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I've done the "ship all armor to Germany" thing for the Winter, which feels gamey to me and not at all historical. I would rather play the campaign from a role play perspective, taking the expected losses, than a "manipulate the game rules for max results" perspective. It would just feel better I think.

So what should I realistically do with my armor next Winter? I assume just park it a few hexes away from the front lines and avoid moving or fighting until April?

You are obliged to keep the cars, otherwise operations for you on a wide front will simply not be available.

But the answer to the question: "what to do?" strongly depends on the situation on the map and then you play against a person or AI.

That's the beauty of a game like this. I'd never take your approach in a PvP game, but you can do whatever you like.

So first, you have the basic idea. Hunker down and minimize movement. Understand that if you are forced to retreat in combat you will lose quite a few AFVs. It will not be uncommon by the end of March for some divisions to have none operational at all. Don't expend much effort trying to refit these units, the newly arriving equipment will just break down in their turn.

Set your panzer replacement battalions to refit, a few at a time in order to get them loaded with medium tanks. The recon and CS support tanks are not nearly as important as doctrinally the German Army is moving away from these vehicle types and production of new vehicles is accordingly small.

Once April arrives you want to have a large depot with plenty of supplies to have you gather your panzers divisions around. Make a super depot near the front as needed. You're going to want like 20k supplies stored to keep things humming. It's completely legit as the German Army was building it's supply base up for the upcoming Blau offensive. This is the critical time to begin the rehab process to get the broken stuff out and the new stuff in. You should have your panzers under a corps HQ with a high admin leader. Hans Krebs is a very good choice (yes, the same Krebs in Downfall. He's an excellent administrator.) Set HQ supply priority 4.

Your typical 42 Panzer Division needs about 110 medium tanks to be at 100%. Once you get to around 70, you can assign a panzer replacement battalion to bring it up to almost full strength in terms of medium tanks.

17th Panzer not looking good


Big Depot


Looking better


And better

Good stuff - thank you! So far I've only played the AI so this should work fine for me...