CB (Long, if I last until Winter): Bonners (Soviet) vs Isokron (Axis)

[Bonners]

17th August

No update from the last turn as the Germans seemed to be clearing their lines ready to renew their offensive. This turn the offensive carries on at full speed. To the north of Stalingrad Isokron continues to tangle with the remnants of 5th tank. I am slowing him up slightly, but in one or two turns I think the front will be ripped apart. What has kept me going until now is playing the Stavka support card which has enabled my tank units to recover readiness and keep up the counterattacks. This turn he will begin to surround what is left though.

The Germans also begin to attack the edges of the Stalingrad defences. It is disappointing as although they dont have the full entrenchment values I did expect them to at least inflict some losses; unfortunately they are wrapped up pretty neatly. Just to the South of Stalingrad I made a mistake in entrenching a guards division in a town that cant get supply. Even if it could it doesnt matter as the Germans have now surrounded the unit in the swamps as shown in the screen shot.

In the Caucasus the retreat goes on to the Terek River and I am starting to build forces up around all the major crossings. The only units elsewhere are guarding the passes to the southern Caucasus. It is going to be interesting in the next couple of turns to see what effect the lack of supply has on the Caucasus units though. The rail line south of Astrakhan is about to be cut, so my units in the South will be by themselves. With not gaining any prestige at any point in he game I have had no chance to build up the 200 points to get Tbilisi as a supply centre. So it could be that all these units are about to meet their doom. Hopefully with the German airforce not yet around in force (they seem to be concentrating in Stalingrad) enough supply will be able to cross the sea to reach my units. Conversely I'm not too sure if the units in the north will get any oil.

Just one screenshot to try and show the depths of the German advance around Stalingrad. It will be interesting to see if he tries to cross the Volga with out of supply units to cut my rail lines.

[Bonners]

21st August - game over

I have conceded defeat and surrendered. The situation on this turn was that around Stalingrad the Germans had crossed the Volga on either side and my defenders were out of supply whilst the German units were just getting enough supply through by air to keep them going. I had one tank brigade spare but that was virtually annihilated by air strikes.

To the north of Stalingrad the German offensive had halted, not through any actions of mine, just because the Axis didnt need to make any further attacks in that area to gain enough objectives to win the game. In reality Isokron could probably quite easily have pushed on all the way to Saratov with no problem.

In the Caucasus I didnt manage to hold him up anywhere. The units I left to try and stop him in the mountains were not strong enough has he was able to just go around them. Similarly he has now reached the line of the Terek in force and will punch through my feeble defences by the next turn.

All in all it has been another sober learning experience, the only trouble is I haven't learnt anything. I have absolutely no idea how to defend as Soviets or attack as the Axis powers. Against a human opponent I find it impossible to find any weak links to attack or to be able to defend in time. In this game I was always on the back foot and had absolutely no chance to try and set up a defensive line, yet when I have played as Germans I find it impossible to every break through a Soviet defensive line.

In this game I didnt have any chance to try and set up a defensive line at any point as Isokron was always advancing faster than I could retreat and when my units did retreat I was not able to get them back into readiness in time. At no point did I ever have chance to set up an effective counter-attack. It is a shame that games against the AI, whilst obviously not being able to replicate human play, do not give a bit of a tougher time. At the moment for a novice player there is just no way to try and prepare to face a human opponent as games against the AI are very easy.

It has been fun playing the game, but kind of depressing as well. There was never any strategy involved, I just spent the entire game running away; a kind of similar experience to trying to launch an offensive as the Germans where I just spent the entire game banging my head against a brick wall.

I know the lessons I am supposed to have learnt from this game, I just dont know how to try to learn them.

