RE: 1.04.36 KLilly vs Fulkerson T7

[horza66]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

I feel so disrupted I don't feel much like attacking anywhere or anything. But the game must go on so I do some good ratio delib. attacks
and get some Axis units to back up one hex. But nothing much moves anywhere this turn. Here's the OOB, losses, destroyed units,
and production for the turn.

Larry,

I've read your AARs with interest before, but this is the first time I've been moved to comment. This kind of experience for Soviet players in '42 is very common, and I've been through the disasters and resultant morale failures myself. I feel your pain.
You get all sorts of toys (corps) to play with, and after the horrendous events of '41 you feel payback of the blizzard turns should continue. Unfortunately this is entirely the wrong attitude. The German army still has one more good summer in it, and you have to prepare accordingly. You've obviously learnt well from your previous experiences in '41 - this is just the next lesson.
Hindsight, or Too Late Now Department: You should spend the last two turns of the blizzard tidying up your line, pulling out Reserve armies (at least three full strength) and all your Shock armies. Keep one Reserve army in each zone (north, centre, south) and the Shock armies in the centre. They are your strategic reserve. Guards divisions should withdraw into local reserves.
Corps: Tank and Rifle Corps should be Guards wherever possible, so use 2 Gds div/bde and 1 regular to form as many as you can. Concentrate Rifle Corps in your Shock Armies, and Tank Corps in Front reserves until Tank Armies are available.
Summer '42: Wait for the German breakthrough and swamp it with Reserve armies. Look for an opportunity to hit the spearhead or safe flank with your shock armies. Perform local counter-attacks elsewhere in the line, but do not step out of your fort double/triple line. At this point the Germans will be looking for opportunities for the back-hand blow - do not give them to him. Attrit, but do not conduct offensive operations.
Autumn mud '42: Start planning your offensive arm. The important thing is not to learn from the Germans - they use Finesse, you must use Mass. Rather than committing Armies to an offensive you must commit Fronts. I use 2 Shock + 1 Tank Army in a Front command, and usually have two of these. These are my breakthrough units (yes, a front is a unit in Soviet scales) - I keep independent Tank Armies for exploitation above this. Later you can add artillery divisions to taste.
Winter '42: Look for a target. It doesn't have to be a Stalingrad - not many humans will give you the opportunity. You don't even need to form a pocket (though it's nice). Where did he put his allies? They have to go somewhere, and they're always the weakest units on the line. Hit them with the steamroller, force him to commit his reserves. Expect your Tank Corps to get bounced around, but hit back with your Rifle Corps - bleed him. Plan to withdraw and refit all offensive units in the mud.
Summer '43: Watch for a German offensive, and swamp it with Reserves. When he runs out of steam, grab the initiative and keep it for the rest of the war.

Executive summary: Bide your time. Build the right tools and you will be able to dismantle him. Do not lose heart.

[bigbaba]

@larry,

regardles of what you did wrong or right i have the greatest respect for you.

you still play in situations in which most of the other players (me included) would surrender.

great fighting spirit.[&o]

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: horza66
Larry,
I've read your AARs with interest before, but this is the first time I've been moved to comment. This kind of experience for Soviet players in '42 is very common, and I've been through the disasters and resultant morale failures myself. I feel your pain.

Thanks for your kind words. I guess I was just having an off day or something. This game will go on. I've been through worse situations than this. All is not lost. Thanks for posting by the way.

ORIGINAL: horza66
You get all sorts of toys (corps) to play with, and after the horrendous events of '41 you feel payback of the blizzard turns should continue. Unfortunately this is entirely the wrong attitude. The German army still has one more good summer in it, and you have to prepare accordingly. You've obviously learnt well from your previous experiences in '41 - this is just the next lesson.

Yeah, I'm thinking the Axis army is still dangerous myself. I thought about maybe extending the winter '42 - '43 offensive but I've been looking at the CV's of the Axis units and I'm wondering why he isn't attacking me on his own. Lots of his units have the moxie to do some damage and I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

ORIGINAL: horza66
Hindsight, or Too Late Now Department: You should spend the last two turns of the blizzard tidying up your line, pulling out Reserve armies (at least three full strength) and all your Shock armies. Keep one Reserve army in each zone (north, centre, south) and the Shock armies in the centre. They are your strategic reserve. Guards divisions should withdraw into local reserves.

I agree......it's time to start thinking defensively and maybe build some forts to excellerate the strength of the hexes held. Also, I like your idea of having reserve armies to put out brush fires. I'm wondering if KLilly is going to concentrate his tanks still and hit some weak spot of miine. I hate it when he does that.

ORIGINAL: horza66
Corps: Tank and Rifle Corps should be Guards wherever possible, so use 2 Gds div/bde and 1 regular to form as many as you can. Concentrate Rifle Corps in your Shock Armies, and Tank Corps in Front reserves until Tank Armies are available.

I've been building rifle Corps like mad but I'm perpetually short of AP's so there aren't as many as are needed yet. I've put the defenders against the Finns on static mode since they don't usually do anything at all up there. That gave some much needed AP's so I'll be able to build more Corps units.

