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neuromancer -> Boring Opening Moves? (5/27/2011 11:14:01 PM)
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In the AAR "The Anti Bolshevik Crusade - Tarhunnas vs Q-Ball" the topic of the giant Lvov pocket - and its predictability came up. Which made me think of the other predictable opening moves; the drive on Leningrad, the 2nd Pz.Gr. pushes east as fast as possible, the 'Riga Gambit;, and the Soviets form the 'carpet of ants', and so on.
In this AAR Q-ball was apparently using an older strategy.
Sabre 21 had this to say about that stratgey -
quote:
ORIGINAL: Sabre21
This was the common Soviet strategy when I began testing 2 1/2 years ago. [The Soviets] would fall back to some point, typically the Vyzama to Kharkov north south line, and entrench units in a carpet hoping they would be well dug in by the time the Germans could get there. Some of the guys refer to it as the Sir Robinsky strategy. The downside was the Germans moved unimpeded to that defensive line with little to no loss well before the Soviets could really dig in and easily break thru it.
I was exchanging email with an 'old' grognard I know, and we were talking about the typical strategy in East Front board games. What Sabre21 describes is pretty much the standard strategy of those games. Sort of.
"Using mostly regular rules, the only thing that keeps the Germans from over running the whole USSR in 1941 is their supply limits. When the Germans are in supply, the Soviets can't stop them in 41. Their only strategy is how much of their Army do they want to sacrifice to temporarily hold back the Germans at whatever river barrier they choose. Once the Germans break through, its flee!, run!, retreat! time for Uncle Joe's boys."
Of course movement in board games is far more predictable, plus entrenching is usually fairly easy and predictable. The standard theory for '41 Red Army always appears to be "delay them, and try to take some Fascists with you when you die for the Rodina!"
Not if, when.
As long as the Axis don't get too far before the mud and winter stops Axis operations for the year, its all good. Then the Soviet player rebuilds and starts some offensive operations in January of '42 which bloodies the nose of the German, mud comes, and then the Axis is back on the offensive. the '42 Red Army is typically stronger and more capable than the '41 Red Army (historically it was still rebuilding and re-thinking strategy in '42, so there was a mix of good and bad there), but the Wehrmacht is still in good shape, and that is when many consider the real fun to start, the '42 and '43 back and forth on the East front. In '42 the Axis should still be able to push forward, but not as quickly as in '41, and in '43 the balance starts to shift as the Red Army has really gotten its act together, and the Wehrmacht is starting to crack under the strain.
I know most old players probably know all this stuff, but I figured I'd recap for the less familiar.
quote:
Soviet strategy shifted then to the forward deployed use of the checkerboard followed by a series of linear defenses ending in a carpet around Moscow and other key objectives.
The checkerboard carpet (aka 'carpet of ants') gives me some concern as the Russian army of '41 wasn't really capable of anything particularly effective. Partly because they had units which were too cumbersome to organize in any kind of useful manner, partly because their actual equipment rarely included what they needed to do the job (when Lend-Lease started, the Americans shipped what they considered to be mostly obsolete junk to the Soviets, which the Soviets gladly took because it was often the difference between having something and nothing), partly because the majority of the army lacked any kind of useful training, but mostly because - thanks to Stalin - the majority of the army lacked any kind of coherent leadership at any level to organize something like a layered and checkerboard defense on that scale.
That isn't to say the Russians didn't perform any kind of defense against the Axis advance, just that they really didn't do any better than the Poles or the French (probably worse actually), they still made the Germans pay for ground, but they were following back rapidly, taking massively losses, and having whole armies captured.
So the evolved tactics that are in use for the Russians seem to be far more effective than they should be for what the Red Army was working with in '41.
At least the carpet of ants seems to be, several defensive lines behind rivers is more plausable, and an easier theory to impliment.
I suppose the way to measure this is simply this -
By the time the blizzards hit in December 1941, where should the Axis advance typically be? If its far short of the historical locations, then there is something wrong. If its far in advance of the historical locations, there is something wrong.
If however - all things being roughly equal - the Germans are in the right general area of historical locations, then we can probably say "close enough" and move on.
I'm not sure that the last is the case though, it seems to be that the Germans are typically coming up short (although I could be wrong on this, I'm sure this will come as a surprise, but I have actually been wrong before. A surprise I know, but true. [:D])
It can be argued that the Germans did historically nearly optimum and that the Soviets did very poorly. I would argue that this is probably inaccurate, and even if it is accurate, that it is irrelivant.
As has been said, this game is not about exactly recreating the events of the actual War in the East, because we all know how that turned out and can read a book about it. Nor is it about creating an environment where the Soviet player can avoid all the mistakes of history while the German is railroaded into certain activities by the limited necessity of his situation.
The giant Lvov pocket - for example - is a strategy the German player is largely forced to take (at least if he wants to have any chance of doing well). To not try for the Lvov pocket is to allow a lot of Soviet forces to escape and return to haunt the German player later, forces that generally shouldn't be escaping. As it seems very difficult to create the historical Kiev pocket (which resulted in at least 400,000 captured soldiers - for all practical purposes four Soviet field armies and 40 some divisions destroyed), the Axis player has to grab the Lvov pocket because he is unlikely to ever get the opportunity again.
The problem with creating large pockets in the game after turn 1 is that even with FOW the players have way too good of information, and the players will do everything they can to get troops out of those pockets before its too late. In reality it was usually too late to escape by the time they realized what had happened, and that is because their information was usually too narrow of scope, and larger scale data was out of date. Heck in those days you couldn't even be 100% sure where all your own units were, let alone where the enemy was!
Obviously that is the nature of the beast with this kind of game. It is almost impossible to create a true sense of the real Fog of War that existed for the General Staff in those days.
Anyway... I'm rambling.
I guess the point of this post is this.
1. Is the Soviet 'checkerboard carpet' or carpet of ants defense too effective, and thus slowing the Axis advance too effectively, too far from where they should be able to reach in '41? Or is the Axis player able to reach the December 5 line as they should, in which case while ahistorical, the checkerboard carpet is a difference that makes no difference, so who cares?
1.a. I suppose a sub question is whether it is even possible for the Axis player to exceed those objectives? Yes it should be hard, and it may require the Soviet player to screw up, but is it even possible without the Soviet player simply not playing?
2. Is there really no variation in the strategy for the players in the begining of the game? Is the Axis player forced into a certain path in order to reach said Dec. 5 objectives, while the Soviet player is similarly forced into a certain path in order to prevent the Axis from advancing too far and causing too much damage?
Notably, many War in the East games do have a pretty standard 1941 game. The question is merely how the dice land, and whether any minor variations allow either side to adjust the end of November positions to a small degree. It could be argued that the real game starts in '42 and that '41 is more about the manuevering to create the '42 situation.
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