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T122

The cowardly and gamey Bolsheviks took advantage of the last clear turn to leap forward knowing that I could not retaliate. Breakthroughs north of Moscow required wins in combats all starting at less than 1:1. At least that's how I remember it, and I can't check by looking at Brian's AAR.

Still, even with the Brianites going on the offensive losses were only 13.7 to 31.7K. The LW played a blinder, losing only 15 a/c (8 recce) whilst the Reds lost 445.

I block the holes

In the south, the Evil Ones even surround 2 german inf xx and 1 pz xx. They will just have to sit there for 4 weeks.

ORIGINAL: sillyflower

T122

The cowardly and gamey Bolsheviks took advantage of the last clear turn to leap forward knowing that I could not retaliate.

EDITOR'S NOTE: It is only fair, as the editor of SF's memoirs, to point out that he uses the same tactic when playing the Soviets, but only in a clever and masterful way.

T123

Still mud so not any real action apart from Brian doing weak attacks vs the isokated pz xx. losses for whole turn 9.8K to 31.3. Air 0 to 127.
Wehrmacht only 60K below max TOE. I assume that max TOE is with all units @ 100% TOE. Does any reader know? G now have 235K men and 600K arms awaiting the call for action.

T124

More action-free mud.Losses 10.2 to 34.3K. Air 5 to 134. Total axis reserves now 612K men and 878K arms pts.

T125

The last of the mud before the roller-coaster of the Brianites' winter O start. I have just finishing Glantz's book on Operation Mars aka Zhukov's greatest defeat which took place at the same time as the Russian offensive @ Stalingrad, so I'm in the right frame of mind: not that I expect the battle for Rzhev to start this winter in our game. I also recommend 'The Rzhev Slaughterhouse' by Svetlana Gerasimova which puts Mars into the proper context of a 15 month struggle rather than a stand alone operation which is how Glantz saw it.

Losses 9.9K to 36.3K and air 5 to 86 as I supply the surrounded troops and move up the last of the rescue forces.

T126. Let the fun begin again



As predicted by AppendixSE, the Supreme Leader (actually it was me not Mrs M as she has no interest in either war or games) decided that the plan to rescue the trapped divs should become the plan to reinforce them and to turn the tables on the over-ambitious Brianites. The highlighted combat produced an extraordinary result. G attacks on R units should normally produce higher G losses than R (and vice versa), even if the defender has to retreat through a ZOC. The overall losses here look more like what I would have expected in the summer of '41. I can't recall ever seeing such a result in or after '42 in my own games or in an AAR. Still, I can't complain [8D].

All is quiet elsewhere, though the landsers prepare for the Bolsheviks to make a nuisance of themselves.

Whole turn casualties 12.6 to 58K; air 12 to 194.

The 2 reinforcement divs, LAH and 2nd FJ, head to Moscow area to try to ensure that front remains static.

T127

The Bolsheviks open the pocket, and I promptly shut it again.

I was wondering about the 6 routed Tank XXX, why did you chose to rout them? Is is a case of biting off more than you can chew? I thought pocketing Russia's armoured forces is a priority at this point of the war.

The Bolsheviks open the pocket, and I promptly shut it again.

They might be lukewarm capitalist [:'(]

Welcome to the forum and to the AAR TunganNinja [:)]

Good question. It is better to capture than to rout at any stage in the war. It would have been more fun to put them in a secure pocket, but I routed them because otherwise they would just escape when Brian opened the pocket. I will be explaining my winter strategy soon.

Waouh! A big fight 1276/1021 AFV. Rare to see both sides over 1000 AFV.

But always impressed with the recovery of the russians! Even badly beaten, they come back...

A massive Romanian-Hungarian joint offensive is launched in the far south sends the Brianites reeling back.

As promised, I set out my plan and the reasoning behind it.

Brian has 3 real shortages. In order of decreasing importance:

1 manpower
2 time
3 trucks

He also has 2 big problems;

1 A large but ineffective air force
2 A full strength Wehrmacht

My plan is therefore simple - make the shortages worse whilst trying to ensure that the 2 problems remain.