ORIGINAL: horza66
Summer '42: Wait for the German breakthrough and swamp it with Reserve armies. Look for an opportunity to hit the spearhead or safe flank with your shock armies. Perform local counter-attacks elsewhere in the line, but do not step out of your fort double/triple line. At this point the Germans will be looking for opportunities for the back-hand blow - do not give them to him. Attrit, but do not conduct offensive operations.

I like the idea of attacking the Axis line and then pulling back into the safety of the forts before the turn is over. I have no idea where the next Axis attack will come from but I suspect he's going to use his tanks in a major way again. He still have them gathered in the south so I'm guessing that's where they will operate. Although he CAN rail them to somewhere else entirely. Moscow isn't out of the question.

ORIGINAL: horza66
Autumn mud '42: Start planning your offensive arm. The important thing is not to learn from the Germans - they use Finesse, you must use Mass. Rather than committing Armies to an offensive you must commit Fronts. I use 2 Shock + 1 Tank Army in a Front command, and usually have two of these. These are my breakthrough units (yes, a front is a unit in Soviet scales) - I keep independent Tank Armies for exploitation above this. Later you can add artillery divisions to taste.

Farfarer and I have switched sides so I'm now the active player in that game and I must say I really am shocked at the small size of the Axis Armies. Just a handful of divisions. I'm used to about two dozen divisions in the Soviet Army. It's really a different combat climate.
I like your use of the word finesse as applied to the Axis. That does seem to describe them. I've had trouble getting the separate arty units to receive all their tubes. I remember building one arty division and even five turns later it was still at 48% of it's TOE for 122mm tubes. I don't think it's armaments points holding it back from 100% TOE but I can't imagine what else it could be.

ORIGINAL: horza66
Winter '42: Look for a target. It doesn't have to be a Stalingrad - not many humans will give you the opportunity. You don't even need to form a pocket (though it's nice). Where did he put his allies? They have to go somewhere, and they're always the weakest units on the line. Hit them with the steamroller, force him to commit his reserves. Expect your Tank Corps to get bounced around, but hit back with your Rifle Corps - bleed him. Plan to withdraw and refit all offensive units in the mud.

Yeah, I have big plans for the Axis Allies. I like to eliminate them because they don't reconstitute. That makes the Axis even shorter on units for the front line. There doesn't seem to be enough Axis units to form a front line AND a second defensive line behind the first one. It's tough finding enough units to be able to rotate them out of the front line to refit from time to time. Maybe I can take advantage of that somehow. The Russian units have enough and to spare most of the time. After KLilly's having pocketed so many Soviet units there's places in the front line where we're down to just one thin line of defenders but I intend to remedy that soon.

ORIGINAL: horza66
Summer '43: Watch for a German offensive, and swamp it with Reserves. When he runs out of steam, grab the initiative and keep it for the rest of the war.

I dred the '43 summer season because the Axis is still dangerous. He will attack somewhere I'm pretty sure, he's got the strength for it. And God knows he has the units with high enough CV's to do it. Part of the problem is the Crimea doesn't have the active rail lines for supply to expand very far for the Soviets. I'm looking forward to the time when the initiative is with the Soviets.

ORIGINAL: horza66
Executive summary: Bide your time. Build the right tools and you will be able to dismantle him. Do not lose heart.

Thank you for all your excellent advice and keep those good ideas coming. You can post stuff that will help KLilly too if you'd like. I like to be fair to my opponents. KLilly is one of the better opponents and posts stuff here from time to time.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: bigbaba
@larry,
regardles of what you did wrong or right i have the greatest respect for you.
you still play in situations in which most of the other players (me included) would surrender.
great fighting spirit.[&o]

Thanks for your post dude. Encouragement from people like you keep this game going. Actually this is one of the better games I've had with KLilly and he and I go way back. We're veterans, KLilly and I, of the TOAW FITE scenario. So this game is starting to feel like a continuation of that contest. I'm considering doing an AAR contrasting TOAW and WITE to depict the simularities and differences in play of both of them. A future project.

But games like mine with KLilly just HAVE to go on. If only to see what happens in the summer '43 time period. Maybe WITE has some bugs that only show up with the passage of time. I've patched up to 1.05.032 and everything and I'm appreciative of the changes and efforts to make the game better. AAR's are a gold mine for the development team to find things that can be changed.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the front lines in T92 after some recon action has just taken place. All the Soviet airbases are bordered in yellow.

[larryfulkerson]

And I know a lot of you guys were sending me messages about the captured stuff, "What have you captured so far....", that kind of
thing so I thought I'd post the Production Screen filtered to the captured stuff. Some of the captured stuff is already
distributed out to the units.

[larryfulkerson]

T93: This is the front lines after some Soviet recon is applied:

[larryfulkerson]

T94: This front line image is almost identical to the T93 front line image but I'm posting it here to show any differences to those of you who are keeping up with the movement of the units etc.

[larryfulkerson]

T95:  mud turn and nothing happened that I know about and on the other hand there were some spectacular losses:

There's only the mention of two partisan battles and nothing else in the way of combat So I have no idea what caused these losses.

