. Those formations will struggle to recover this month, and likely won't reach their peak strength again until February or March. Not with the pressure that's coming their way. I fully expect a counterattack to bleed me, but there are echelons behind this ready to take advantage of that opportunity.

Fantastic AAR

What do you do with the Soviet air force over the winter of 41/42?

Mostly I keep the majority back in the reserve, with a smaller element of bombers and fighters forward in case a break in the weather comes through.

T25

My weathermen assured me the blizzard would reach the front this week. It stalled out about a hundred miles too far east, leading to a quiet week where I mostly just poked more holes in German weak points as those reserves arrived. This does have my favorite deadpan event description in the game however:



More importantly, we can see the rush to cover the holes last week drained a lot of power out of the panzerwaffe while they marched through the blizzards to meet the newly generated holes. I secretly suspect a lot of this is down PG1's way where the logistics suck to begin with, and that unfortunately PGs 2,3, and 4 are in better shape than that number implies.



Since the rest of the turn is quiet, lets talk on the four big pillars of the winter in my mind. These can change in priority and effect for each game, but some blend of them is always present.

1) VPs. Usually not a very big deal, since the Germans can probably reclaim most VP cities you take (maybe not in front of Moscow), but for me a massive deal staring down the barrel of a 657 score and on track to lose Leningrad, If I don't knock down some of these VP cities there's a very good chance that the basic '42 target cities will end me. Even if Bobo comes back to get these, he'll still suffer the permanent negative points from my capture bonuses and then we'll fight over the same VPs rather than new ones.

2) The '42 start point. Rather self evidently, where the winter ends is where '42 begins. I'd rather not start with enemies 70 miles from Moscow or ready to spring into the Caucasus. Unlike '41, the Germans have a full six months to make good, so even at slower rates of advance they can chew up the distance. I would like to impose essentially a six week delay on to the '42 campaign in most sectors and of course render Moscow impractical.

3) The Red Army. The Red Army has to do two things. It needs to build its strength to at least 5M by spring (so you can't be TOO profligate with soviet lives) and build up a core of guards divisions while the wins are...well, they won't be easy this winter, but at least while you aren't getting your teeth shoved down your throat.

4) The German Army. While you shouldn't expect major encirclements, steady pressure needs to keep the Heer down. The little corporal will start realizing his error and sending troops east by January, and then OKH will release force for Case Blue as time goes on...unless you want juggernaut coming your way, you need to crack the Germans one early and then keep grinding them up. This time I have a few select formations in mind that I really don't want being in offensive shape when the spring rolls around.

T26

And now the blizzard rolls over the front and we begin the offensive near Tula in earnest, looking to recapture the city for both political reasons and to secure Moscow from a southern hook. It also has the added benefit of giving me a chance to catch most of PG2 in open terrain and relying on one...maybe two...shaky rail lines. A good chance to start seriously hurting the panzers. You may notice that some of my commands are inter-mixed; there is a method to this madness, as it won't be until January that I get my third Assault Front.



Elsewhere, I look for attacks of opportunity. Either to hammer on exposed panzers from Bobo's counter attacks:


Or just because there was a weak point and this will keep the Germans spreading themselves thin or accept the chance that the loss starts exploding into a real problem while gaining ym boys some confidence. Regiments and weak or exposed divisions are favored targets. In other places, the force density is too high for that, but creating local challenges for the Germans can be done by breaking a strong position and then hitting the newly exposed unit with a second wave, leaving the German player with the poor choices of sending new troops there rather than where he wants to or feeding a greatly weakened unit back into the line where it will become a bleeding ulcer as it gets re-attacked every week and invariably loses.



(That may have been, in hindsight, a less than efficient allocation of forces)



But hey, dead Germans are hard to argue with.

T27

We're in the swing of things now. Unfortunately bobo has committed PG4 and significant supports to the Leningrad campaign, and my error from a dozen turns back of not weighting the area sufficiently is beginning to tell. The long slow death is upon us. AT least the weight means there are opportunities to knock around weaker German formations elsewhere as I finally manage to build a real front line near Valdai.



In addition, with the Germans racing to deal with the Tula problem, the smaller northern hook near Kalinin begins. As always the blizzard offensive is dancing in slow motion, setting a point where bobo has to consider withdrawing or losing his forces.



This cascades down to Tula, as we aim to push about the withdrawing Germans and seal the fate of the city in the next few weeks. As I mentioned above, this is an entirely different type of fight than the flowing dynamic Axis offensives of the early war - it's a smashmouth operational fight where slowly but surely the German line is battered in succession until it has no choice but to withdraw as its divisions bleed out. Meanwhile, fresh soviet echelons rotate in to ensure that once the front starts to fall apart there won't be a reprieve until they fall back to the next major depot - in this case, Kaluga. Here the 18th panzer, much abused, folds yet again.



Meanwhile probing in the Kursk-Orel area leads me to believe that the supply net is not supporting the Germans here...or rather it did a couple weeks ago. Freshly organized formations march out of the Voronzeh staging areas to see if they can't push the Germans back on the cheap and add to the overall sense that AGC is collapsing.



All in all, the ground we're recovering is ahead of schedule everywhere except near Kalinnin, but more importantly we're just butchering the panzers. As the one tool that is essential to every German operation, using this time to keep the panzers suppressed is high on my priority list. I want them to be struggling to patch themselves back together with the replacement battalions this spring, not weighting a devastating and unparry-able thrust wherever they please. This sort of pressure can help that, as well as preventing Bobo from erecting impenetrable lines or sending out stinging counterattacks...whihc in turn means I can get very aggressive with.

