Less Stalingrad as such, as you say with any degree of preparation its near impossible to take unless the Soviets are at the end of their strength. What I hadn't paid much attention to was that there are 70 city VP (with a guarenteed + 30 time pts) in the arc - Astrakhan-Grozny-Baku. In part, as I didn't really expect to make the progress i did. But that 100 pts is game winning and probably easier than going for Stalingrad. The Soviets can reinforce via the SR, but its a supply desert for them - basically all they have is whatever that NSS in Turkmenistan can send across the Caspian. So I do wonder if my focus on Tambov was very wrong, and that pulling back and releasing additional mobile formations to the south could have paid off.M60A3TTS wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 5:23 pm Stalingrad would have gotten you the win. But it is incredibly hard to take against a competent Soviet player.
Any regrets not moving in that direction?
I had decent supply around Grozny due to the set up, so could have absorbed more demand without crippling myself. I am coming to regard pushing on Tambov as a serious error.
I've gone back a few turns to find some egs of defensive GS, the recent turns have all been blizzard/heavy snow and that makes a mess of reliable commitment. I think there is a reporting issue, or an outright bug, as it while it shows damage on my side of the equation, it appears my planes did littleRosencrantus wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 9:39 pm If you can, can you please post any screenshots of you using defensive GS? I get almost 0 disruptions when I used it, but I was told that it could be due to cloud coverage (air weather was rain) making my bombers miss.

confirmed by the detailed screen:

while the 'return match' shows what you'd expect to see:

thank you - yes if he'd sent say a cavalry raid into that gap by the time they got near anything that mattered their MP would have collapsed giving me an easy pocket. I think at times we both had brigades covering several hundred miles down thereEwaldvonKleist wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 10:35 pm I like that the logistics system allows you to leave a flank completely empty because it would be impossible to exploit that weakness for more than 1-2 turns.
I continue to enjoy your (as always) high quality AAR and youratch seems very balanced/tense, if somewhat in favour of the Axis atm.
Best regards
EvK
its going to be interesting to see how this pans out now, given its going to come down to the 1944 HWM test. I have +10 over history for city points and a fair bonus for time pts. He can remove the city bonus by say taking Warsaw in December 44 (which if he's in Poland should be doable), so its going to be the trading of time bonuses that determines if I can win there. So I have that safety net (which I didn't have in my last HtH) but we are about 5 turns ahead of the reports and its ... uncomfortable. His usage of the Red Army is very doctrinal, echelons, push stuff to exhaustion, stop and build up again. I'm off balance but due to my commitment to the Caucasus, I have some powerful stuff out of position, so I think as I pull out of the south I can bring this phase to a halt without too much long term damage.