Lovenought
Posts: 227
Joined: 8/21/2017
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Hello. I've been playing a 41 Campaign (No Early End) vs someone called Stamb. Since we are both new to WITE2, I thought it would be interesting to record what happens. Show what it's like with two rookies, not super-genius WITE-1 veterans. We have already reached the Winter Offensive, so it feels like a good time to start writing (since anything from before Winter has little relevance to the current situation).
Note: since i'm writing with a delay, I don't mind if my opponent reads this. I think having the perspective of two new players might generate some really useful insights into how we think.
Also since i'm recapping a few months of game time, I'll present the progress in the Army Group North/Centre/South sectors in turn, rather than bouncing back and forth constantly. (I actually do my turns South to North, because i'm a lunatic. So i'll start with Ukraine.)
(Also, PS: I'm not sure what to do about image sizes. Are these all too large? I could go back and try to re-size things if people think it looks bad. Feel free to give feedback on the formatting of everything)
UKRAINE
Herr Stamb opens with a pretty standard, professionally executed 1st Turn. Enormous VVS losses and equally enormous pockets. The only fumble at start was the obligatory heavy casualties to some unescorted deep penetration raids, and losses to some naval bombers. I believe he was following that 1st turn bombing guide someone made. Nearly 4,000 aircraft destroyed on the ground!
However, if I remember correctly, I still had a fair scattering of completely intact squadrons, because their turn to be hammered never arrived due to some German squadrons getting shredded over Kiev and such before they could do their missions closer to the front. All intact squadrons were moved back. At this stage I was really confused about best practice with decimated squadrons. Some were moved to the reserve, some were just shuffled vaguely into the interior.
Over the next few turns, I am able to withdraw and consolidate most of Southwestern Front's powerful assets in good order. A powerful grouping of forces was left positioned forwards, hoping to delay and counter-attack, while I tried to rebuild the frontline around Kiev. However, this grouping was nearly encircled, and barely escaped. They managed to run for their lives and regroup around Kiev, which now had a pretty decent amount of forces defending it. By this time (Turn 3), the Germans were also starting to menace the northern flank of Kiev, but I was cautiously optimistic about my chances holding up there. I was intending to establish a defence in depth along these multiple river lines.
My optimism was instantly proven wrong as the Germans busted through and nearly encircled Kiev by Turn 5, helped along by a supply crisis as I had not yet figured out the logistical system. (and by "figured out", I mean "just put everything near the front on 4, that works well enough I guess").
Luckily, I my opponent didn't cut the rail lines, so I was able to rail out the units with low movement speed, and have faster units just run for their lives. Kiev was mostly abandoned, due to the fact it had almost no supplies in it's depot and so couldn't be held for a siege. I also launched suicidal frontal attacks against the pincers of the pocket. They were never intended to win, I simply wanted to decrease their movement potential next turn so they couldn't chase down fleeing units. I'm not really sure how well that worked, maybe my opponent can say if he remembers. At this point I wasn't aware that you needed to have certain Final Odds to a battle to take off enemy CPP and movement points and such, so a lot of these attacks were probably a pointless waste of human life.
But that's historical! So it's all good.
Meanwhile, in the south, I retreated with little firm resistance (especially since the northern flank of Southern Front kept getting vaporised as SouthWestern Front fought for it's life). Odessa was mostly abandoned except for one or two units. This was not, in fact, an attempt to be gamey, since I wasn't even aware at this time that a Ukraine Minimal strategy was the meta. Rather, it was an attempt by me to be clever.
You see, my thinking was: "Well, Odessa is mostly useful as a port, right? And the only Axis export port on the Black Sea is Constanta. So what if I just...blew up....Constanta.". Therefore, Odessa is worthless! Heavy Bombers would simply be stockpiled in Crimea until the Axis fighters advance forwards enough out of Romania. Then, boom!
See, this is why I was picked for STAVKA. My Proletarian, everyman pragmatism is something you would never find in any academy. (Spoilers: This plan did not work at all)
As a consequence of all this, by turn 6 the Germans and their comic relief were well on their way to Crimea. However, Southern Front had been able to build a strong defensive line in Central Ukraine, linking up with the reformed SouthWestern Front in Northern Ukraine. I tried to send them some reinforcements here and there, but Ukraine by this point was getting a relatively low priority for reinforcements, due to the threat I felt around Moscow and Leningrad at the time. I was determined to dig in and fight for Kharkov as long as I could, however, given it's huge tank factories. So that bumped up the priority of the entire Ukrainian theatre, and attracted more armoured forces especially.
On Turn 6, my masterful bombing offensive against Constanta finally launched. Hundreds of bombers took off, and after a few days for the Luftwaffe to wake up...they basically all died! Literally 100% of the aircraft in this raid for instance! So the less said about this all the better.