T28

Alas that my weather luck couldn't last forever, the blizzards abated over much of Russia this week, with an odd outlier down south. This isn't optimal - the blizzard is really what obliterates German attempts at logistics - but it also isn't too bad. The heavy snow sticks around for a bit, providing useful venues for attack, hampering logistics, and most importantly shielding my own densely packed formations from any major maneuver based counter-attacks.

Of course, up north where the weather has been "good" for a couple weeks is a different story. The final paths to Leningrad were cut, and there's no way I'm opening them back up through corps of panzers and motor divisions in heavy terrain:



There are also few opportunities elsewhere in the mild snows up north, other than picking on the odd exposed regiment for it's own sake:



Meanwhile in the center, Bobo's withdrawal leaves us racing to catch up to his line. I chose to Isolate Tula for now rather than rout out the defending division, as I've already been building rails up to front with impunity, and I'm sure I can extend the supply network off Tula and forward rapidly as a result. I want those ten thousand Germans to die pointlessly, not lose a small chunk so that I'm one hex faster off the beat; especially not since my depot network in front of Moscow is strong.

None the less, I can't have Bobo setting his feet, so several armies that were previously in holding positions get put into attacks right up the gut, hopefully starting to unseat this new line Bobo's retreat just bought before it can really dig in:



Elsewhere, the supply desert in front of Orel-Kursk-Belgorod is vulnerable. I figure attacks here will either force Bobo to reinforce this front or give up major cities, and either one of those is a win. Dead Germans and victorious soviets are always nice too:



And then finally down south. I don't have great hopes for the South. The weather is milder, the winter shorter, my own supply situation more precarious. But I do need to do my best to pre-empt an easy case Blue, and that means eventually getting Rostov back and beating the crap out of the panzers if I can. This week's blizzard lets me start working on those goals:

T29

Soldiers of the Soviet Union, the time to avenge the suffering of the motherland is at hand! FORWARD!











So, that's exciting. Admittedly Rostov was a stroke of luck - the unit CV was poorly recon'd, so I attacked it expecting it to be much weaker, then it actually collapsed while repelling my first wave (lots of damaged elements), and a second attack just made sense.

Elsewhere we're mostly pursuing into the Axis withdrawal space. In some cases I'm just sending out feelers, letting the majority of the armies designated for operations rest and taking my bets that bobo won't sacrifice his panzer and infantry readiness in a sudden counter-attack. So just a few divisions go forward to secure the terrain for movement next week while the bulk of several armies recover. This is a Kalinnin example, but you can imagine similar actions elsewhere.



That being said, I think it's important to hit retreating Germans. If someone is willing to pay hexes for a breather, it seems like you should make sure they don't actually get a breather if it's possible. You can often catch a unit on the retreat and get favorable odds against otherwise strong units before they can set their feet.



It won't give you miracles, but it should help complicate German defensive efforts. This is often the realm of high mobility assets like cav and motorized formations, but there is one other way to buy some mobility: skis. It means not having a hefty tank or rifle brigade attached, but sometimes the ability to harry the Germans as they go and otherwise reposition for attacks is worth the cost in raw power.



And, of course, sometimes the "don't let them take a breather when they want it" mentality has to be scaled up a bit.

T30

Dire days up north. Only a matter of time now. It hurts to lose Leningrad, so it's on me to make the most of the fact that it has tied down PG4 throughout a good chunk of the winter...



That said, the pause across the rest of the front in November is really showing it's long term effects now. I had time to both assemble my assault formations for continuous pressure, and pre-build my logistics network virtually up to my initial objectives. Rather than needing to take a pause to consolidate, we are in position to continue pursuit and initiate the battles for our follow on obejctives.

Besides November, this helps highlight a key difference in WitE2 vs WitE1. In the first game it was "de rigeur" to fall back just enough to avoid the soviet hammer in the winter, encouraging an unrealistic view that you could conduct a general retreat and still be in pristine fighting condition.

In WitE2, not only can the soviets catch the Germans via a variety of means if they try for a mechanistic X hexes a turn formula, the act of retreating through the blizzard leaves those units in tatters. You can no longer take two steps back to be invincible, and a German player conceding ground has to carefully weigh giving up real space for a breather, taking a forward fight, or being caught in a bitter compromise where you lose men and space, but maybe not as many...unless it goes wrong.

This paradigm has played out in operations near Kaluga:



And also the central regions where the prebuilt railways have allowed us to gobble up the space in front of Kursk and Orel and slam right into the retreating Heer:





The converse of this is that you can only really pull of these moves as the Soviets if you've laid the groundwork for them. As mentioned earlier, this is one the unquantified effects of how November plays out...a resting Red Army is building up operational dynamism. Maybe not to the level of the Germans, but beyond it's usual capacity. In many ways the legs the reds have in January is direct reflection of what happened in November, even if the overall numbers of things like casualties and VPs seem to indicate otherwise.

I am confident at this point that this time-purchased explosive capacity will let me not just achieve my initial goals, but open up a series of third phase objectives near Moscow.

Thank you very much for a well written AAR. Looking forward to seeing it continue.

Thank you! It’s always nice to get feedback, and I’m always open to questions - of course, I can’t vouch for the answers being any smarter than the next guy’s, but so it goes...

ORIGINAL: erikbengtsson

Thank you very much for a well written AAR. Looking forward to seeing it continue.

+1

Great AAR - much appreciated by this fellow Red

Question: I haven't noticed you creating any cavalry corps yet? If understand the rules you are allowed a number of combat unit cavalry corps by December 1941. Is there any reason?

Also, will we be able to recreate the colourful Soviet Cavalry-Mechanized Groups? I am thinking they should/could be a corps level command (Soviet Army), but can't remember seeing anything about them in the manual.