Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Centuur

Losses are slowly mounting on the Axis side, Stavka should be pleased with the developments on the frontlines. Germany is slowly exhausting it's forces. It's early in the turn, and already a lot of the German HQ's are done for. Also: look closely at the frontlines. There are few Axis reserves, except from the forces which have now captured Odessa. Already the Germans have hexes which don't contain two land units and even a gap is there.
The Pskov force has to contain Leningrad. Reserves have to come out of Germany, and that's far, far away by now.
Thing is: it's turning into attrition warfare on the Eastern Front. Attrition favours the Allies. The regenerating power of the Soviet Union is tremendous. It's only the second turn of 1943. I've seen the Soviet gaining 40! hexes in the summer of 1944 one game (that's about the distance from Moscow to the Polish-German border).

Simply keep up doing what you need to do, and that is to maintain a defensive line, with lots of FTR's. Look carefully on how things are developing. Build out your FTR2 forcepool (which has real good Soviet FTR's now), make estimations on where the German reinforcements will go. I think you will see at the end of J/A of this year that you can affort to start building bombers and PARA or ARM, because you have so many infantry type units on the frontlines, that the Germans have stalled.

I don't know what is under the disorganised German divison near Moscow, but I would suggest that the Soviets attack that hex, to isolate the German ARM (if you can get reasonable odds, that is. If you can't get a good attack on that hex, attack the lone ARM instead. Move the whole Voronezh frontline one hex to the east if that's the case (give up the city, it's probably going to be your last tactical withdrawal).

Also: move the GAR's towards the frontlines (especially the one in Sevastopol to the north). You tend to use them to guard places, but there is no reason to wait for an attack which will or will not come. Especially GAR's are very good units to get into the frontlines. And don't leave HQ's alone in a frontline hex, ever.

Don't despair. Be patient. The turning point comes suddenly. Already there are hexes on the Axis frontlines which are not defended or which are defended by only one unit in them. Don't make any attacks you can't affort to get losses on, that's the golden rule of WiF...