B41 v.5.8 using TOAW v.5.1 database with Zovs as Soviet

[larryfulkerson]

Zovs and I thought we'd playtest the latest mod I made for B41 and the change I made was to install the TOAW v.5.1 database and enable a lot more different equipment types. I'm going to add a bunch of new equipment to both sides for the next mod.

Zovs is doing a really good job holding me back and he tells me that the majority of his units are orange striped and can't move or shoot. I'm going to use the red green yellow rule for my units. The red green yellow rule is that when a unit is red it can't move or shoot. The sole exception is moving the red unit toward a better supply source. When a unit is yellow it can move but not shoot. A green unit can move and shoot. It makes for a more realistic game I think. Moscow is that group of red dots just right of center and that's my goal. We're on T4 already and IIRC there's 40 turns or so. This should be interesting. Zovs tells me he's having fun. So far so good.

[StuccoFresco]

What is the scale of the units?

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: StuccoFresco
What is the scale of the units?

It looks like most of the combat units are divisions. But I have seen units of smaller sizes.

[Bamilus]

pumped for this

[larryfulkerson]

This guy sums up my attitude perfectly:

[larryfulkerson]

It's just possible that I've blasted a hole in the Soviet lines and there doesn't appear to be much in the way of defenders present so far. I'm going to see if I can't use that hole to roll up his lines and destroy a few of those Soviet units. There's no reserve to speak of so there's no horde to pour through the hole. I need to disengage my Panzers from the fighting here and get the advance going east again. I forget that my fast movers are for fast moving not fighting. I have to admit though, that they come in real handy for taking down Soviet strong points. The supply lines are approaching Riga, the railhead for the nearest source of supply for these units is there. There's another line being built off the left bottom edge of the image being built to go through Dagavpils to Pskov. The one running through Riga is headed for Narva near the bottleneck up north.

[larryfulkerson]

The Rumanians became active this turn and I'm using them to push the Soviets to the east on my way to capturing the road leading south. As soon as I have that road I can drive my Pazers toward Odessa and cut off all the Soviet units on the west side of the road. There's quite a few of them further south of this image. I'm going to use the Axis minors in the south and attach the German 11th Army to help them take over the Crimea and Sevastopol. I need to get the rail repaired down to this area as quickly as possible because the advance east across the expanse between the rivers will need a lot of supply to keep going. I might ought to consider moving some of my RR engineers down here to keep up with the front.

[larryfulkerson]

July 13, 1941 sitrep:
It's T7 already and I haven't made nearly as much progress as I had planned. Don is doing a magnificant job of holding back my advance. I've destroyed the garrison at Hango so now my ships can enter the Leningrad Bay or whatever it's called north of Narva. I'm following the red green yellow rule so most of my units are in excellent shape and the supply levels are okie dokie. I've just now opened this turn so I don't know what shape the aircraft are in but I suspect about half of them need rest this turn. The railheads aren't quite keeping up with the advance. The closer I get to Moscow the more airfields there seem to be.

[larryfulkerson]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdYYN-4ttDg

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a view of the Smolensk area right now. There's a lot of broken bridges behind me and that's bad for supply flow.
The railhead is already at Minsk so there's a way to go yet for more supply at Smolensk. Half my planes are down for maintanence and some of my units are tired of the constant moving and shooting. I'm going to have to set aside some units for a reserve. Maybe a Panzer division.

[gliz2]

This rule of green-yellow-red makes no sense to me.
It's actually rather ahistorical. The initial German run was led by armoured elements literally till they run out of fuel.
The Soviets throughout 1943-44 had a fascinating logistical approach: the unit was refitted before commencimg the offensive. Once the offensive started the supplies were "not to be expected". I read memoirs of tankers and many stated that they whole units (sometimes at Division level) operated until they literally run out of equipment or supplies.

And on EF many times units were fighting in out of supplies situations. The "cannibalisation" of equipment wws a standard procedure to maintain the combat efficiency.

Therefore your appriach is rather not historucal.

[Zovs]

Rule # 1, once you start any Historical scenario, it sways from Historical exact results. That is the beauty of war games to explore within the confines of history solutions.

That being said, here is a release from Stavka on our glorious defense against the Nazi invaders!

[Zovs]

Oh the turn is 7/13/1941 (for the Europeans' that is 13.7.1941).

[larryfulkerson]

I called Hallie Jackson from MSNBC and told her I had a press release ready for her and told her about our game and presented her with a copy of the above image of the front lines with almost ALL of the Soviet stuff censored out and asked her what she thought of the way Don had censored his stuff.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what it looks like up north in T8. I've gathered all the strongest Finn units and I'm attacking the Soviet line and all of a sudden I appear to have pushed into the Soviet line with only an arty unit holding up the path south ( so far )and I'm wondering how Don is going to respond. I'll probably get forced back to the NW in Don's turn because there's a lot of really stout Soviet units around that lone unit out there in the middle of of all those Soviet units. I haven't moved everybody yet so there's a chance that I can move some more equipment into the jepardy spot. Also, I'd like to see if I can't get one of my tank units to push that Soviet arty unit out of the way. I've dropped some paratroops to the SW of Leningrad to try to grab the Narva area before Don can fortify it. Just a couple of turns to get some better units in there is all I need. The paratroops are worth that much. So I used them.

[larryfulkerson]

New moves from Don. Here's what's going on in the north. I've cleared out Hanko and now my ships have access to the Gulf of Finland and the Bay of Leningrad. I've sunk the Soviet BB's with my Ju-87's and now I need to fly them south to sink the potential Soviet BB's near Sevastopol. They have an anti-ship rating of 120 and that's why I go after his ships with them. After all the ships are gone I'll use them as CS on the road to Moscow.

Near Pskov I'm thinking of trying to outflank the Soviets and create another avenue leading north. I'll need to repair the rail out in that direction to feed the units needed there. The supply levels have shrunk slightly. I'm wondering if the weather is changing the supply levels. A cold front this early?

[Zovs]

I had to reinstall everything as my Windows 10 VM died a horrible death, and I was having issue with my screen shot software saving to my OneDrive (from which I download the images and then upload them in Imgur and then paste the html code into Matrix's thread for screenshots), so no "secret" (lol) screenshots today.

I managed to counterattack in the far north and throw the Finns back and also (hopefully) reinforce that sector. Its a fine line between sacrificing some units on the one hand and using others to get to green and dig-in on the other.

It may cost me in the end, but I have not followed the 'traditional' Russian player way of fleeing to the east. Instead I am hold my ground, blowing bridges and attacking Larry at every opportunity I can to inflict casualties on him and wear him units down and exhaust them, so when mud and winter arrive I can grind them into the snow.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's happening in the south right now. The Axis minors are active now and they are pushing east to clear out Bessarabia and I plan to use them to push southeast from Z-town toward Kharkov. But that plan might change depending on how hard it is to get into the Crimea. Odessa is going to be a Romanian target.

My next immediate goal is all the river crossings on the river to the east so that I can try to trap as many Soviets on the west side of the river as possible, and then destroy them.

[Zovs]

Here is a Soviet Screen shot from the turn prior to Larry's moves above:

[larryfulkerson]

New moves from Don. I've put together a cut&paste of almost the entire front lines as they are right now and then I asked for a full screen view of MSPaint and it gave me this image. I thought it was pretty cool and thought I'd show it to you guys. The little bubbles are the supply bubbles because I asked for the supply mode view and I'll have to post the full-size view so you can see how the supply is good in some spots and lousy in other spots.