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Setting up my side of the forthcoming DAR of Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa with fellow Groghead Bartheart.

Edited to add: his thread link is here, but we're still playing so I won't read it until then. http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=15513.0

Edited to add: and the aftermath discussion thread shall be here. http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=17083.msg449121#msg449121

Thanksgiving today, got to do errands etc. (including right this moment), so I'll be back to add later.

Note: Bart can read this thread down to a point before we start; I won't be talking about anything secret until later, and I'll make it clear when he needs to stay away until the aftergame.

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As my thread title indicates ("It isn't paranoia if they're..."), I'll be playing Stalin. Bart will be playing Field Marshal Halder.

For those who don't know the game system, those are actually the characters the game is designed for each side to play, partly to make playing each side as different (yet not too different) as possible, and partly because the entire design philosophy of this game can be summarized as, "How can we possibly make curb-stomping the Russians interesting for either player?"

So I get to fight my own paranoia while paying for my stupidly egotistical murders unspeakably brilliant plan to save Russia in the long run from its greatest nearby threat. We'll see how that works out as I go.

Bart gets to be an upper-middle manager, answering to at least two seniors (one of those being Hitler), dealing with at least two generals around his own command level, and trying to directly manage three Theater Marshals while indirectly managing the Army and Division generals under them.

The game will run no longer than 54 turns (4 days each) plus a pre-game strategy turn which will be more detailed for Bart than for me -- see his thread (which I'll link to later once he makes it) for details.

It might end sooner depending on whether I can get HalderBart shot as an incompetent / traitor by his own people.  >:D Or depending on what kind of strategy Bart picks. If he decides to semi-defy Hitler from the outset, he can win the game relatively early by seizing any of the three target cities (one per theater, although in the South he'd need Rostov plus one of a couple of other cities) and holding it for a month. Otherwise he'll pick one target city, which I won't know about, or let Hitler do that for him (there are benefits either way), and he'll win if he's holding that city at the end of the game. There are some other sudden death win conditions, too, such as if one of us wipes out all opposition in a theater. (As a practical matter, neither of us can permanently wipe out each other's HQs, but we can temporarily put them out of action. Technically mine are permanently gone but I reinforce with new ones quickly; the Nazis just reconstitute the old ones in a safer place. If there are no troops from our regime remaining in a theater when the last HQ of that theater goes down, that's the end of the game.)

Otherwise, whoever has the higher score wins after the final turn. That's calculated by taking the victory points (I own them all at the start), dividing Germany's by half (since realistically every expectation is that he'll be dominating the map by the end of the game), and then adjusting each tally by our difficulty level.

The difficulty level is a multiplier with an initial calculation at the start of the game based on the options we agreed to -- I don't recall the details offhand, we'll see when the game starts -- but it can actually CHANGE DURING THE GAME! Each side has some special help buttons (Germany has more of them) which can be played for free at any time as often as we wish, they don't have cooldowns or limits and don't even cost political points (the currency for most actions in the game)! But whenever they're used, they reduce the difficulty score for that player and increase it for the other player, so that Victory Points will be worth less and more respectively at the end of the game.

So I could use my one super-power, to activate all my armies at once, every turn if I wanted to. But if I did, my difficulty multiplier would be constantly reduced and Bart's would be constantly raised, so that his Victory Points at the end of the game might be godly while mine are worth rubbish.

I am looking forward to the match.

NON-SECRET PREGAME BLATHER

(Not that the other blather wasn't pregame or non-secret. I just mean that Barth can continue reading through this post.)

You're all probably wondering what my big strategy is. Well, I'll tell you.

My plan is to provoke a war with Nazi Germany.

People will say I'm insane. That's fine, so long as they go along with my plan. Those generals who didn't want to go along with my plan, I've imprisoned or shot. Kruschev and Zhukov are on board. They understand.

They understand that the Imperialist capitalists will never have the guts to try to stop Hitler before it's too late. Everyone appeased him and appeased him and then ran or got overrun by his panzers.

They understand that while trying to recover from the mess the Tsarists made of our nation over centuries and centuries, we haven't had time to put our Hero Plans into action yet.

They understand we look weak, because aside from numbers we are in fact weak.

And they understand that by the time we grow stronger, Hitler and the Fascist Huns will have had just as much time to grow stronger still.

So.

So I have launched a great strategy to defeat the Huns, our natural enemy, before they grow too strong.

Step one, make an alliance with them. This buys us a little peace in our time to prepare.

Step two, make sure the United States will support us with material if we go to war.

Those steps, accomplished.

Step three: tempt Hitler into trying to conquer us this year.

Our agents have appealed to his ego through various channels.

Our forces have lined up along our border, clearly too weak to attack, clearly too weak to withstand any great war he throws at us, clearly a sign that we intend to attack him once we think we are strong enough.

He would be an utter fool not to strike us while we can still be beaten.

And that is why we will win.

Step four: hold off the Huns long enough for them to be caught stretched out when winter comes, as we train men and material in Asia to swarm down from the Urals and hit them. Many of our troops must be sacrificed for this, but the difference is that we will then be fighting his vast armies in our defensive territory, instead of tucked behind their walls.

Step five: just to be safe, convince the capitalists to open up a western and maybe also a southern front, once the maniac's attention has fully centered on beating us. As in ancient warfare, create a spearline, then hold while the swords and cavalry fall in from the sides.

The Hiterlites will crumble from the sides, and we will have the weight and the power and the experience to push them back to Berlin -- and beyond.

The capitalists will serve us well; and then once we have taken Europe, as a tidal wave draws back and then smashes all before it, they will face a foe much more united, undistracted, and the fittest for having survived the worst in the world.

Many will call this plan insane. A mistake. I will lure them into a false sense of complacency by pretending I have been taken by surprise.

Now let us see the deepness of my strategy...

You could always recall the master strategist, Lev Trotsky from exile.  He took care of the Whites and those foreign interventionists.

Oh, wait.  That icepick to the head is a problem.

Two men enter..... :-X

All right, Bart has set up and I think sent in his first turn, so from this point Bart can't read farther until after the game is done.

This is just a buffer in case Bart is scrolling down.  O:-)

Once Bart creates his AAR thread, I'll add links to both our threads in my sig for ease of reference back over to his side.  O0

Thus ends the buffering (probably).

Seriously, you should have already looked away: therefore you are a spy, and I shall have you shot. When I catch you. And I will.


TURN ZERO ROUND 1

In this game, there are rounds not turns. Also, the pre-game turrrround is still called Round 1, not Round 0 or whatever.

For the Soviets, this turn consists in getting reacquainted with the initial Sov dispositions; maybe checking any randomized levels of competency and paranoia factoring assigned to various Marshals and Generals; and most importantly picking which Front to hold at all costs, represented by a particular city which if captured will probably lose me the game.

I'm not really familiar with how this game treats relative front strengths yet, so while I suspect choosing Rostov (the Southern Front) would make the most sense (because depending on how Bart chose his initial strategy he might need another city beyond it in order to make taking Rostov 'count'), I decided to choose Moscow since historically the Germans never quite got there.

That's the only actual action the Sovs can take on the first round; so there isn't much point looking at the map until Round 2 after the Nazis have had their first shots and we can see what I'll have to work with going forward.