[larryfulkerson]

T96 is a mud turn so nothing happened. Also, did I happen to mention that I've upgraded to the 1.05.037 beta version?

EDIT: T97 is also a mud turn so nothing happened in it either.

EDIT2: T98 is also a mud turn so nothing happened in it either.

[larryfulkerson]

T99: This is the situation in the NorthWest Front area. We're both waiting for the other shoe to drop I think. Maybe I should spread my guys out more. Get more forts building.

[larryfulkerson]

I found a bunch of air bases still assigned to STAVKA so even though it's going to take the rest of the night I'm going to assign those
air bases to some higher HQ within range and maybe my losses will go down.

[horza66]

Larry,
 
  A few detail things I think that might help you:
 
1) It looks like you have a single defence line in significant portions of the front. You're also strongly stacked. I may have missed it, but did you merge all your rifle brigades into divisions? I find a mass of these useful in '42. Firstly to carpet in front of a German assault, and secondly to help form a fort triple line. Two lines of brigades, behind the main line, all digging like fury with the backing of a mass of construction battalions in the Army HQ. When the Germans form up to assault (you have to recon heavily every turn), the main line retreats a step and a brigade advances into the forward fort to form a skirmish line. If the assault point is perfectly clear you can reinforce the skirmish line with a division as necessary - you want the German infantry to have to use up a deliberate attack on the skirmish line. The main line will get hammered back by the second wave of deliberate attack, but will hopefully just retreat into the third line. At this point he's likely going to need to commit panzers to breach the third line, severely reducing his exploitation MPs. On the turn after the assault the rifle brigades move to carpet the spearhead, choking it as you move in the Reserve armies to swamp, and the Shock armies to hit the spearhead and swap men for tanks.
  I'm not sure whether you can find the units to move to a triple line defence very easily, but it should be doable over the course of the winter - you can expect a repeat of Operation Zitadelle, and you're going to need to absorb and throw it back to be able to move on to the offensive in '43.
 
2. Glad you're tidying up the VVS. With a bit of love and cultivation they can grow into a real Triffid for the Germans to deal with. I withdraw everything to rear areas in '41, putting all the biplanes into National Reserve as effectively training units. Once I have 200+ fighters with experience in the 60s I'll upgrade (always use manual upgrades) and commit them to a sector. Assuming they're holding their own as air cover I'll then do the same for any decent Shturmoviks and bombers in that sector. Take another evening and review what you have. Retire poor units into reserve, and try and ensure you have 200+ decent fighters and 200+ IL2s per front. There's nothing worse for exploiting panzers than being interdicted every hex by hundreds of FBs.
 
3. I realise the mud turns are a bit boring, but your sake and for that of the AAR you should take a close look at the length of the front. You should be trying to identify any opportunities for victories you can find. Attrition is the key here - hit him anywhere you can, even if it leads nowhere. Get your victories for Guards promotions, and for a decent kill ratio. He doesn't have enough units to cover the front anyway - force him to leave no weak points and gaps will start to open up.
 
I think you liked my aphorism about the Germans using Finesse, and the Soviets Mass - that's from the bad old days of pushing counters around the Fire in the East board. Here's another one : in 1942 the Germans can win Anywhere, but not Everywhere. The trick is to make sure you're winning battles where he is not.
 
I'll be interested to see what KLilly has planned for the Snow. The temptation will be strong to get a breach and another pocket before the Blizzard conditions slow down his panzers. (Bear in mind he *must* keep getting pockets to prevent you just steamrollering him with sheer numbers). You should be ready with reserves to meet that threat. I'm very suspicious of his voluntary withdrawal in the North. It didn't shorten his line that significantly - like Admiral Akbar, I sense a trap.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: horza66
... did you merge all your rifle brigades into divisions?

yes.

ORIGINAL: horza66
I'll be interested to see what KLilly has planned for the Snow.

me too.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the OOB, losses, destroyed units, and production:

[larryfulkerson]

T100: Here's the front lines after the application of a lot of recon everywhere.

[larryfulkerson]

T102: I've been doing roughly the same things these past 10 turns or so: Open the turn and scan the Logistics report then open the Commanders Report and sort the "%TOE" column so that you get an ascending column of your units. Click on the "Prtsn" filter to eliminate the Partisans from the listing. I've been putting those units 89% or lower on refit. And the units 90% or more are going on reserve or ready in that order. According to the scroll thumb about 1/10th of our units are on refit. Which means all the others are supposedly combat-ready.

[larryfulkerson]

Before I moved any land units I thought I'd go through the airbases looking for groups to move to the NR ( those with planes less than 50% of their total planes, in other words planes that won't fly this turn ), and I found an air base that needed more planes on it and clicked on the wrong line and ooops there was all of a sudden an LI-2 transport at an IAD air base. I gotta remember to move that next turn or I might not get any use out of it at all.

[larryfulkerson]

I bought a bunch of Rifle Divisions and a few Rifle Brigades. I'm in the process of building a bunch of Rifle Corps units.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's my attacks such as they are. I'll post the losses after this.