Moving on, the defences in Ukraine held steady for a number of turns. The Axis forced a crossing in Southern Ukraine, but I retreated in good order to new positions, and also began fortifying Crimea:
Things only really exploded on Turn 11, when a major offensive by Army Group South shattered my defences again. Kharkov and the unspellable Ukrainian river cities were placed under seige, and I retreated towards Rostov (with a delaying action around Stalino). Some forces escaped the pockets, many did not. Supply problems meant that most of these cities had very low supplies. (I turned everything on the front to refit one turn before the Axis attacked, and drained everything. Woops!)
I retreated to new positions a little further back. Stalino was cut off and sieged, but the Axis didn't pursue me into Rostov. Meanwhile, Crimea stood firm, and the Germans never made it past the chokepoints. The final Axis offensive of the year in Ukraine began on October 5th (Turn 16), as mud was setting in across the map. However, I had a gut feeling he was about to attack, so I deformed my forces into a sort of defensive hedgehog one turn before. As a consequence, when the Axis offensive hit, he didn't find a contigous front line to encircle, and I was able to retreat to the Rostov river line with only moderate losses. I had to stay behind the south near Taganrog however, because there was a large aircraft factory that was about to be evacuated, and it would save a lot of production if they didn't evacuate early. I was able to hold out in the area long enough, but then these divisions were obliterated the second the factories had safely left on schedule. Heroic!
The last weeks of the year before Heavy Mud shut everything down were a series of back and forth skirmishes above Rostov. Exhausted German units were vulnerable to counter-attack, but my own units were vulnerable to counter-counter-attacks in turn. The two weak sides battled back and forth half-heartedly until Mud stopped everything, and we both started preparing for the winter battles. Rostov was never seriously threatened, despite how close he was.
CONCLUSIONS
So, as a beginner, here are my thoughts on the whole topic of Ukraine. (Don't take this as authoritative at all, just my thoughts)
1. I genuinely did try to defend Ukraine. Despite that, I got vaporised over and over again. I have a suspicion that the ever increasing time gap between Army Group South offensives was more due to their logistical problems than my own resistance. I was very lucky Stamb had trouble closing all these pockets completely. Even with so many men escaping, I still had to send new reinforcements down constantly to help rebuild solid defensive lines.
2. However, I did give the South the lowest priority of any of the 3 sectors. This was before I even read any of the stuff on these forums about that, so it was entirely my own thought processes. My basic thinking was: "wow, the situation is terrible. I am being destroyed everywhere. I need to think what is really important, and focus on those first.". So I decided that the Moscow NSS was the most critical point on the map, since without it, any offensives in 1943-44-45 would be extremely difficult, because all the supply would be coming from Tatarstan and the Urals. And then Leningrad, because it was doing extremely poorly and was about to fall.
3. Could I have kept Ukraine? I feel like the answer is "maybe". My defence was so brittle and got smashed over and over because I wasn't able to build a true defence in depth due to lack of units. It was only one or two lines deep in most places most of the time. As I demonstrated in other places (like the plains near Moscow, which you'll see in a bit), the Red Army in 1941 is actually capable of blunting Axis offensives on clear ground, then punching back. They just need a huge number of divisions to do it.
Would I ever decide to dump the majority of my armoured forces in Ukraine, so I can have an epic battle of destiny with Army Group South?
No. I don't think so. Then they would break through in the flat terrain near Moscow, which is infinitely more important than Ukraine.
4. Hitler my dude, you do not need to worry about Romania or Ploesti. The unsinkable aircraft carrier that will destroy all your oil if not taken is a myth!
Crimea has held out completely, but isn't actually that useful, given that any raids into Romania will be completely and totally exterminated to the last plane by a few German squadrons. I've spent the last few months (even before winter) just launching human wave attacks to try and push back out of the peninsula, while the Axis just holds me back like a flailing child. Embarassing!
But the victory points are nice to have, and it gives me a high-supply area in Ukraine to launch attacks and burn up the precious Axis supply that would otherwise go forwards to Rostov (I assume that's what's happening, anyway! Hopefully!)
So, in conclusion: I feel like the average Newbie who doesn't "learn the meta" is still likely to fall into a South Last strategy, even if they don't abandon it. Just because it feels rational. But by defending half-way instead of abandoning it, they will still lose a lot of men, especially if their enemy can seal up encirclements. And then end up at Rostov at the end of the year anyway. But if you do defend the south, Southern Front should eventually get fat enough that it can actually hold Crimea once it retreats into it. (Especially if you have built a few Fortified Zones well ahead of time, like I did.)
Although perhaps my opponent simply chose to ignore Crimea to focus on a lunge for Rostov, and he could have taken it if he wanted to. I'm not sure on that part, hopefully he can answer.
Next up: The Moscow campaign, and then Leningrad (which I actually lost this game! Spoilers!)
< Message edited by Lovenought -- 2/10/2022 1:37:50 AM >
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