Still, I'll post some flavor shots provided by the game (and one by Bart) along the way this turn.


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Some British spies are trolling me by subtly replacing some letters "s" with that weird "f"-looking version of "s" they used to use back around the time the American partisan revolutionaries kicked them out of America. And then lost their revolution anyway. But I digress. They didn't think I would notice. But I did. Also, I noticed the attempt to seduce me into your Imperial measurements. You cannot troll me, Britain. I will send the head of whoever prepared this report to your Queen's palace. DEATH TO SPIES! Ha ha ha.

(Note: mainly this screen means we're playing the game with all the historical bling turned on.)



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The first thing that happens is that someone named "Vance" has hacked the game between Bart and me, and now is taunting us with having done so.

Consequently, if I lose, I shall blame this "Vance" person. This is only reasonable.

I won't show the stat screen (there isn't much to see yet other than what I'm about to tell anyway), but Russia outnumbers Germany 1431.1K to 1265.6K. But that isn't much, a 1.131 to 1 ratio. And their troops and organization generally are much, much better. But our reinforcement schedule is much, much better. But our reinforcements are cursed. They have the consistency of yogurt, for example.


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This was part of my Great Maskirovka. (Actually just flavor text in the game.)


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This is a draft of a letter we are planning to let slip to some chosen probable fascist sympathizers in my staff, to see if we can use them for counter-intelligence or at least increase the probability of their being spies should our sympathizers on their staff hear of a supposed rift between Zuhkov and myself. Lies of course. This is only my Maskirovka being played out, to make us seem weaker than we are and ready for attack. I am not really insane. (Note: also just flavor text in the game.)


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Obviously I chose Moscow because I'm there. I'm not insane.


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They may be Tsarist, but they'll be loyal to me, seeing me as their Tsar. Or I'll send them into a pit. I can do that, because I'm the leader and I am not insane. Can Bart!Halder shoot his own generals and still win? Can he shoot his own generals at all?? Ha! Ha ha ha! Advantage: me.

With the game already clearly in my advantage, I declare myself the winner and end my turn. I MEAN MY ROUND, I end my round.

Bart has started his side of the AAR, yay! Here's the link, which I won't read until the end of the game. Also, I'll add it retroactively to the first post; and I'll setup links to both sides in my sig.

http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=15513.0

Not-ROUND 2

For anyone who would rather not Read The Fascist Manual, true Soviet Heroes can instead watch a nice suite of videos in-game (if you have the appropriate bourgeoise decadent video player on your system) under the help tab. Unfortunately, you have to start a game as one or the other side first to watch them -- unless you know how to go into your game folder from the system and look for the tutorial folder. There are plenty of tool-tips, too; which can be set to only activate with a mouse right-click, if you prefer, in the preferences tab for whatever game you're running. The Pref tab is the farthest left on the upper toolbar (in good Soviet fashion! :D ), and the boxes there will only affect your game, not your opponent's. I've got several special boxes clicked, including one to send end-of-round results back to the devs for balance tracking purposes.

First turns are always fraught with lots to do, and that's especially true for Germany, so while Bart is working on that (and/or whatever else is happening today), let's take a look at some basic game information from the Soviet side as of July 18th before the starting gun(s).

For this purpose I've started a skirmish game against the AI. Germs haven't moved yet, or started reducing my troops, so all positions will be identical to our actual game. Probably the starting generals will be historically assigned -- I'm not sure if there's any deviation on that, since we picked a historical start -- but even with a historical start there will be some minor random fluctuation on their stats. So anything you see about that in these screenies won't necessarily be true for the game vs Bart.

Let's start by looking at the total available area to play in.


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That's the minimap at game start. The red rectangle roughly in the middle is where my game window is currently zoomed, and we'll see that in a minute (centered on Moscow). The red squiggly line is the front of control between Germany (or their allies, most importantly Finland with that disconnected red line a little left of top center) and Russia.

Most of the blue lines are river systems, which for game purposes are purely roadblocks for movement and defense. You can see a number of oceans (and the Caspian Sea), but I'm pretty sure for this game there are no naval options: there are technical options for getting to Copenhagen etc., but it wouldn't do me any good; and on the other hand I don't think the Nazis can do naval invasions or engagements. For me that's just as well -- I have enough problems as it is, but it also means the Germans (probably??) won't be able to interdict some of my supply lines arriving by ocean.

Two of the long squiggly blue lines, which you may have noticed look like I accidentally dragged a pen across the map into the Urals and the Far North, are red on the real map: they're the Theater lines, dividing the map into three organizational parts, north, central, and south. I'll talk more about this later.

On this map you can't see units, but you can see some rough terrain ideas, and if you squint you may be able to see the minor and major towns (in brown and blue respectively).

Let's zoom in a tad.


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I'm going to try experimenting with the 1024 Imageshack size, since games like this need more resolution; but I don't want readers to have to be scrolling their windows left and right all the time, so let me know how well this is working or not, kthx? (I'll try to remember to ask again after this post.)

Okay, on looking closer, as far as this game is concerned there is no land connection to that area of Scandanavia in the upper left corner, so it is literally impossible for me to get there, and even if the Germs have naval transport there wouldn't be a point. So I've purpled a line around it with a big "IGNORE."

All the other land area is possible playing field. You can see the major cities -- especially important for the Sovs, since losing them drives me insane. NOT THAT I AM INSANE!

Ahem.

Here the regime / ally holding of areas is more obvious, brownish red for us, lightish green for the Nasties; but we can see a little more terrain detail under that, too. The theater divisions are still in blue like rivers -- personally I'd recommend making them bright yellow, so I've penned them in that way for this map. On the main map they're red, like the regime control border. Along that border, and scattered in a little depth behind our border, you can see red dots representing all our stacks, and on the other side you might be able to make out some white clear squares for sighted German stacks. The narrow red rectangle window is still there, as in the minimap -- if I unzoom it gets bigger -- and because I've got command radius turned on, and I've selected STAVKA HQ in Moscow, you may be able to see some slight discoloration around Moscow in a five hex radius. This'll be more obvious in a moment.


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Same map, without the yellow Theater lines, but with the HQs turned on. Well, most of the HQs; the main Front HQs don't get listed on this map for some unknown reason. Don't know if it's a bug.

Those were the minimap and the strategic map, in that order. They have their own tabs which overlay the main map window (the strat map moreso than the mini). The strat map has a few other tools on it, such as where to send messages to your opponent, which will arrive when your turn is sent.

Let's zoom all the way in to Moscow for a moment on the main map. (I've tweaked the position a bit south to show the ring of towns better, so it won't match up exactly with the rectangles shown previously. All those towns are minor, by the way, costing me 1 VP and no paranoia if they fall. Moscow would show a large red dot if I removed the military counters; those cost me a lot more VP and add paranoia.)


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Now you can see the command-glow around the HQ -- I've got that turned on in my preferences for the game. Any unit in that radius will receive various combat bonuses, not necessarily stackable with support from other HQs. I can't move STAVKA and the other Front HQs (I don't think -- if so that'll be a card operation, costing political points), but the Germans might move them for me! They can't destroy my HQs, but they'll earn a bunch of political points for overrunning them -- but given an opportunity, the computer will relocate my main HQs somewhere more safe before their overrun. (The same goes for me running over his HQ, but that isn't likely to happen in this game.)

