We begin turn 4 with looking at the north. Talinn falls, the Narva is almost reached, but Pskov remains static beyond a failed attack.
Centre is very quiet besides the fall of Smolensk.
At Bryansk however, the Germans continue their blitz. By this point I was very dejected at how relentless his advance has been here - multiple rivers breached each turn, even with me cutting some of the units off. I also didn't have the manpower to refit the garrisoning units into actual combat capable divisions, I think the majority were very unready at this point.
Chernigov falls, but otherwise not much action up here.
He is however driving hard east, in the south. Odessa falls and Nikolaev comes under threat.
Here's the one northern hold. This battle actually tilted me a little - not only did I take 7x as many losses for a victory, but these units were fresh and under Malinovsky.
In a scouting battle, half of my total rifle squads were damaged. I think 2 of these units became unready as a result.
The battle of Smolensk. I don't know what meth Tyronec is feeding his artillery, but good God they've been relentless this game - every significant battle has had hundreds - and often thousands - of German guns.
Even the Romanians!
Weather wise we see mud in much of the map, hopefully denting German trucks.
German bombing begins in earnest.
We make one small attack here in order to dive deep and hopefully cut off German forces in the southern spearhead.
I also begin monitoring my TBs, not that I can do much here with them closed. As someone used to open TBs this hurts to see so early on - and boy does Stalin love reinforcing the TBs.
His relentless advance does come at a price in trucks, however, and I also begin monitoring these turn to turn.
We pull back to the Dnepr here, and leave a token regiment in Nikolaev for manpower evacuation and port/rail damage.
I make the decision to abandon Kiev, not wanting to replicate history with German mobile units to my north and south. I also rail in useless tanks for the same reasons as above - this was a mistake on my part however, I forgot to leave some airborne brigades as garrisoning units but oh well.
Ground is given up here, as I desperately try to refit these armies into something more stable than wet paper.
At Bryansk, which was reinforced with some units that deployed this turn - we try to establish some sort of defensive line and reoccupy the taken hex and river.
Vyazma is static. We continue to refit the 20th army (I always reinforce the starting Smolensk tanks/mech with units from other sectors, amassing thousands of AFVs.) and otherwise hold positions. You can see the deployment of the Smolensk Mountain Corps, of course all rescued from the south.
In the north, we man the Narva and hold positions. I also rotate out the units from the stack he hit on his turn.
Losses
A LOT of men being transferred as you can see. And OOB.
Air losses.
One other important thing to mention at this point was that Tyronec seems to love his hasty attacks. I think for the vast majority of turns he's had more hasty attacks than deliberate attacks.
I made a meme after spotting this. All in jest, of course.
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