MarauderPL
Posts: 134
Joined: 4/8/2016 Status: offline
|
Just to start, I came to this game with a few assumptions. First, I'm an average tactician and will do a lot of subprime unit micro - and that has been basically confirmed, M60 even posted a screen with all the "Held" results ;) Second, to overcome this deficiency, I need to step up with the operational and strategy layer. I asked myself what was the most dangerous and irritating operational situation to deal with when I was playing the Soviet side. The answer is obvious: wide front with motorized formations behind the infantry. The Soviets need to present a continuous front and be strong everywhere, while the Germans pick the weakest spot in the defensive line and break through there. So the operational plan was to widen the front as much as possible on every opportunity. And it has worked like a charm, the Soviets do not have enough units to present a long AND strong line of defence. On the more strategical level my main objectives were Leningrad and Moscow. The fight over the Ukraine is tempting, but lack of supply behind the Dnepr till turn 10+ makes it very wasteful. So after initial attacks 2nd PzGruppe was switched back to AGC as soon as possible. Note that the destruction of the Red Army was set as a secondary objective. So Panzer incursions were mostly used to unhinge Soviet positions and force them to retreat and not to shoot for encirclements. The reasoning behind this was to gain terrain quickly and threaten the important Soviet objectives. With that happening the opposing player would be set with a decision - to abandon important cities for free or to fight in unfavourable conditions. Last but not least, the air game. I intended to skip it completely, but after hearing M60 wants to put it as a central point of his AAR I tried to play along. Unfortunately, after few turns I came back to my original idea ;) The fatigue bug in national reserve makes the Kabuki dance ineffective but still time-consuming. The amount of AA and its effectiveness makes airfield bombing extremely dangerous. So in my hands the Luftwaffe got degraded entirely to combat support role. As long as I was able to bomb a given hex twice and fly ground support in the important battles I was happy with the airgame. From what I observed from my point of view, M60 finally also didn't engage in air war much, I was usually seeing a couple of bombing raids here and there. How the game developed? Well, looking at the result it went just fantastic :) I have the screenshots at home so will not post them right now, but on various occasions the Soviets played right into my plan, abandoning very good defensive terrain/positions and letting me widen the front considerably. My plan for operation Typhoon (assaulting Moscow) was to use a wide north encirclement, at the same time threatening thrust further north to the Finnish border and cutting off Leningrad area. Capturing cities like Torzhok and Vyshny Volochek was key to my plan. You've seen the result. I'll try to explain it more on some examples later. Hopefully it is more or less understandable, but I'm more than happy to further discuss any details, concepts etc. (here or in discord or by PM) :) Sorry for the long post - and no potato ;)
|