For this game, Russia is freaking empty except near the front line, so it's just as well that I don't have to worry about invasion from the Black Sea or whatever. (Maybe! -- maybe the Germans have cards for that, I don't know, I've gone out of my way not to check so I'll be a bit surprised when various things happen.)

Despite Barbarossa being the largest military operation in world history so far, the designers have streamlined things a lot. There are only five kinds of counters on the map (for Russia; Germany gets one or two more, such as for rail guns.) You're looking at one kind now, the HQ.


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The flag shows it's an HQ -- other units have NATO markings or (if the option is turned on) figure icons instead. Note that I'm not yet using Philippe's alternative counter art, since that mostly affects the Germs anyway, and I'd rather wait and see if he's going to use it; that way y'all can see both types.

The little red and yellow dot on the upper left is actually a Soviet gold star, and just shows this is a Soviet unit; as does the darker red background to the main counter area. (The Russians have a lot less variance in this than the Nazis, which could have Axis minor artwork instead.) The little green dot under the national dot shows that this unit is safely in supply; it changes color otherwise. The purple bar down the left side is the HQ color, which is unique for Stavka but which helps visually show which units belong with what HQ (along with a couple of other counter-outline aids that I've got turned on but which don't affect this HQ because it has no attached counters.) Last is an abbreviation of the HQ's name. On other units this would be a number representing a rough combat power value. HQs do have some weak combat power; this one has 500 troops, although you can't see them yet.

I won't go into a lot of detail about what the various buttons and things do on the user interface; I just want to give readers an introduction to what the various screenshots I'm going to show 'mean'.

I do want to show the Order of Battle tab, though.


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Okay, the left side of this tab shows a quick list of all counters (i.e. game pieces) I've got on the map. The list is really a little simpler than this: STAVKA and Army HQs are both HQ types for example; and there are several kinds of mobile infantry but they're all "fast infantry" compared to various flavors of slower regular infantry. Cavalry are a special kind of fast infantry which don't need fuel, so they have their own map counter.

The main OOB window can have several things showing at once. Here I've got Stavka selected, so only units directly reporting to Stavka are shown: garrisons are a special kind of infantry that I can raise for free once every round, and we start off with one of those on the map already (in Brest). They can't move, but they're tough and cannot ever be out of supply even if surrounded (although other units in their stack may go out of supply). You can see they have a NATO infantry symbol, a rectangle with a big x across it. Cavalry would have one slash of that x in the rectangle. Divisions based mainly on tanks or other heavy armor would have an oval in the rectangle (like a tank tread); and motorized or mechanized infantry would have both the x and the tank tread. We'll see more of this in a minute. Those are basically the only kinds of unit on the map.

If I click any Front HQ (north, central, and south, from left to right), the screen will bring up all HQs receiving supply and support from that HQ.

Central FHQ has the fewest field HQs, so I'll choose them:



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From left to right, that's 10th Army, Western HQ, 3rd Army, and 4th Army. Notice that they have a pink border around them. That means they submit to the HQ I've selected! ^-^ On this little tab that's obvious, but if I went to the main map they'd be highlighted in pink, too, to help me find them. (However, sometimes HQs won't be on top of a stack, so they won't show up as pink on the map, which can be a bit confusing. The OOB tab helps me find HQs quickly by double-clicking on them.)

3rd Army has the fewest Divisions, so I'll click on it.


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And that's it, that's as far down as the rabbit hole goes for this game! See, not far enough to drive me mad?

Somewhat unnecessarily, my Front HQs all have their own color flag, even though they don't command divisions directly; but notice that each of those divisions connected to 3rd Army all share its color flag. Unfortunately, that flag is almost completely obscured by the usual nation and supply icon plus the unit's health-bar (for want of a better term). This is why it's nice to have the option turned on that highlights all subordinate divisions in pink when an HQ is chosen on the map, and the slightly different option that highlights all fellow divisions (and I think their HQ) when a division is chosen.

On the OOB tab, those divisions won't show their current power, but we'll see that on the map in a minute.

Okay, back to the map. The full zoom out shows about a quarter of the map's area at a time. Here's the bottom left quarter as an example, but you can move this view around with the mouse (at the map edges) or the arrow keys, it isn't locked to the four quarters of the map.


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I could have shown a couple more hex lines to the north, but I wanted to be clear about how far down the map goes: to Plovdiv in this case, which of course isn't in Germany per se but this game tracks regime not actual national boundaries. In theory I could be running riot all in that hinterland, but in practice I probably won't as I'd be out of supply and these groups are too large to forage effectively -- I don't have the same logistical problems as Germany will, but I still have to keep supply up. I have to say the big gap in the line there sure looks tempting, though! -- after all, I can cut their supply line, too...

Let's zoom in there one notch.


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As in the previous level, it's easy to see where my fog of war shroud it. In that shroud I can see nothing, but I actually have a good four hex radius forward from my front with some chance to detect things. I really wonder what might be waiting for me in those mountains -- or not, perhaps!

I'd also like to know how that army or two to the south is getting its supply; almost surely from the road to the south which leads to Bucharest. Well, it isn't a road, it's a railroad. In this game, roads aren't shown on the map, only railroads of two qualities (single and double rail). All-weather roads are assumed to exist along with the railroad network; all other hexes are assumed to be connected with what the developers call "goat trails", which in rainy spells (and seasons) turn to a sloggy mud that stops trucks cold, and German infantry (not so much Sov infantry if I recall correctly, since they're used to it). Only tracked vehicles (whether tanks or mechanized infantry -- and the latter only if the division has enough Armored Personnel Carriers) can move through mud, and that causes breakdowns.

As a not-so-incidental sidenote, Germans are able to fix their breakdowns eventually. Soviets in Barbarossa were so ill-trained, though, that any breakdowns we suffer amount to permanent losses, abandoned on the side of the road, as if shot by tanks!

Anyway, let's zoom in on that gap to the max.


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I've turned on my supply layer here, which unfortunately doesn't tell me anything about how they're getting their supplies, but I can make some reasonable guesses. Our supply is coming in from Moscow (originally) through Kiev (where our Front South HQ is parked), down the rail-line onto the map screen at Proskurow, and then around the rail network to 12th Army HQ there. Some of my divisions around that Romanian salient are getting their supplies from that same railroad route (not shown in that screenie); a bit farther south my troops are getting supply from an Odessa route (also not shown in that screenie.)

At this zoom level, there's an option to make the counters smaller and unstack them. Here's what that looks like, supply level still on.


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I've directly selected 12th Army there, so its divisions are highlighted in pink squares. Most of those are getting supply from the route with the little arrows (stopped at my HQ because that's what I've got selected), but clicking around showed me one or two at the eastern edge of that salient are getting supplies from a more southeasterly direction. Still, it's harder for the Germs to cut us off from supply, or rather it's easier for us to redirect overland as long as a route remains open, although supply may degrade due to weather and terrain -- so if I go into those mountains to try to surround the Romanians and their... um... {checking} grounded Luftwaffe allies (there's a whole Army of pilots carrying rifles down there in grey!), I will definitely be increasing my overall supply load for the theater. May still be worth doing though.

