43 Campaign Flavio vs Bob, Soviet Viewpoint

[Sabre21]

Flavio..where are you seeing these 600k at that he is short?

[Flaviusx]

By looking at his turn 1 OB. He starts off with 3.2 million and is now at 2.6 million.

It's actually even worse than it looks, since those numbers are disproportionately coming from the infantry.

[Flaviusx]

Btw, when is mud supposed to happen in this?

[Sabre21]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Btw, when is mud supposed to happen in this?

10 Oct - 7 November providing you aren't using random weather.

[Flaviusx]

Yup, I just finished turn 14 and saw the mud colors flash at the end going into turn 15.

Are we supposed to go on past mud?

[Flaviusx]

Turn 14. Lots of reorganization this turn from STAVKA. Northwestern and Kalinin Fronts are renamed 1. and 2. Baltic. Bryansk Front is dissolved; I reassign the armies to a rather badly overloaded Western Front. Central Front becomes Belorussian Front. Voronezh, Steppe, Southwestern and South Fronts become the 1-4 Ukraine Fronts.

At the end of turn 13 I put all my fronts from Central on south on refit; prior to this the only formations on refit had been my mobile corps and artillery. This allowed me to store up over a half million men in the replacement pool. But the rifle formations down south have gotten fairly run down. This fresh infusion of men brings them all up to speed again, and drops my pool of replacements to 100kish. Having done this, I return to my prior policy on refits and will build up another reserve.

Bottom line: you have to be a lot more selective about refits in 1943 than in 1941. You cannot sustain an offensive by placing everything on refits.

I have not been doing anything to formation TOE and do not feel it is necessary or useful to do so.

Meanwhile, Bob's infantry screen collapses east of Kiev and I gain a great deal of ground. These guys are played out. I'm finally starting to see some German units rout on retreats. Luckily for him, the rasputitsa arrived going into turn 15.

[Flaviusx]

The Eastern Front on the eve of the 1943 fall rasputitsa:

[Flaviusx]

Order of battle:

[Flaviusx]

Turn 20. After 5 turns of mud, the Red Army is tanned, rested and ready. Men and machines have swollen the ranks and many new rifle corps are formed.

As such, STAVKA launches a new offensive, Operation Meatgrinder. This operation has no geographic objectives as such. Rather, as the name suggests, it is simply a broad front advance including all fronts from 2. Baltic down to the North Caucus designed to chew up the German army. Bob has kindly cooperated in this offensive by inexplicably putting some of his infantry east of the Dnepr and it more or less gets annihilated along the entire frontline as a result. I am completely fine with advancing a hexrow a turn until the German infantry reaches the same state it was at just before the mud, at which point the front line collapses of its own accord. It won't take nearly as long to get it to that combat ineffective state this time around, either. They are much weaker now than in mid summer.

His linebacker strategy, which had its virtues when the German army was in better shape, I think now is positively dangerous for him. He needs a new tactical doctrine. It cannot possibly withstand 4-5 more months of this brutal attrition.

Order of battle:

[randallw]

Having 6000 guns support a localized offensive seems quite heavy; I suspect it's more than historical events though I am not sure.

[stewartbragg]

I think Bob had been planning on putting his Panzers in central locations to counter your attacks yet you foiled him. Now on with the slow meat grinding attack.

[janh]

Hmmmh, awe-inspiring performance of the Russians.  What is the impression of you tester:  Would this have been historically possible, or is just some more tweaking of the model necessary?  Is it consequence of Flavius knowing history and the game engine much better than his opponent, early use of new tactics like the concentration of so many artillery divisions, luck, or a poor German performance?

Imagine if you started the scenario (as I would mod it to be optimal) without any static units and necessity to invest APs: a full blown offensive from turn 1 along the whole front... War would be over by Christmas?

[Flaviusx]

Turn 22. Half frozen rivers have severely impaired my ability to stage cross river assaults and are effectively impassable until frozen. Given that most of Bob's line is behind major rivers now, this seriously hinders my ability to bring the Red Army to bear. I will not be able to cross the northern Dnepr until blizzard freezes it. I have managed to throw across a bridgehead in the swamps north of Kiev when it was lightly screened, but that's as good as it will get pending blizzard conditions.

