warspite1ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
From experience, I know that it is wrong for the USSR to hold Berdiansk as part of its front line. When it falls - and it will fall - the Soviet position is much harder to hold. Getting units into the hex east of Berdiansk then becomes difficult and the frontline has just gotten another hex longer.ORIGINAL: warspite1
Jul/Aug 1942
Impulse: 9
At Berdiansk the odds are reduced to 2:1 +1 on the Blitzkrieg table - will that reduction by one column be vital??...
....NO!! its another 10(11) - the Soviet Army is destroyed and a breakthrough is possible.
The Germans play safe and do not occupy Stalino this impulse....
I prefer to hold Stalino with the two hexes south of it empty. The Germans have to enter the western-most hex and then wait another impulse to enter the next one. Correct play by the Germans would then be to attack the hex between Dnepropetrovsk and Stalino. The USSR rails units into Stalino, Rostov, and Kharkov. The rest of the USSR line stumbles backward to the Donets and Don.
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In your game I would have advanced into Stalino as the Germans. That would have given the USSR fits trying to find a unit to occupy the hex between Stalino and Rostov.
As in many tactical games the attacker has to locate the weak point and then roll up the rest of the line. When it is held, Berdiansk is the weak point almost all the time.
Given what happened earlier in the turn through being too greedy, I was not going to make the same mistake again! Would the Soviets be able to put my units out of supply had I done so? Possibly. But not worth the risk.
