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This is my first attempt at the campaign vs another person. Have played the tutorial and several of the smaller scenarios and decided to learn by doing in the GC. Needless to say I will be asking advice of anyone who thinks they can help the good guys (that's me) beat the bad guys (Germans). This was going to be a German AAR but DicedT decided to play a small scenario with me for practice so I am defending the motherland against Belphigor.

The Germans stormed into the motherland on 22 June and took our forces by complete surprise. First turn losses, especially in the air were severe as first reports show.





In the Northern sector the Germans have advanced as far as Riga but have not taken the city. They have isolated the better part of my forces west of there and they will most likely be mopped up next turn.



In the center it could have been worse, I will pull back from Minsk and try and establish a line farther east.



In the south i will do a gradual pullback to the Dnepr river and see if i can hold him there, depends on what happens farther north.

I'm looking forward to seeing a person to person AAR in the GC to see how the first few turns go and the later stages.  Good luck Miller41 [;)]

Yes, I'm looking forward to this.

Ok, here is my turn plan, such as it is based on what I have read here and in the manual[:D] Fell free to tell me how wrong I am....

First get whats left of my poor air force into the national reserve to recover and redeploy much farther back.

Second, get all the support units out of the corps HQs and lock them down. If I can I will transfer divisions to army HQ's and get some decent leaders in them but that will take time. Along with this I will try and get all units close to their HQ's to keep some supply and command and control going.

Third is to get some kind of defense line established. I plan on sending many of my reserve units (once they have gotten some strength) to the north to protect Leningrad. The plan is to defend hardest up north (when the terrain is better for me), hard in the center and least in the south, where I have more room to lose.The German player I think will not try and advance to far in the south and go for the easiest objective, Leningrad.

I will evacuate factories in the closest cities right away to the maximum extent that I can.

Try to form a checkerboard first, forming a line will mean a lot of your units are going to die after being encircled.

I'm guessing you have played your turn by now, but still.

In the north, you should be able to restore supply and isolate at least 3 mobile divisions something like this, with the X marking a spot where a divisional formation should be placed if possible:

In the center something like this (red and green arrows in the central part represent two ways that might restore supply):



The pocket in the northwest part of the Kiev M.D./Southwest front screenshot can be broken by simply moving one Rifle division one hex to the east.

Oh, and good luck!

Good Luck Miller41!  

Losses are severe after turn 2, averaging near 300,000 a week.




Here is the overall situation

Situation up north is bad, have very few troops and can only hope he has to form up before he advances.

Looks like his panzer are driving deep, should be out of fuel soon and if he was to greedy, might of left himself open to encirclement.  Stalin must hope so [:D]

Situation near Smolensk, depending on his fuel situation he could drive either way. Encircled units tried to disrupt his lines of supply. Notice the checkerboard I am trying to form. Also disbanding the corps when I can, they are such a pain. Don't have enough armies yet though.

here is the situation down south. A large pocket was mostly formed but i have an exit that I have expanded slightly. Even if I dont escape I have opened up supply so units can fight another week and tie down the germans.

And of course odessa, moving back from the front line and expecting to lose the town later, but will try and hold it.

How are you planning to displace back in broad open spaces?  Pull back a couple hexes at a time or just fall back to the next river.  I have yet to play the Soviets so I have no clue on their defensive capabilities.  From the AI though, there damn good. [:D]

Well I am planning on stepping back a few hexes at a time and using the honeycomb defense where your alternating hexes so the Germans can't break thru and surround whole batches of divisions. Seems to be the best way I have seen but it depends on how aggressive the opponent is. Will be looking at the next turn soon and I will post some screens, just got home.

Turn 3 losses were heavy but hie advance slowed as opposition got more tenacious. In the south I was unable to pull the troops back fast enough (lesson learned there) and I will probably lose more divisions. Am going to try and keep some supplied to tie down the Germans as long as I can.

trying to give an overall picture of the front, will have a new program to do this soon. Not to bad for a first effort[:D] Better than my play anyway

Are you making any attacks on the Germans? I tried one,it was ravaged by the Luftwaffe and ripped-up by the ground troops as well. new Policy,my mediocre morale boys will wait until the first snow. Until then he's gotta dig our Bolshevik butts outa our holes.

Trying to use rivers,lousy tank country and forts to slow him up and hurt the precious panzers. I have a linear defense which i am sure is the worst thing I could do,but there are reserves behind the lines and armour corps at that. Need more riflemen at the front.
By the way,i like the layered defense you are doing! Good Luck!

No tophat, the only aggressive moves I am making is trying to keep pockets open to delay him. Actual attacks are just not worth it unless he does something really dumb, which has not happened. I do think about it alot though[:D]

The area south of the marshes, you can make multiple defense lines between the Goryn and Dnepr rivers; you won't get outflanked by a massive attack from the marshes, and the German's buddies down south won't rip through anything less than a modest defense.
 
Those airborne units won't come back to life on their own so be carefull about them dying.
 
The NKVD border regiments are just light infantry; against a division they'll just get hit by the division's artillery before having to retreat.  There's no real gain having them try to defend.  You may just want to disband them as soon as you can.