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I guess I could post this in the war room instead of here, but the thread will probably over time turn into an AAR of sorts.

Right, Stalingrad. It's a difficult scenario for the Axis because the longer you wait, the more Soviets will appear and the worse the weather gets (although it seems to be very variable, as in some playthroughs I didn't see any mud and in my previous one mud appeared on about half the turns).

As I see it, there is no "best" opening move for this scenario as it all depends on what you want to do/how you intend to get to Stalingrad.

Contrary to earlier scenarios, most of your Panzer formations are 4 step ones, so they pack less punch then before. They're still excellent, but overruns will by default be more rare than in previous scenarios due to the Panzer divisions being weaker and the Soviets generally being stronger.

One thing I always want to do on turn 1, regardless of whether I want to push on Stalingrad from the west or south, is destroy the 4 Rifle units on "your" side of the river and weaken or destroy the 3 Tank corps in the area. Whether you want to spend your air strikes on the strong Tank corps in the south and attack that, or use them to increase the chance that the Tank corps in the central part of the map are destroyed or significantly weakened is up to you.

Moving all/most of the mobile units south is probably the easiest way to win the scenario, but it's not necessarily fun (there is basically little to nothing the Soviet AI can do to stop you from getting a DV or if you do it right a BV).

Contrary to what I thought after my previous playthroughs, during the beta, an attack from the west can work as well.

My opening move for an attack from the west, or possibly even for an attack that will eventually come from the south, is this:



Red arrows/lines indicate attacks and the blue arrows indicate movement.

I generally use an air strike on both Tank corps, and in most cases at least one of them is destroyed, usually the one across the Don in the swamp (because it's already beaten up at the start). The other will be so beaten up that it is essentially useless for the Soviets.

After using the air strikes, I attack the Tank corps on the western bank of the Don with the veteran Panzer division from the north. I then move the regular Panzer division on the other side of the Chir to the hex the Tank corps was in, and use it to attack the Tank corps on the other side of the Don. The veteran Panzer division can then move across the Don into the hex the second Tank corps was in.

The infantry can then mop up the Rifle formations, which can't retreat so if they are forced to retreat, they'll be "cornered" (all steps suppressed) and become easy kills. You can do this without any step losses in most cases.

The 5 step infantry divisions in the area are almost veterans, and need only 2 step kills, so use them for the final blows so you'll have several veteran infantry units on turn 2.