Barbarossa

[dhucul2011]

What am I doing wrong?

Every time I launch a Barbarossa I am horribly stalled just a few hexes into the USSR by the end of the good weather.

I usually concentrate a large armor attack from Romania into the Ukraine and a smaller infantry attack into the Baltics.

I find that all the USSR needs to do is place some speed bumps in cities and along rivers and, inevitably, the odd bad roll and I am disorganized with all my HQs used up and waiting for the next turn.

No surprise ZOCs and Option 47 would definately help but there must be something I can do to try and get more historical encirclements and sweeping attacks? No?

Any advice?

[paulderynck]

Could be making too many attacks at middle odds versus trying to make fewer but guaranteed attacks. Ground strikes to pin down some big Russian units that later can be put out of supply and hit at high odds. Take what you are given and don't take chances early in the turn.

[Joseignacio]

Yes, we all use to believe Barbarossa should be a blitz till Kiev, and it may very well be, but not because we attack 10 stack a turn but because at the end of the turn we have attacked 30 stacks successfully 4 or 5 at a time.

1 Make very safe attacks, especially at the beginning of the turn. You cannot afford to be flipped in your 1sr or 2nd impulse and let the other (possibly) 5 impulses just looking at the NKVD wave you from the distance.

2 Unless it's absolutely necessary, don't use HQs in attacks, they are much more valuable for restoring you units if half or all of them get flipped in one of the inevitable ad rolls you'll have.

When the turn end is closer you can avoid this rules taking bigger risks.

Anyway, Barbarossa is somehow like that. Either you storm the initial defenses and the USSR player has to pull back all the way to Siberia or he is successful and you get stack halfway to Moscow and in the Dnieper? river line. Few times you get an intermediate situation.

[Centuur]

Concentrate on either the South (Ukraine) or the North (Baltic States - Minsk) when setting up your forces. Put your good forces and the best planes on that part of the front and just screen the other front.

You start hammering on the front you concentrate on and leave the other front simply as is.

You'll break through eventually and even that other front will at one time start to crumble, since the Soviets need to withdraw forces to avoid a German breakthrough on the other part of the front...