Assuming I can even get the HQ to issue capable movement orders. Which, this early in the game, isn't too likely, for reasons I'll get into later once Round 2 arrives and I can do things like move. The Germs get to move and shoot first, as the ones with strategic initiative (in this game the turns will alternate regularly back and forth till the end of the game), so when Bart sends his turn I may find the situation down there untenable for trying anything interesting even if 12th Army activates.

Annnnnd, not much point showing much more until then; so until Round 2 starts, that's it for now!

Argh, yeah that's too big of a graphic. I'll try downsizing a notch, see how that looks.

Here's the final screenie from the previous post, resized for comparison.

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Remember, for this screenie I turned on the spread-icon toggle which tries to show all icons stacked in a hex but which makes them smaller to do so.

ACTUAL ROUND 2 (Part 1 of 2)

THANK CHRIST!! Finally, it's time to...

.......

...oh, right. It's time to be Russia at the start of Barbarossa.

Crap.

(Admittedly, still an opportunity for prayer.)

The good news, is that I haven't lost any Divisions (or HQs) yet. That's about to change next round I suspect.

The bad news, is that I'm Russia at the start of Barbarossa. This will be a theme for a while.

The first thing to notice is that I have no decisions to make. I've read somewhat contradictory information on this -- most Decisions (trademark) are made by Germany, except during the Pre-game phase. But I never got any pre-game decision options, except for the one choosing my Key Front. Is that because we chose "Historical"? But everything I've read so far suggests that only affects Front Marshall characteristics or something like that. We kept all Decision Off buttons clicked off, which means they're clicked on, right? Do I get decisions only as a reaction to any decisions made by Bart? -- so if he doesn't make decisions I don't get any? Decisions do affect both sides in proportionately opposite ways. I dunno. Something to look into later.

While I don't have decisions, I do have Cards, though again not as many as Germany who for this operation naturally would have more strategic policy options. Quite a lot of my gameplay is simpler, which is reallllly nice until I remember again that I'm playing Russia in Barbarossa. :P

Stalin can choose cards from a strategic stockpile every turn ROUND, some of which are free and some of which cost political points. He can also get access to more cards by moving his two chief asskickers around, Zukhov and Kruschev (who each start at Stavka, but can move freely around the area though it takes time with some delay chances). I might as well mention here that I accidentally sent Krush to where I thought I was sending Zukh (though I did send him afterward, too; we'll see where and why, soon.) That's probably okay, since this early in the game Zukh doesn't contribute much -- he's more someone who neutralizes paranoia problems, and I still had no paranoia at the start of this round. That's going to change.

So, if political points are so important (and they are), how many do I have?

Ten.

10.

Zeit.

Whatever Russian is for Zeit.

I do get to accumulate them if I don't spend them (which can be handy if Stalin has a paranoid incident; excess PPoints will be spent to reduce his paranoia globally.) But this early in the game I can't accumulate them much.

So for example, it would be a good idea to put all three Fronts on Defensive Posture as soon as possible. But that currently takes 15 points PER ARMY, not per Front, PER ARMY, a total of God Who knows I'm not a mathematician. I only start with 10. I could easily lose the game before getting all my Armies shifted over. Until then, the divisions for each Army will be suffering massive defensive penalties (against the Nazi massive Blitzkrieg offensive bonuses). Sure, I'll get a 40% attack bonus, but keep in mind I'm Russia At The Start Of Barbarossa. My troops largely suck.

Granted, a lot of them start entrenched. But because I'm R-A-T-S-O-B (we'll just go with that acronym for convenience), I start with a massive debuff to entrenchment, which will slowly decrease each round but it means my entrenchments mean nothing. That's because historically while the Sovs did set up very nice forts and entrenchments along the border, they were inept about using them, and were being told to not bother with them anyway since Stalin intended for them to invade the Axis and run riot in the Hinterlands.

Beyond that, the Germs get an extra-special Blitzkrieg bonus to start with, which will slowly decrease over time but which stacks on top of the normal Blitzkrieg bonus. (Blitzing eats up more supplies than regular offensive operations, which he can also switch to by spending political points. The game has been designed to naturally encourage Blitzing operations early.)

There's also a card I could play each round which costs 10 points and which reduces the cost of switching to defense in any theater by 5, but it raises my paranoia. On the other hand, flying off the handle and shooting a general at this point wouldn't necessarily hurt -- although Stalin will always be semi-randomly weighed toward shooting a competent one, so...

I need to work this out. (I'll explain what I spent my 10 points on this round, soon.) Um... okay, making one concession won't accomplish much; I'll still be spending all my points each round getting an Army set to defense, for twenty rounds or however many Armies I have left by then.

Making two concessions, and I can shift to defensive posture for only 5 points. That's two Armies per round. Not too bad but not great.

Making three concessions, and I can shift all my armies to defensive posture for free! So by turn 5, I can be gearing down into some huge defensive bonuses everywhere! -- but I'll have to deal with Stalin's paranoia out the wazoo. Fortunately, this is what Krush is for, and again it's easier to deal with this earlier in the game than later. Also, his paranoia reduces every round, so long as I'm not losing red-dot cities (although there's a minimum based on the paranoia threat from his generals; but those go up over time as they get experienced, and I doubt any of them will be all that experienced by round 5.)

So, what did I spend my political points on this round? We'll see later.

First up, we need to see what my real starting dispositions are going to look like now that Bart!Halder has taken his first shots. Before then, I'm pretty sure I couldn't even set my divisions and armies to retreat at anything less or more than 50% casualties; so Round Two is really my first turn. Round. Arsh.

Look, can I just call them "turns"? There is no distinction in this game between turns and rounds. Thanks.

Let's start on the Finnish border.


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I don't know for sure what the White Ss mean. But the Red Bs are hexes beyond which the Finnish won't budge; or rather Bart could send them, but it would result in a 10 Ppoint penalty per unit per turn. If certain towns on the southern road to Leningrad are taken, the Finns might agree to unrestricted operations -- 5% chance per turn per town held by the Germs (up to 10% for both towns), but until then even attacking Russian units across the border would risk a political penalty. They can park on the Bs (helping surround Leningrad) without penalty, though, and could help fight to take Leningrad depending on how things turn out.

(Despite the game's vanilla unit flags, the Finnish weren't strictly part of the Axis, although there's at least one German unit actually on the line up there, or maybe will be eventually. They were definitely the good guys among the Axis, only fighting to recover what the Russians had invaded and seized, and they came out of WW2 pretty well.)

That being the case, the White Ss probably refer to a political point penalty line if an asteroid strikes Finland giving me half a chance of working some troops into their area. If I have the option, though, I'd send the asteroid somewhere else.

Bart has started a little fighting along the two lines, but hasn't made inroads yet. I counterattacked with some troops, shuffled some up to the southern Finnish line, and otherwise began the long process of pulling the 7th Army off that northernmost line, to get them back down to Leningrad. One of the nice things about the Armies in this area is that they're the only ones set to Neutral Posture, meaning they get no buffs or (more importantly) debuffs -- except for being RATSOBs of course.

At Leningrad, I have two Army groups, one in the city itself and one up near the Finnish front. You can't see it on the map, but North Front HQ is in the city, too.

