M60A3TTS
Posts: 4014
Joined: 5/13/2011 Status: offline
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This game had been put to bed after Larry transferred his interest to the Pacific (WiTP AE). At the time, I really didn't have much interest of my own in continuing but having been idle a couple months and having had the opportunity to run through some test battles in the last turn (105) from Pelton's game, I asked Farfarer if he wanted to continue. He wants to do so, and therefore we will now resume the conflict. We are now at Week 51 and the rasputitsa is coming to an end. The OOB from the previous post displays clearly that both sides are well loaded up. The Axis withdrawal far to the west during the blizzard meant relatively few losses for both sides. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. In reviewing the overall situation, there are some issues. Larry left his defenses rather weak in spots. Also he chose to load up armies and fronts with a support level of 3 so there are quite a few ancillary units I'm not sure have a lot of value. I am resetting the support level to zero in the armies and fronts from the northern command (Larry's area) so I can flush those units to STAVKA and re-allocate the resources. I also noted the fact the Red Army had 131 RR construction brigades and 51 sapper regiments. The main reason for so many RR brigades was the great advance west in blizzard revealed a lot of damaged rail and it needed to get repaired before the Axis once again attacked east. This was quite successful, but now the RR brigades need to be pared down. With 366 AP available, I bit the bullet and disbanded 86 brigades, leaving total of 45. I will be adding at least 100 new sapper regiments later, but I'll ramp them up gradually. They will be used for the existing and new corps SUs as well as for army support. I'll have to keep a close eye out on the available trucks as only 90 factory points remain. Arms points are a healthy 320 so things should be fine there. There are 24 motorized brigades assigned to the far eastern MDs and will form 8 mech corps at a later date. I won't build a lot of rifle corps as I did in my gane against Pelton, and am counting on all these rifle divisions to carry the burden of summer. With a much more extensive use of reserves, hopefully we will see some committments with Zhukov in command of STAVKA. Most armies are being kept at their command limit of 18 or not far over, so at least this game won't require a major reorg in that area. The Voronezh Front has been activated this week. And so...on with the show.
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