[Flaviusx]

Even in the south Ukraine, where I am past the Dnepr, minor rivers are preventing me from bringing to bear my rifle formations. I'm forced to try to work my way around them with mechanized units, which Bob is repeatedly counterattacking with some success.

Blizzard cannot come soon enough. Then I can attack all along the line. I've got plenty of rifle corps and artillery ready to rock and roll but they just can't get into the action right now.

[Flaviusx]

Western Front is making decent progress along the Gomel axis, where the Germans are east of the Dnepr. I've got 3 tank corps flanking his line here. I'm trying hard to get behind him and prevent him from retreating due west.

[Flaviusx]

Kalinin front liberates Vitebsk and is making good progress overall in the Smolensk landbridge. Bob has reinforced the area with some mechanized forces and is preventing any major flanking maneuvers, but I can at least press forward here without any rivers to stymie my rifle corps.

[Flaviusx]

Kalinin Front also liberates Velikiye Luki. 4. Tank and 5 Guards Tank Armies arrive by rail from the Ukraine and exploit the breach. He has no reserves here. I begin activating Volkhov Front in anticipation of a full scale retreat near Leningrad by the Germans, probably in the direction of Narva and Pskov. He's already been making some tactical withdrawals near Leningrad.

I plan on raising a new tank army HQ by Smolensk and attaching the mobile corps near Vitebsk to that HQ. That will give me 3 total tank armies in this area, and 3 in the south. His panzers cannot be everywhere, and this will stretch his line to the breaking point.

Only one Front remains inactive now, Leningrad.

[Flaviusx]

ORIGINAL: randallw

Having 6000 guns support a localized offensive seems quite heavy; I suspect it's more than historical events though I am not sure.

In real life Voronov achieved similar concentrations in the reduction of the Stalingrad pocket well before these events. By 1943 Soviet artillery had arrived in a big way.

[Flaviusx]

ORIGINAL: stewart.bragg

I think Bob had been planning on putting his Panzers in central locations to counter your attacks yet you foiled him. Now on with the slow meat grinding attack.

It worked for a while. He stopped me cold in the central part of the front. The problem was he couldn't be that strong everywhere and I found a weak spot west of Rostov and pressed that to the limit. Eventually this unlocked the rest of the Ukraine as he was forced to react to it and send his heavy mass of panzers south to stop the Soviet advance. I very nearly pocketed an entire panzer army against the Sea of Azov and Bob staged a dramatic breakout of those with panzers that had been keeping me at bay near Karkhov.

[Flaviusx]

ORIGINAL: janh

Hmmmh, awe-inspiring performance of the Russians.  What is the impression of you tester:  Would this have been historically possible, or is just some more tweaking of the model necessary?  Is it consequence of Flavius knowing history and the game engine much better than his opponent, early use of new tactics like the concentration of so many artillery divisions, luck, or a poor German performance?

Imagine if you started the scenario (as I would mod it to be optimal) without any static units and necessity to invest APs: a full blown offensive from turn 1 along the whole front... War would be over by Christmas?

The results of this playtest are being evaluated and may result in further tweaks. (Nor is it over yet.) There's some feeling -- I don't entirely agree with this, but it's arguable -- that losses from retreats may be too high and should be adjusted downwards for high morale/experience units.

As far as APs go, I was pretty ruthless about this and had to accept many sacrifices along the way to rapidly activate my static forces. For several months going every AP spent went towards activations (and I am still not quite done activating things going into December.) I wound up having to put most of my tank brigades on static mode to free up further APs, and many of these are still stuck in the rear. My command and control went to hell for a while and is still not really straightened out. I've had to accept the leaders I started with, who are not always the best. And only during the rasputitsa was I finally able to start organizing new rifle corps in a big way.

There is still much to be done to optimize the Red Army. I may never get quite caught up with all the things I'd like to do with it given the very tight budget.