ACTUAL ROUND 2 (Part 2 of 2)

Next, the Riga / Koningsberg / Warsaw region. Here the Front shifts from North to Central, which you'll be able to tell by the red dashed lines -- in fact, down to the lower right, you can see a bit of the Southern sector. The actual front is shown by the dashed yellow squiggly.


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I'll discuss things roughly north to south and west to east. I'll be anchoring discussion on the Army HQs, because those are usually easy to see, with their bright flags.

Up at the tippy top is the Baltic MD HQ (which I'll just call Baltic), parked in the port of Windau. (City names are a bit obscured with chits on the board, but it's the chit with the bright red flag at the top of the map.) You can see some grey shipping counters on the map now; those will be the shipping routes for supplies (not invasions or shore bombardments, fortunately), when/if the Huns take Windau, Riga, and/or another port or two farther north. Take a moment to follow that ship trail down to Koningsberg. It has a chit on it saying "Main", meaning that's the main supply hub for Army Group North (our North Front). That thing can't be moved, and would be a wonderful target if we could get to it. There's a Forward Supply Hub, too, but Bart probably hasn't moved it yet because there are trucks on the road out of Konin, and those only go forward from the FSB. Otherwise we'd see trains to the FSB and then trucks. (What we can't see is whether that trail is in supply or not, I think -- it ought to be, but it also ought to be green not grey which indicates disruption. That would be true if he had moved his FSB up to a city already, but he has no need to do that and the trucks-not-trains show he hasn't.) The trucks are using "sealed" (all-weather) roads running with the tracks. I won't go into the complex weirdities of Bart's supply and logistic game; suffice to say that our only chance of winning is to mess with it. That isn't possible yet.

Back northward and to the right you can see Riga, which has a red dot not a grey one. Red-dot cities are strategically important, and will shift more victory points around than grey dot cities; losing them will also give me a punch to the paranoia glands, and while it will wear off over time the next punch will hit harder for every red-dot city the Germs conquer. I'm not worried about Riga yet, but it's a super-important target because in effect it acts like cloning Koningsberg and moving it northward. (Some other cities northward beyond the screenshot do, too.) The North Sector is the only place where he can effectively clone-move his main Sector supply base like that.

To the right of Riga you can see the spread out divisions of the 27th Army. I'm going to be moving that and the Baltic Army group southward to the front to help slow down the German advance; I can't do strategic rail moves in this game (although some such things happen in the background for moving reinforcements and troop replacements in), but they still give me some movement bonuses. On the other hand, I'll be looking for places to sit on mountains and swamps and hills to make stands, as I get pushed and retreat backward; and I'm taking an important strategic gamble to move 27th Army south beyond its defensive river, which I may not be able to get them back behind very easily.

While I'm passing nearby, note how close the 27th Army is to the Sector border. We'll see in a minute if I ended up with any divisions across the border (I can't recall offhand), but for Russia that'll be much less of a problem than for Germany: despite the rigid Soviet command structure, the defense of the Motherland allowed more leeway for shifting units across onto other Fronts, meaning I can push Armies and Divisions a little way into those areas without political penalties. The Germans marching on Kanaus (where 11th Army is parked, as I've scribbled on the map), could have a lot more problem if Bart doesn't pay attention to where his divisions and HQs are going: he can be easily socked for political penalties crossing that line! (Though maybe not for attacking across it; I don't know.)

Okay down south to the northern part of the North Front: 4th PanzerGroup (the North's only PG) is leading a charge off the rails into the plains between those forests. The little shaded "10" rectangles on either side of the 8th Pz (and its stack) tell me he's got zones of control there which would hamper me moving into them if I cared to do so. He's also projecting a hex of front forward, although I don't know if that's a special ability or if he pulled back a division after fighting to keep from going too far. Since I'm on Offensive anyway, I took the opportunity to keep him honest by ganging up everyone around in condition to fight (some had used up movement points already fighting defense during Bart's turn), and plinking at the 3rd MtrInf by itself there in the middle of that salient. Didn't accomplish much, but it made me feel better. :D

This is as good a time as any to talk about movement issues. Movement points are needed to move and to fight, even defensively (though not to run away perhaps; not sure about that, I'll have to check). Every unit needs mpoints, but "fast" units (the armored and mech/motor divisions) need fuel, too. (Russian cavalry is an exception, being fast but not needing fuel. They still need movement points.)

Mps are assigned at the beginning of my turn through a Headquarter system, passed from Stavka to the Front HQs to the Army HQs to the divisions. At each stage from the Front HQs onward, though, if an activation roll fails or partially fails, based on various bonuses and penalties, then the divisions (including the HQs themselves) only get 40 or 75 movement points, not the full 100. All my armies failed to activate this turn, so a number of divisions who had already been fighting couldn't move at all, and all the others were hampered (although infantry moreso than motor/mech and cav, which were moreso than armored.) 40 mps are still enough for an infantry Division to move one hex across clear plains in good weather, but that's it. So I couldn't shuffle chits much, and I couldn't cross rivers at all except at a bridge. Ideally I'd liked to get those infantry divisions down in that developing pocket west of Kaunas back into the forest behind the river to the north, combining with the 179th and 90th infantries there; but that didn't happen. Still, they're in swamps and woods, which don't mean anything to infantries but help defend against local arty and tanks. (Unfortunately that pocket west of Kaunas has a lot of Nazi infantry surrounding it.)

Generally in that area I also tried to pull forces back to defend Kaunas, where I also send Zukhov (and Krusch by accident) to bolster the local military power and maybe blow the bridge if I get a chance. (My troops will try to blow a bridge automatically I think before vacating a hex on the other side of it, but they aren't very good at it. Zukhov can do it manually with 100% success if I spend 2 Ppoints. Whether I can hold out long enough to get that done while trying to shift everyone to Defense Posture by turn 5, is another question. I can create one conscript garrison for any grey town once per turn (one minor town per game), and I send it to Kaunas. (I won't be able to do that again for Kaunas for the rest of the game regardless of what happens.)

Bart has already created one of his first true pockets, centered on my 10th Army, in... um... Bellystock, toward the bottom central of that screen. They are almost certainly screwed, but I get one free Breakthru command per turn which I can apply to any HQ cut off in a city; so I use it to tell them where to find hidden supplies so that their defense might possibly last a little longer, and I shuffled some armored divisions around out of bad terrain in there (no one else in the pocket could move). This perk won't go into effect until next turn, but I might be able to plink at a passing division with it.

Nearby, my 29th Motorized Infantry might as well be in a pocket by itself, but at least it's doomed by itself. Finally, I shuffled the large Western Army group forward, preparing to stiffen the line and, if possible, prepare for swamp fighting against the 2nd Panzergruppe which is moving into that area (the divisions with the light blue flag).

When I was done, the area looked like this:


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(I didn't get quite the same scope of the screen as before, on any of the 'after' shots, unfortunately, but this'll be good enough.)

Moving south of Warsaw for the next screenie:


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You can see my 10th Army pocket still visible at the top of the screen, so start there working down for commentary.

Bart's 2nd PG may be about to overrun my 4th Army -- I can't even get the HQ out of the way! Hopefully he'll have some trouble with the political costs of finagling near his sector border, but I really don't have any hope of saving most of that army, other than telling them to try an orderly withdrawal if they lose 25% casualties.

