What to do with Soviet Airborne Brigades

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Gary Grigsby's War in the East Series >> The War Room >> What to do with Soviet Airborne Brigades

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What to do with Soviet Airborne Brigades - 10/31/2012 8:46:27 AM

Wally Wilson

Posts: 98
Joined: 6/22/2011
From: The Republic of Texas
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I see that many people suggest to retreat the Soviet airborne brigades at the start of the game to save them for later upgrades to Guard Rifle Divs or Guard Airborne Divs, but then I notice in many of the AAR's by the pro players that the airborne units are in the line in the early game.

When WiTE first came out, I played two games as the Soviets against the AI and both times I retreated the airborne for upgrades but never used them for air landings.

What are people's thoughts about saving Soviet airborne for upgrade vs. using them for combat in the early game?

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RE: What to do with Soviet Airborne Brigades - 10/31/2012 11:43:32 AM

carlkay58

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Joined: 7/25/2010
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At the start of the game, the airborne Xs are about the only reliable troops you have. They also benefit from the brigade/regiment ability to take lower casualties and retreat easier than XXs do. So you keep them for where you absolutely need to slow down the Axis - I tend to use them against the infantry rather than the panzers. They are also excellent as a fall back line that will slow down any panzer breakthrough.

Once August hits, you should be able to pull them out for refitting and preparing for the winter counteroffensive. I have never been able to get the airborne drops to work in any of my games (although I have no problems with the sample game from the examples) so I have not done that.

(in reply to Wally Wilson)

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RE: What to do with Soviet Airborne Brigades - 10/31/2012 10:41:45 PM

Wally Wilson

Posts: 98
Joined: 6/22/2011
From: The Republic of Texas
Status: offline

Ok, thank you very much. I'm on turn 7 and have already moved them to Moscow to dig, but I'll keep that in mind for the future.

I recall now, that in my first game, I couldn't get them to air drop either, but that was in the original release version.

(in reply to carlkay58)

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RE: What to do with Soviet Airborne Brigades - 11/3/2012 9:46:28 AM

delatbabel

Posts: 1252
Joined: 7/30/2006
From: Sydney, Australia
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They also dig quite well. When the rest of your rifle brigades start showing up I stack the airborne corps HQs with 8 rifle brigades each and some construction engineers and use them to dig.

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(in reply to Wally Wilson)

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RE: What to do with Soviet Airborne Brigades - 11/25/2012 4:19:41 PM

BIG ERN

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Joined: 5/19/2011
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i also was never able to make airdrops

(in reply to delatbabel)

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RE: What to do with Soviet Airborne Brigades - 11/25/2012 5:27:04 PM

Klydon

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Joined: 11/28/2010
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Making airdrops with the brigades is rather tricky and takes careful coordination with an airbase and how you handle your transports.

Basically, airdrops early in the game are very difficult due to lack of good transport aircraft and what good transport aircraft you have, you need to do forced upgrades to get rid of the crummy bi-plane transports. After all this, you then need to concentrate most of your longer range transport assets into a single airbase.

From my experiments, you need to have something like 8 squadrons of transports on the same airbase stacked with the airborne unit. As I mentioned, the bi-plane transports don't get it done, so they all need to be the TB-3 transport or Li-2's. You have to make sure the airborne unit you are dropping has good moral AND a healthy ToE percentage. I think if a unit loses enough to go unready in the drop, it will probably fail.

Clearly it can be done since players have successfully pulled it off in some of the "cheese" manuvers to cut the rail lines a good distance from the front lines.

As far as the airborne brigades go early in the game, it is a tricky balancing act as others have mentioned a airborne brigade can slow down an enemy advance quite effectively. I have a tendency to yank them out of main line and use them as diggers/last line of defense. As the war goes along, the standard Russian rifle division doesn't exactly get better in terms of ToE/manpower. The Russian mountain/paratroop divisions are another story and keep a lot of "extra" in the ToE along with being much larger in terms of manpower over a standard rifle division. A paratroop division can easily hit 5 for a combat value in 1943 and its "elite" moral also means it can generally advance better than other rifle units.

(in reply to BIG ERN)

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RE: What to do with Soviet Airborne Brigades - 11/25/2012 5:33:26 PM

morvael

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Joined: 9/8/2006
From: Poland
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I saw that the '44 airborne div has all 300+ squads with SMGs, that could be worth something. On the other hand they are very light in artillery, comparing to normal guards or mountain.

(in reply to Klydon)

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