Manpower


It seems from looking at the Russian OOB that they currently get about 60K men per week. The m/power centre multiplier goes down in Jan '44 from 35 to 30: a drop of 14%. However, some of the men come from the disabled pool so an overall drop of 10% to 54K p/w seems reasonable. In my experience, a full on offensive results in weekly R losses of 80K+. The R OOB at end of T129 (Dec '43) is 6.16M so a net loss of 100K per month will not be sustainable.

The axis multipliers also go down in Jan - from 8 to 7 which a similar %age reduction. However, the axis currently has 600K men in the kitty and the axis forces do get a lot more reinforcements than the soviets.

To put the numbers above in context, in the last 4 turns (up to end G T129) during which fighting has been largely confined to the area SW of Penza, axis losses have been about 83K to 284K R. New axis manpower (excluding reinforcements) has been about 105K, R perhaps 240K and the current OOBs are G 4.32M (+ about 1.6M allies)and R 6.17M. I can keep this up forever. The current loss ratio of 1:3.4 will destroy the Brianite army. The Bolsheviks cannot even afford a loss ratio of even 2R to 1 axis given the reserve m/power numbers, and I've not seen that in any game except perhaps where the axis forces are being isolated and captured in large numbers.

Redundant

Time

Only 96 turns left, of which I think 22 will be mud which means only 74 'useful' ones. I think I have 274 or 275 VPs which means Brian needs to recapture 1 VP per non-mud turn to avoid a major defeat (to add to the auto-defeat in this VC260 game [;)]). Hanging onto 200+ VPs is therefore now my target which means I have a reason for carrying on other than just because Brian wants to. Of course, I am assuming that Brian will want to carry on for that long but he's refused earlier offers to give up.

Trucks

Clearly the least of Brian's shortages but not to be ignored. He seems to have quite a tank/mech heavy army, not least as a proportion of his forces. This makes perfect sense given that his factories will be churning out AFVs much faster than his baby factories produce fresh recruits. He was already bemoaning a shortage of trucks in another AAR or part of the forum when I think we were in mid '43. From memory of his screenshot he only had only 80 or 90K trucks in the pool and needed about 20% more, but I may be wrong. On the other hand,his army is only about 70% of normal size for this time, and hasn't done anything much in '43 so perhaps the problem isn't so bad at the moment.

In my experience the position only gets worse - particularly when the Russians go on the offensive which is what he's now starting to do, so he will have some mobility/supply problems going forward. If he does go forward anyway.

Brian's 2 problems

The first is the Wehrmacht. The Soviet army at end of T128 was 6.16M vs Wehrmacht of 4.31 - only 143% bigger. I think it was Chaos who wrote that it needed to be at least twice as big to get anywhere.

The performance of the Red a/f has been very poor. I think this is partly because of his policy of airbase bombing. It has never had any negative effect on the LW but has probably cost him thousands of a/c - to the detriment of the red a/f's morale and the opposite to the LW's. I have also been careful when using the LW offensively. I haven't used it to do defensive bombing missions for perhaps a year, and only sparingly offensively for ground support. I therefore still have bombers left and he didn't get a lot of easy wins. That said, for a couple of turns recently, I forgot to turn ground support off at the end of my turn..

All my day fighters are set for day and night work. They have been since his U2s started operating in numbers and they have made the most of their chances to shoot down such easy targets. The LW lives very close to the front line, and the other units a max of 2 hexes from the fighters in order to be covered by them. I don't max out ftr use during my turn so they are in good condition for defensive work. I also try to keep the bulk of the LW where the ground action is. The LW doesn't add much value in the backwaters, though I keep LW bases there to be ready to take transfers.

I know Glavka's LW has been/is being hammered by PJH. I can only assume that G has omitted at least 1 of my defensive measures, but maybe his LW has reached the point where it has lost the quality edge (morale + exp) over the red a/f which means my approach won't work.