Over to the west, in the Fog shroud, you can see that Warsaw and, south of that, Krakau are the main supply depots for those Army Groups; and based on those truck chits Bart may not have moved his FSB up to, say, Lublin yet. You can see the main Luftwaffe bases for AGC and AGS at Warsaw and Lublin, though. Some of my towns have an airplane chit on them, too, but only as a way of showing that he could move his Luftwaffe support chit forward there when/if he takes them.

My line down here is doing sort of okay so far, except for that portion of the 6th Army trapped in a small pocket on the plains west of its HQ. I've told them to make a stand, but I disbanded the weakest division into partisans (a free action I can take once per turn). Ideally I'd like to get the 6th HQ out of a developing pocket at the rail crossroads there, but they were pushed back by the initial attacks and don't have enough mps to do it. I would have taken some shots at his 13th Panzers in that forest north of 6th if I could, but didn't have anyone capable. Mostly I spent the turn down here moving Armies up to shore the defense of Lvov (where 26th Army is parked), including spending my first 5 Ppoints on raising a main-city garrison there which will be nothing to sneeze at. I can create fortifications for free once per turn, too, and those I plopped with the 6th Army at the rail crossroads.

Here's what that area looked like at the end of Round 2. (Split into two screenshots because I wasn't thinking ahead enough at the end.)


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Last, but not least ("least" at the moment is the Finnish War), we'll go down to the Black Sea / Romania border.


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I either didn't have anyone near the Rums (and their Shotdown Flyboys) to fight yet, or I had people near but I'm on the other side of a river. My 9th Army and part of my 12th is spread out along that river rather thin, but I'm going to take a bit of a risk and start moving Army South across its defensive river (which will take some time unless they luck into an activation, since they can't cross without that or a bridge where Army S currently is) to shore up that defense.

Bart can't move the Romanian crew (and their Germy cronies) at all on Round 2, but I'll be looking for him to either try to find a weak point across the river, and/or to run up the rail and hit that one lone tank division which some chucklehead in the 12th Army thought ought to be guarding the city. I can't get an infantry in there to help in time -- partly because I didn't notice the stupidity before I had begun my Clever Plan of hiking most of 12th Army into the Romanian border mountains for a shot at an enfilade.
By the time I was done shuffling chits around down here, it looked like this:


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My last action for Round 2 was to use my last 5 Ppoints to replace the South Front HQ marshal with a Tsarist from Lubyanka Prison. He'll help get things moving along the Southern Front, but I'll need to remember to send Krusch there next turn (or whenever he arrives in Kaunas after my botched order) so I can minimize paranoia danger -- which for the next 3 turns will be ramping up a lot.

So ends Round Two. I'm sure I'll find a way to keep up with things as I go that won't be so in detail, but I wanted to talk about various game things on the first move and my initial strategies (such as they are! -- and so far as circumstances now allow!)

In case anyone is wondering, Bart is still taking his 3rd turn (or so says the Matrix site when I logged in to check a few minutes ago) -- presumably that means he hasn't started taking it yet, since he can't save during turns (in hindsight we shouldn't have agreed to that).

However, his thread has been super-active this morning. I don't know why -- on this site my guess would be puns  >:D -- but if anyone except me wants to go over there to check on how things are going, you can find it one level up in the Digital Gaming AARs, or use the handy link down in my sig.  O:-)

And, uh, if there's anything I need to know that's non-spoilery for his game, let me know, da?  :coolsmiley: (Russians say "Da", right?)

Subscribed.   O0

It's time for my Turn 3, and may I just add here that I feel 1000% justified in calling it a turn rather than a round, because THE GAME ITSELF CALLS IT A TURN.

Anyway, just keeping readers up on which side of the court the ball currently is.

Annnd, poinged back to Bart. Time to eat lunch, and then work on the not-entirely-horrifying AAR.  :knuppel2:

ROUND 3


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No kidding.

Currently, and for some time to come, I'm caught on the fell incensed points of the Dilemma bull.

On one horn, I have absolutely got to save as many troops as possible for the eventual counter-attack. That means they need to run the hell away as much as possible.

On the other horn, I need to slow him down as much as possible. Or, alternately, make him spread out beyond his support. Which are both important but somewhat mutually exclusive. Also, I need to minimize the number of major (red-dot) cities he's going to overrun. But I can't do that unless I don't run away.

In a backhanded way, Bart is helping me make some of those decisions by shattering my lines, so I'm not tempted to make stands.


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Along the way, I came to realize that if the game has a report for how many divisions I've lost so far, I haven't found it yet. (The report I screenied last time talks about any divisions of his I've destroyed, not how many I lost.) I'm totally certain he wiped out at least ten divisions, maybe more. Mental note to poke around during my next turn and see if I can find a track for that.

Here's where things stand at the start of my turn:


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He still only has 25 VPs. How does that translate into score? Not as bad yet as you might think.


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His points will be multiplied slightly (rounded down) because at the moment his difficulty is actually 8% more than mine. But I'm still winning 124 to 1. That will surely change in his favor, but he has a lonnnng way to go.

Zuk arrived at Kaunas, but not in time to help blow the bridges and save the town; so I'm flying him up to Leningrad next turn to the North Front HQ (with currently the weakest front commander) to see if he can get me some better activation points: I really don't care if the Finns retake their land, I just want to keep them from taking Leningrad and otherwise free up an army or two for sending south to make a better defensive stand in trading land for time. For that, I need more movement.

Krusch also arrived at Kaunas (or rather at the retreating Army HQ there); as per my previous intention, I promptly put him back on a plane to find my new Tsarist general at the Southern Front HQ.

I still feel pretty good about my decision last turn to spend my Ppoint budget elsewhere and delay my SovDefHero plan a turn: that major garrison at Lvov has already helped me buy one extra turn against the southern advance, and spending the other 5 points on a guaranteed competent general for the southern front paid immediate dividends with several partial and a few full army activations. (I even got a few at the Central front, partly due to Zuk's presence in or around Kaunas no doubt.) I'll show what I did with that mobility in a minute.

Between one thing and another, Stal's paranoia was still at zero this turn (maybe technically lower on the balance but for practical purposes he can never have negative paranoia), which gave me a good head start for the SovDefHero plan: I publicly admitted we're in trouble, which lowered the Army Defense Posture cost to 10. What bothers me is that I confirmed my political cost for trying this again next turn will go up to 15. In which case I won't be able to finish this plan until turn 8 at the earliest (and won't fully benefit from it until turn 9). Still, I think that's my best plan. His paranoia blipped up 15 points, but maybe not so high practically (if I have an essentially negative paranoia factor); and depending on what happens on Bart's turn it may go down ten points next turn.

Two new Army HQs arrived on the Central Front today, and another will be ready to place next turn. Their actual forces haven't started arriving yet -- all their associated divisions failed to arrive for assignment -- but by placing the HQs on the map, and specifically in some towns (well behind the front), I'll greatly increase the chances of any of their divs showing up on any subsequent turn. I'll show my ideas on that soon.


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Yick, I can't tell how blurry that is, so I'll repeat notes here.

Something worth keeping in mind, is that all three or four of my Armies up here on the Fin border, are set to neutral stance, not offensive, which means I have no defensive penalties.