1. Try and keep defenders entrenched behind rivers.
2. Try and build up a second line of entrenchment to give the first line of defenders somewhere to retreat to, this gives the defenders on the second line a chance to try and build up.
3. Keep AA and engineer units back to defend important bridge points as first priority and second priority being armoured units for AA units.
4. Try and keep some kind of counter-attacking reserve in place at a high level of readiness, probably not enough to stop the Germans, but enough to try and reduce the readiness of their points units to enable the defenders to retreat to the next line.
5. Try and save the air force for emergencies for use when the Luftwaffe is starting to get warn down.
6. Make sure that rail lines of retreat are left open where possible to rail out defenders in danger of encirclement.
7. When retreating retreat the line as a whole and make sure that at least two hexes are left between the defenders and the advancing Germans.
8. Only use entrenchment cards on the secondary line of defence to allow the defenders enough time to build up their defences.

So, those are the lessons learnt, I unfortunately dont really have an idea of how to do that in a game situation against a human opponent.

ANyway, here are the maps showing the end position starting with Stalingrad showing the cut supply lines.

[Bonners]

.....and the mountain passes, just to show that one unit is inadequate as with air supply the Germans can go round the mountains; these units were wasted and should have retreated further

[Bonners]

..and finally the Germans reaching the Terek line with very little in place to hold them:

[Bonners]

...and finally finally some finishing stats, things were not looking good for surviving much longer:

[Reconvet]

Thank you for this AAR, it really is a prime example what an experienced Axis player can do to the Red Army!

Don't be too harsh with yourself. My take on your game here is that Isokron had a clear experience advantage on you, but I bet you'd be able to give him a harder challenge next time. The learning curve for DCCB should not be underestimated.

My second encouragement for you would be that this scenario - Case blue - puts the soviet player in a much more difficult starting position than Trappenjagd does. Isokron could optimize his starting moves versus the AI, leaving ANY soviet player in a very tough starting position. I would recommend you to try out Trappenjagd as red player, it should be way more enjoyable for you, does not put the Axis player in such a clear starting advantage at turn 1, and is simply more balanced. Trappenjagd lets you recover a bit more easily if you make bad mistakes than directly jumping into CB.

Chapeau for your effort ingame and with this AAR. [:)]

[Isokron]

Good game Bonners, although as you said it was probably decided quite early.

This is exaggerated by it being possible to get 10-1 kill/death ratios on attacks even when not encircling enemies. This leads to the game being very snowbally since the only way the soviet can inflict big losses on the German is by counter attacking which requires the odds to be somewhat even to work out well.

[rickier65]

Thanks for posting this AAR. I've followed it and found it enlightening.

Thanks
rick

[Keunert]

Thank you both for the aar. it was entertaining to be able to read both sides.

Bonners, at least on one occasion you surprised me. At Rostov you almost seemed to beg for an encirclement. After the river crossing in force of Isokron you should have pulled back. or at least pull all but a few units behind Rostow. I did not understand why you let yourself get into that mess.
Even if you want to achieve a high command goal you have to do the math: how much sacrifice is the goal worth? or as other said you could have brought the navy up to evacuate after the goal was achieved.

Troop preservation should be one of the big goals early on the campaign. Counterattacks are fine but only if chances are good to succeed. I think you either have attacked too much (like with your airforce) or defended in the wrong places. a few weeks from now your reinforcements would go up quite a bit.

[olivier34]

Thanks Bonners for this detail AAR. I have not played the past few weeks so It was really nice to have this game to follow. Never played the soviet and according to all the AARs, it seems to be very challenging against a good axis player. I have played a lot DC1 case yellow, both sides. After a few games it was "easy" to achieve good results as the axis but it tooks me more time to find some good strategy to play the allies and I found it more challenging and stressful.

[Bonners]

Thanks for the comments chaps. Whilst I am still learning the game I am going to continue to do AARs. Whilst it can be a bit embarrassing having your mistakes made in public I am hoping to learn from them, either from comments from more experienced players or the mere fact of writing them down helps.

As for Keunert's comments about Rostov, yes, absolutely spot on. I think with that mistake and with the mistake earlier when I lost the 18th and 12th armies in similar circumstances I realised the mistake, but was too slow to actually do anything about it. As for Rostov itself I realised early on about the rail net, so tried to defend the bridges not thinking Isokron would be so quick to take advantage. When somebody suggested bringing the fleet up I'd already thought about it, but again was too slow to actually do anything. I reckon in a future game, providing the Soviets have enough oil I will bring the fleet closer much earlier so I have a chance to evacuate.

