tyronec (Axis) vs Quantas (Soviet).

[tyronec]

We are playing Campaign - No early end.
Am just going to make very occasional postings.

TB control off.
No Ground Attack ADs (except Axis T1).
No temp motorisation.
No paradrops.
No Amphib assaults.
No air transfer unit

National Morale mod, Reduced retreat attrition.
+5 for Germans and Soviets, +10 for the rest.

This is both of our first time playing the mods. The reduced attrition should help the Soviets in '41/'42 and Axis later in the war, as I understand the idea of it is the stop Axis from being able to get a win by grinding in '41/'42.
The +10 for Allied Morale hasn't made much difference, the Allies are still mostly fairly useless and unprotected just get trashed as usual while absorbing supplies and rail capacity to REFIT. Their elite units are more helpful.
The 'No GA' is a serious nerf to the Soviets, IMO the game is unbalanced without it as an active VVS can do too much damage early war when Axis are advancing in the open.

1941.
AGN took Lenningrad after much heavy combat.
AGC got up to Kalinin & Tula, around 6 hexes from Moscow.
AGS took the Crimea, failed to assault Rostov and up close to Voronezh.
The Soviets retreated in good order pretty much all the time and there was only one pocket of more than a couple of units after the opening.

Soviet winter offensive retook Kalinin but otherwise the North and Center were fairly static. In the South they recovered a lot of terrain with Axis falling back rather than fighting. They also retook the Crimea when Axis failed to defend Kerch properly.

[tyronec]

Axis lines at the end of the Summer.
AGN has been static.
AGC ground forwards to take Tula, Voronezh, Ryzan and eventually Tambov.
AGS recovered the Crimea and took Stalingrad without too much difficulty but the offensive towards Saratov was defeated when too many Soviet Corps started to appear. In the Caucasus they got up to Makhachkala but couldn't get any further towards Baku. Along the coast eventually started pushing towards Tuapse after some Soviet had been pulled away to other fronts and the offensive there is still continuing while Axis are on the defensive everywhere else.
Pics are for T70 which is the last turn of before the mud.

T70N.jpg (184.97 KiB) Viewed 1948 times

T70C.jpg (247.64 KiB) Viewed 1948 times

T70S.jpg (175.19 KiB) Viewed 1948 times

T70OOB.jpg (35.4 KiB) Viewed 1948 times

[tyronec]

T70Men.jpg (117.08 KiB) Viewed 1945 times

T70AFV.jpg (117.43 KiB) Viewed 1945 times

T70Losses.jpg (128.08 KiB) Viewed 1943 times

[tyronec]

We are now up to T74 and the Soviet winter offensive.
And just for the record, I have never got this far into a WITE game before without one side or the other effectively having won.
Just for comparison, this is around the same turn as the start of StB. OOBs attached for comparison.

Axis have 6M as against 5.1M men historically, so +0.9M
Soviets have 8.8M as against 7M historically, so +1.8M.
This reflects our play because while Axis have been attacking at least somewhere all of the time the Soviets have just been dong occasional counter attacks.
I don't know who has the advantage, Axis are ahead of historical on territory but have failed to defeat the Soviet army. As I understand it the vanilla game is very much advantage the Soviets from '43 onwards but the mods may make a difference.

Nov42.jpg (36.94 KiB) Viewed 1940 times

StB.jpg (39.37 KiB) Viewed 1940 times

[Metalist]

Thanks for this AAR, for I am curious about how the recently added options effect the game, especially in the late war. Looking forward to it.

[tyronec]

Just to demonstrate how rubbish the Axis allies are even with the +10 morale boost, this is one of a sequence of 4 Hungarian defensive battles which were all much the same.
The lead Hungarian unit had morale 70, full supply and CCP and a level 7 leader and still it dropped to around 20% of displayed CV.
Having seen this so often now in this game am thinking that the display CV for Axis allies is not representative. Used to think they did worse than predicted because Axis allies were mostly around 50 morale and at that level you can get some extreme bad combat results, but even with higher morale they are not doing much better (elite units generally excepted).

T80.jpg (53.9 KiB) Viewed 1781 times

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Just to demonstrate how rubbish the Axis allies are even with the +10 morale boost, this is one of a sequence of 4 Hungarian defensive battles which were all much the same.
The lead Hungarian unit had morale 70, full supply and CCP and a level 7 leader and still it dropped to around 20% of displayed CV.
Having seen this so often now in this game am thinking that the display CV for Axis allies is not representative. Used to think they did worse than predicted because Axis allies were mostly around 50 morale and at that level you can get some extreme bad combat results, but even with higher morale they are not doing much better (elite units generally excepted).
T80.jpg

Border Guard BDE & light Inf Div against 2 Mech Corps with 5 Tank BDE's and a Motorized BDE in clear terrain. You are expecting what exactly?

[tyronec]

Border Guard BDE & light Inf Div against 2 Mech Corps with 5 Tank BDE's and a Motorized BDE in clear terrain. You are expecting what exactly?

Am not expecting anything.
Would be interesting to hear if anyone has some insight on the display values of Allied CVs.

[FortTell]

Hungarians getting defeated by mech corps

What makes it weirder is that this Soviet leader starts with 2 Mech skill, so Soviets were not even well-lead here

[quantas]

Hello,
tyronec has suggested that I can also give comments here. I am happy about this offer and will provide occasional comments on the game from the perspective of the USSR

tyronec started with a strong opening. After T1 it looked like he would focus on Leningrad and the center. All reinforcements were therefore in these two directions in T1.

In T2 his units have already reached Pskov and Smolensk...a good achievement.

[quantas]

[quantas]

2.png (874.83 KiB) Viewed 1656 times

[quantas]

In the south, no firm defense was planned, but rather a dynamic retreat. The primary goal is to preserve the Red Army. I definitely wanted to avoid larger pockets. This also worked well in the first few rounds

In T3 Smolensk fell, and in T4 he already reached the Luga line. Everything pointed to an early fall of Leningrad. A new defensive line was established behind Smolensk.

[quantas]

This line was already abandoned in T6 -after the fall of Vyazma

[quantas]

In T6 the pocket around Kiev was closed. Fortunately, there were only a few garrison troops in the city. At the same time his tanks already reached the region around D-Town and Z-Town

[quantas]

His advance also went well in the north. This is where I made my first major mistake. I withdrew the troops southwest of Leningrad too slowly. Here there was the first pocket with five rifle divisions.

[quantas]

Sevastopol already fell to T10. I didn't use a Kerch fortress because I found it to be gamey.

In T11 a large blob had already moved within 4 hexes of Moscow.

[quantas]

At the same time, Tyronce managed to close a large pocket in the south. About 250k troops were trapped inside, including my entire tank and mech divisions in the south. My mood started to drop a bit

[quantas]

Luckily, tyronec didn't have enough troops to completely seal the pocket. So that the majority of troops were able to escape in the following two turns. Despite everything, around 80-90K troops were lost in this pocket.

In T13, Leningrad was finally isolated and the blob west of Moscow had changed its direction towards Tula. Moscow was saved - for the time being

[quantas]

In T14, Leningrad's defensive line was breached for the first time. The fall of the city was now only a matter of time

A new offensive began in the Moscow area, which led to the fall of Kalinin

West of Rostov, Tyronce was again able to form a pocket around several divisions