I couldn't retreat the 191st at all, so the Finns will most likely surround and finish them soon. (Pun not originally intended.) That northernmost infantry is on the way to Petrozadovsk, and will probably make it in a turn or two; after which I mean to run it down the road to meet with the 7th Army. In theory. In practice, the Finns are keeping the 7th Army stack from retreating very well by using up their maneuvering on defending attacks; I could have pulled back part of the stack, but that would mean two weaker stacks. This is one main reason why I'm sending Zukhov to the North Front HQ, and maybe afterward to 7th Army HQ itself: to get some better chances of activation points so I can move most of the 7th back down to Leningrad eventually. True, technically the Finns could go beyond their borders and do serious damage in my backfield, but politically that would strongly hamper Bart elsewhere, so I actually hope he tries it! Until then, the 7th Army stack has some forts to protect it (although due to the R.A.T.S.O.B fort debuff those forts are practically worthless for now.)

Down near Leningrad, I've set up what I hope is a safe retreat corridor (although again the stack at the front couldn't fully retreat this turn and I didn't want to break them up much). My mid-range plan is to get everyone back to L'grad, except the Len HQ itself which happens to have some tank divisions. That thing I want moving south asap, if not next turn then the turn afterward. I might even send another Army south with it, if I can get the 7th back to L'grad. My best chance at keeping the Finns from politically activating beyond their borders, will be to stop the Nazis from getting so far north. Remember, right now these are the only armies which are set to neutral and so get no defensive penalties (beyond the global RATSOB debuffs).

Down to the northern Nazi front at the end of my turn.

Here's what the lay of that land looked like, at the start of my turn, without chits and comments.


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One thing that needs to be patched, is that HQs should ALWAYS be set on top of their stacks. Maybe that's something I can fix in my prefs...? Mental note to check on that.

Anyway, I was originally thinking of bringing Baltic HQ south to set up a line around Liepaja and the small mountains west of it; but since part of its divisions are surely doomed in closing pocket to the south, I've angulated my strategy to abandoning this corner of the Baltics and pulling as much of the Baltic Army as I can save (still several divisions) over to Riga to help bulk up what I'm hoping will be my first truly major defensive line for the Northern Front behind the Dvina River.

In support of that strategy, I'll be dropping my free fortifications each turn on plains behind that river; they're useless to me right now, with the RATSOB fort debuff, but might be of some use by the time the Nasties get there. I'll be putting my free minor-city garrisons in small towns along this line for the next few turns, too. (This garrison went to Jakobstadt; the forts were plopped down outside Dunaberg on the way to J'stadt, at a vulnerable curve in the river where three German forces could attack.)

My first two Army reinforcements began to arrive this turn, both for the Central Front. (Once per turn I can redirect one coming Army to another front for free, but this time I wanted both in Central anyway.) I can place the HQs immediately (which I do), but their divisions have only a random chance of arriving ready for battle each turn, and they all happened to fail. However, those chances go up once the HQs are on the map, and go up more if the HQs are in a town. So I've plopped the 21st Army in a small town along the Dvina River Defense Hero Motherland Whatever, so I can use its divisions to help hold that line; and the 22nd Army will help stiffen the road out of Minsk later -- or possibly go south to help hold the line there, depending on how things go.

Talking about Minsk: I have managed to consolidate the massive surviving Western Army into three stacks: one, with the HQ, is now in the swamps south of the road to Minsk, ready to screw with attempts to charge up that road (and maybe to mess with any panzers stupid enough to drive up the road through the swamp, too. I'll still be pulling it back as often as I can, but it's safer from armor and APCs here. The surviving Western Army tank divisions, I pulled back much closer to Minsk, but still close enough that I might help trap some panzers trying to pocket the WestHQ stack. Again, I'll be pulling them back behind the river at Minsk asap. The third and currently smallest stack (3 infantry divisions) are at Minsk itself. I'm slightly nervous about this: there's a lot of Nastie armor and guns on the way, but probably not by next turn, and I should be able to send them some reinforcements from north of the city soon.

Bart handily ate all the pockets he had surrounded last turn, including the big 10th Army pocket which I had hoped would hold out at least one more turn. He managed to surround most of the 3rd Army east of that; and although I could have run my 3rd HQ away with one infantry division, they'd be fairly useless afterward; so I marched them WESTWARD instead, into the developing small pocket there, to join most of its divisions in one large stack. Its 85th infantry is trapped westward over the river, and couldn't get out, and is quite surrounded, so I expect it to fold next turn, but 3rd Army itself might possibly hold out another turn. If Bart moves his Forward Supply Base for the area on his turn, that'll screw with the supply for his troops for a turn, and I might be able to not only survive but get a lick in at an isolated division.

Speaking of getting licks in, I wish I could show a video replay of the 11th Army fighting open a pocket and creating a corridor out to its HQ!

The best I can do is show what the area looked like beforehand:


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Compare that misery with the glint of hope provided by the end of turn map above!

It could, and probably will, all fall apart next turn, but giving the Huns a bloody surprise this early in the game was excessively cheerworthy. With support from the 27th Army, much of which has moved forward to help, I might be able to rescue some 11th divisions from disaster there and bring them back beyond the Dvina.

South again to the Brest / Lvov line.

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Brest-Litovsk, not surprisingly is doomed to die. The game gives me one major garrison to start the game with, and it's here, along with most of the surviving 4th Army. In a backhanded notion of "unfortune", unfortunately the 4th HQ escaped the pocket and has been forced east along with a nearly destroyed 42nd Infantry. There is no way I can keep it close enough to give any bonuses to its divisions in Brest; so for now it's running away along the swamp road to Gomel. I have every expectation it will die in a turn or two. Whether it survives Brest is another question: totally cut off from supply, and without an HQ in the city I can't give that stack emergency supplies. The only good news, such as it is, is that half the surrounding hexes currently have only one division on them, and the other three hexes have only two. If I manage to hang on another turn, his supply weirdities might give me an opportunity for a surprise punch at a weak stack before Brest falls. Not surprisingly, Brest was where I spent my free Partisan card this turn, disbanding an armored division whose morale was about to break.

My line between Brest and Lvov (near Romania) collapsed pretty much completely; but I was able to pull back all of the 5th Army to a nice three-hex revanchment with plains for my armor and forest and swamps for my infantry. Now I have to decide if I want to abandon a few 5th Army divisions currently stiffening the defense near Lvov, and beat a slow retreat toward Kiev; or shift the triple-hex south a bit into and around the forests south of Grovno to let the HQ support them as long as possible. If so, they'll end up surrounded by that giant purple-flag army for sure, but I might be able to turn them into bait that way... I dunno, I have to keep reminding myself I HAVE PRACTICALLY NO DEFENSE POWER! And won't until Round 9 at best. It may be better to abandon the few 5thArm divisions near Lvov. They have lots of help.

I completely wasted those forts at the three-way rail hex northwest of Lvov (forgetting that I have a debuff on forts for a while), but I managed to stack up nicely in Lvov itself, and to move forward plenty of support on a line behind the city. Sure, they'll be able to hit the city with four hexes, as they set up to do last time; but I can hit them back, as I managed to do this time, clearing the hexes north and south of the city! Plus I've got a backup army HQ camping in the mountains southeast of Lvov, with an increasing number of troops.