As for counterattacking yes I'd agree I was far too hasty at times, but that is going to take a lot longer to get out of my play. I just felt at times that I needed to try something to try and slow the attack, even if they were desperation attacks.

I'd like to think in my next game that I'll be able to make the defence last a bit longer. Whilst I am quite happy to lose games, I would like to give my opposition a bit of a challenge. The challenge for my next game would be to try and last to September as Soviets. I have to admit I am still slightly apprehensive to play the Axis again as I still cant seem to get my head around building up the correct amount of supplies and readiness to attack, and also picking the right spots.

I'm thinking of setting up a war room thread for a me vs me game and just put up some detailed screenshots of one part of the front to see how people would break through or defend that portion of the front to see if I can pick up some more hints. I think the breakdown of combat mechanics in the manual is really good and going through it gives a good idea of how to break through an AI defence, just maybe not a human defence.

[James Ward]

I enjoyed this AAR, and all the others you have posted.
From the one's posted it seems there is the 'snowball' effect in play, if the Germans are successful early they can never be stopped and if they don't break through early they don't get anywhere at all.

[shrek]

I also enjoyed this AAR, & hope you will do more of them in the future.

[wallas]

Bonner I have been playing hex war games for many years and this game is very hard as the soviets. Only experience will make you a better player, so in a nutshell keep playing ! [:D].

Great AAR and Great Attitude Bonner

[Bonners]

ORIGINAL: wallas

Bonner I have been playing hex war games for many years and this game is very hard as the soviets. Only experience will make you a better player, so in a nutshell keep playing ! [:D].

Great AAR and Great Attitude Bonner

Dont worry, I'm not about to give up any time soon[:D]

I didnt think this game presented enough of a challenge, so I've just started a Uranus campaign against Olivier.....as Germans[:D]

So far it is looking like great fun. I have already told Olivier that I intend to fight, so the game is a bit of an experiment to see how long the Germans can last. As another experiment I'm going to do an open AAR for Olivier to comment on as well, so will be doing it a few turns behind.

[Keunert]

oh jesus, good luck with that Bonners!

[James Ward]

ORIGINAL: Bonners

ORIGINAL: wallas

Bonner I have been playing hex war games for many years and this game is very hard as the soviets. Only experience will make you a better player, so in a nutshell keep playing ! [:D].

Great AAR and Great Attitude Bonner

Dont worry, I'm not about to give up any time soon[:D]

I didnt think this game presented enough of a challenge, so I've just started a Uranus campaign against Olivier.....as Germans[:D]

So far it is looking like great fun. I have already told Olivier that I intend to fight, so the game is a bit of an experiment to see how long the Germans can last. As another experiment I'm going to do an open AAR for Olivier to comment on as well, so will be doing it a few turns behind.

Just remember, Speed cards aren't just for attacking! [:)]

[Bonners]

ORIGINAL: James Ward



Just remember, Speed cards aren't just for attacking! [:)]

Oh yes, the remnants of my Romanians have been running away just as fast as their little legs (and special cards) can carry them. Can thoroughly recommend Uranus, it is absolute madness all over the shop. Olivier has formed the Stalingrad pocket and neither of us have the faintest idea what will happen next. It could be that he is in Kiev for Christmas Dinner, we just dont know! Will start posting the AAR at the weekend as we are far enough along now.

[James Ward]

ORIGINAL: Bonners

ORIGINAL: James Ward



Just remember, Speed cards aren't just for attacking! [:)]

Oh yes, the remnants of my Romanians have been running away just as fast as their little legs (and special cards) can carry them. Can thoroughly recommend Uranus, it is absolute madness all over the shop. Olivier has formed the Stalingrad pocket and neither of us have the faintest idea what will happen next. It could be that he is in Kiev for Christmas Dinner, we just dont know! Will start posting the AAR at the weekend as we are far enough along now.

Good luck. It looks mighty tough for the Germans in that scenario. There are just soooooo many Russians.

[olivier34]

Right, a lot of Russians, around one million [:D] but I would take a few more armys in reserve, we never know [;)]