quote:

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

That actually sounds like fun, Ketza, but how many people are willing to play it out in the south the way it's supposed to be? On both sides, really. You have to have an Axis player willing to forgo the opener and a Soviet willing to fight it out in the south and not run to the hills (which is perfectly doable without the opener, btw.)

Everybody has settled into this hackneyed and ahistorical way of playing the game which for me at least ruins the immersion. But I salute what you and Bigbaba have done. It sounds like a reasonable approximation of history, including the casualties.

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I'd certainly be open to not performing the Lvov opening, if my Soviet opponent decided to fight forward in the south (and not transfer units from the south to Leningrad/Moscow). I'm just not sure how specific to get with house rules to make this happen - probably some sort of SD point count for the major cities in the south.

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ORIGINAL: vandev

This comment really is directed at turns 2 and 3, but makes sense even now. Strong soviet defensive cv's do not get weaker if you ignore them. You must attack them early and often. After many turns of pounding it becomes very hard for the soviet to field strong cv's. Especially on defense, cv is only the starting point. The german has over 20+ pioneer units. Adding 4 to an attack can reduce the fort by 1 or 2 levels. This means 5 attacks a turn can ignore the fort level. On the early turns you do not really attack with mass because your infantry is lagging.

Sapper defended the land bridge very well, but he was not hit hard soon enough. Panzers and pioneers on turns 2 and 3 can deliberate attack while waiting for infantry divisions to arrive. There are times for panzers to fight and too move, I believe too many axis fail to deliberate attack with panzers in the critical turns 2, 3 and 4. You cannot let the soviet breath or rest.

The above aside, the new morale recovery rules are creating some powerful soviet cv's.

Vandev