Vet (Axis) vs Thistle Tea (Soviet): "WW1 grinding" example AAR #1

[Beethoven1]

This is a SUMMARY of longer discord AARs for a game that was played between Vet (Veterin) and Thistle Tea.

Here are links to the full discord AARs:

Vet (Axis) vs Thistle Tea - https://discord.com/channels/9438273612 ... 8344113202
Thistle Tea (Soviet) vs Vet - https://discord.com/channels/9438273612 ... 2158592124

EDIT - apparently you need this invite for the links above to work: https://discord.gg/BmmCbQQaMX

I will not (can not) repost everything in the discord AARs, but will just provide a summary of what happened here on the forum.





EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Basically this is what the game was like:

[Beethoven1]

1941

Both Vet and Thistletea were experienced players who knew pretty much what they were doing.

On Turn 1, Vet did Rovno pocket in the south, and close to or exactly HLYA's opening:









In the subsequent turns, Vet pushed steadily forward. Here is Vet showing one small example of his skillful grinding technique:





Here's another example of grinding inflicting 30k losses. 99:1 odds on that follow up attack, so Vet's panzers lose little CPP (the combat engine is not really built to handle those EXTREME lopsided final odds, which predictably yield results like this):



If you want more of those screenshots, look in the discord AAR, but anyway there were these kinds of battles turn after turn.

In this way, during 1941, Vet managed to keep the Soviet on map OOB under 3 million until turn 13 or so:



Initially, Thistle Tea tried to defend around Smolensk/Pskov (this is turn 6):





Thistle Tea attempted to defend Crimea; Vet plowed right through it:





Although most of the losses Vet inflicted were from "WW1 grinding," he did also get a small pocket or 2 like this:





To avoid these high losses, by around turn 8-10 or so, Thistle Tea started retreating more to try to get his on-map OOB above 3 million, and retreated all the way back to Moscow, Voronezh, and Rostov. Even so, he continued to take substantial losses from grinding and didn't get much above 3 million by mud.

General retreat on turn 11 for example:



Not many Soviets, due to the retreating, as well as, well, there not being all that many of them after all the losses:



Despite having advanced all the way to Voronezh etc, Vet had excellent supply due to him knowing how the logistics system works (whereas a beginner player would have bad supply due to not knowing how to set things up).


Vet's supply on turn 9, pretty good:



Vet's supply on turn 16, this is about the worst it gets:



Where possible, Vet did some attacks after mud and before winter to keep the Soviet OOB growth down:



20:1 loss ratio on those battles, just from deliberate attacks:

[Beethoven1]

Winter

Here is Vet's supply near the start of winter (turn 22):



Vet had a bunch of freight stored up in rear depots. For example, he released 55k freight previously stored up in Vitebsk on turn 26:



55k freight sent out:



So this meant supply in winter wasn't too problematic despite the various special winter rules which are supposed to make there be bad supply, but which don't necessarily have much effect for an Axis player that knows how to set up their supply properly such as Vet:



And this is Vet's supply on turn 27. 0 net freight shortage across the front.





Here was Vet's Front Line defense at the start of winter (turn 25):







Where feasible, Vet attacked to inflict more losses with a lopsided loss ratio at the start of winter:




On turn 24 at the start of winter, this was the OOB:



In winter, Thistle Tea tried to attack Vet's well supplied double/triple stacks, in particular around Voronezh. At the start of blizzard, Thistle Tea was getting these sorts of battle results:



And this was a follow up attack to that battle:



Thistle Tea was discouraged by the high losses he was taking even on his successful attacks (even with the December winter penalties):



Another frustrating battle for Thistle Tea:



These are his thoughts on that battle (and as he mentions, weather RNG is also a factor, since he mentioned that no blizzard was forecast for the subsequent turn, which limited how he could build momentum):



Vet counterattacked and strengthened his forces around Voronezh as a result:





10k losses on this counterattack:



After this, Thistle Tea gave up on his winter offensive. Note - personally I think he probably gave up too easily and could have made some progress by attacking more aggressively and also attacking in some other parts of the map where Vet might have been weaker, but it is true that Vet was very strong, had a well set up defense, and Thistle also was especially hurt by not having blizzard throughout all of December. And it is also true that even if he had attacked more successfully, not only would Axis have taken more losses, but so would Soviets (and he was taking plenty of losses anyway).

[Beethoven1]

1942

As winter penalties started to fade away, Vet kept trying to inflict losses with more deliberate attacks where feasible. For example:









Note, those are just regular straight up deliberate attacks, not even follow up attacking/herding here.



Losses just from that one turn when it was not even spring weather yet:





When the weather DID get better, Vet continued to inflict brutal losses with grinding (rather than pockets) on the Soviets in 1942. At the start of good weather in 1942, Thistle Tea was attempting to defend a normal sort of front line as a normal naive player would do and as would be historical (e.g. similar to the set up in the start of Stalingrad to Berlin, 1943 Campaign, and 1944 campaign, in the sense that there was a more or less continuous front line rather than abandoning large parts of the front), like this on turn 38:



This led to atrocious losses as a result of Vet's deliberate attacks and follow-up attacks after Thistle Tea's units. These graphs shows how Thistle Tea's army began to disintegrate in May 1942. In numerous turns he suffered 300k losses or so just from pure grinding alone:








Just one small part of the front on one particular turn:



Nearly 100k losses, and a 50:1 loss ratio just on that one little small bit of front:





Vet's supply after the special freight penalty disappeared:



From this point onwards in the game, AFAIK the entire Wehrmacht was on supply priority 4. There is no reason not to use supply priority 4 for everything once the artificial freight penalty is gone.


The game ended in August 1942 or so, around turn 59 or so, with this OOB, showing how far the Soviets had been ground down by the method of deliberate attack + herding + follow up attack on the retreated units:



As far as I am aware, there were no particular pockets in 1942, it was just deliberate attacks and follow up attacks on retreated units causing these extremely high losses:



The final front line went from Rybinsk in the north down to Moscow (Vet was about to encircle it) down to Saratov (Vet was about to take it) and down to Rostov.

[Beethoven1]

CONCLUSION AND RECAPITULATION OF THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Basically this is what the game was like:

[Leumas06]

I did also have the feeling that this casualties ratios in enven combats are disproportionate taking into account that the historical numbers of reinforcements are not received. In my current game the German has already directly chosen to put all the panzers on the southern plains, avoid any complicated terrain, and destroy the Soviet mp. I dont know how i going to end because I am in turn 10 but I dont see a way to engage this.