I might possibly be able to hold this defense long enough, despite my crappy inherent defense debuffs, to make it worth hte effort to try. At worst, I'll lose Lvov and retreat backward in a strong set of stacks. Along the way, I'll be watching his southern flank, to see if I can sneak a few divisions around it and into his backfield.

In considering that possibility, I learned that troops can't cross into high mountains. I do have some Mountain Infantry divisions, but searching their stats I can't tell if that's just a name or whether they have any mountaineer abilities. I'm not in a position to test out yet whether they can go high-mountain, but maybe next turn.

The Mtn divs which might be able to try that, unfortunately, are all south at the Romanian border where we'll fetch up for the finale of this round's report.



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Much to my annoyance, the Romanians and their downed flyboy comrades forded that river and pushed back my troops pretty easily. Christ, 6th Army, are you only made of wet paper??? You literally outran my Cav divisions on the south side of that line!! -- whom I've probably lost now, but we'll see.

Whether the second river line can do any better, will depend a lot on how the fight goes at the Romanian Roadblock. (I can't and won't try to spell the town's name.) I got the tanks out, and some infantry in, including the nearby HQ; and I still need to bulk up the south side of that area, but with a city, river, and low mountains to work with, I could be there a while; and depending on how Bart decides to deploy for various assaults, I could have some interesting supply-cutoff opportunities a few turns from now. (I keep dreaming about putting some troops in his backfield farther north near Lvov, too, but probably not anytime soon, though I'll watch for opportunities.)

About half the line below the Roadblock will be able to retreat behind the next river (though I'm leaving a bleeding division behind as a sacrifice to speedbump the Romanian steamroller); the other half, I may be able to get into some mountains behind that second river, south of Proskurow -- where I expect a retreat from Lvov to largely arrive at eventually, too.

And so ends Round Three.

Woke up this morning to find Turn 4 in the mail; so the ball's back in my court.

And poinged back to Bart. The somewhat more horrifying AAR will follow soon...  :crazy2:

ROUND FOUR


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Honestly, I suspect he'll be able to push us out of Lvov next time, if he bothers to try. But it survived this turn, so yay.

Brest as expected was the first major city to fall. Currently Minsk and Lvov are vying for the next honor -- maybe both will go down next turn! Wooot!

Well, no one said being RATSOB would be easy. Or even survivable. Or even honorably fatal. ;) I knew what I was signing up for when I started, so let's get to it.

First, the overview of where things are, at the end of Bart's turn.


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Not surprisingly, that's almost exactly where things are at the end of my turn, too.

I still haven't found a report showing which divisions got murdered between turns, but here's the OOB again.


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By the time my turn was over, here was the overall manpower.


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And that's with 16 new divisions arriving for those two new HQs I plopped down last turn.

It didn't help that almost no armies activated this turn. I mean exactly one activated (on the South Front). It was a full activation, but none of the others even partially activated. On the other hand, despite Stalin's (entirely expected) paranoia jump to +23, we didn't have an incident.

As you saw from the OOB, we have 19 fighting Armies remaining, although calling some of them "Armies" is a sad charity. Specifically we have 6 remaining in the North, 6 in the South, and 4 in the Center, including the two new Armies whose divisions arrived this turn (but who couldn't move yet) and one HQ which is trolling around the swamp road with about 10 percent of an infantry division in tow.

That doesn't add up to 19, but three more HQs arrived on the map this turn for the Central Front. They won't get troops until next turn, and won't be able to move until Round 7.

Let's do the North-to-South disaster run!


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First off, and most importantly, Zukhov rolled a delay so he won't get to North Front HQ until next turn (maybe). This, and some bad dice rolls generally, and general incompetence generally, led to exactly no activations for the North Front.

This wouldn't have helped 7th Army anyway, which has allowed its main stack (now at around half strength) to be surrounded by the Finns. They aren't dead yet (nor the isolated 191st and 71st Inf Divs, which are somehow doing rather better), but neither do they have any hope of escape. At best, the 237th (and 108th) will be able to reach Petro, and make a run south back to L'grad; which admittedly looks like it'll happen, since they were able to retreat beyond the Finnish border. But then what? They can't feasibly get in position to help the main 7th Army stack, and without the 7th HQ they're fated to wither and die if exposed to any action at all.

Send the Leningrad Army up to rescue the 7th? That would require a lot of consistent activations, which even with Zukhov around I doubt we're going to get, and besides nine divisions of the 27th Army are getting their butts kicked nearby by 5 divisions of Finns. (I was wrong on the map comment, the stacks are 3 and 2 left to right.) At this rate I'll have to keep the Len Army around just to pull their hash out of the fire, if even that's possible! -- the Len Army couldn't even move up to support the 27th on a defensive line.

I'm going to have to write a "Finnished them off" pun. Sigh.

Get out there and push that plane, Zuk. The weather's good, there can't be any Luftwaffe nearby. FLAP HARDER!!

The other reason I want him lending broad activation help to North Front HQ, can be seen on the next screenie.


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That screen shows all the remaining North Front, and all the remaining Central Front. Yeesh.

I get one free reinforcement HQ reassignment (after that the cost to choose where the first of the next HQ reinforcements arrives goes up by 5Pp every time), and I dang well played it this round because I'm going to need more help on the Northern Front sooner than later. The way that works, is that I won't be restricted to only one Front for deployment when the HQ arrives next turn, but can choose any town or railway on the map. Given the opportunity, I'll probably choose Riga. Or maybe not, since even if my gamble against the panzers running to Riga next turn pays off (for various values of 'paying off'), I doubt enough (or any) of the Baltic Army will make it next turn to protect the lone HQ until the turn AFTER that when (maybe, hopefully) its divisions begin to arrive. I may end up putting that Army farther north.

So, yeah, I gambled pulling my infantry reserves out of Riga to try to help protect Jakobstadt next turn. I feel at least 70% confident that Bart will focus on mooshing that hard 11th Army pocket, or trying to beat the 27th Army into Dunaberg; and that the Army elements south of Baltic will go for the ports I left behind. My only worry is that part of that army threatening Baltic will dare to outrun its supply to scout Riga, and find it empty. This would be a disaster; among other things, it would increase the chance that the Finns will politically activate beyond their borders!

Since no one on the North Front activated this turn, the 11th Army couldn't try punching its way free, even at the Panzer Division foolishly parked in the forest northeast of the 11th HQ stack, much less consolidating further. I fully expect at least one of those stacks, maybe two, maybe all three, to be gone next turn. But we made a legitimate stab at it. 27th Army's stack, unable to help 11th further, and failing to activate, crawled desperately toward the river and the Dunaberg bridge. My free garrison for the turn went to Dunaberg. I thought hard about dropping my free forts for the turn in the middle stack of that pocket, but decided some armor on defense further south could use it more. We'll get to that later. My Partisan card was played on a nearly disintegrated motorized infantry division in the 11th Army stack of that pocket, however. Mental note to look around next turn to see if there's a partisan report -- there ought to be, but so far I only recall seeing a partisan level for a front when I play the Partisan card there. So, other things being equal (which they aren't), I ought to have 2% partisans on all three Fronts now.

I said last time I was a little worried about Minsk, the next major (red dot) city on the Central Front road to Moscow. Turns out I should have been more worried: the three infantry divs there have now been almost completely surrounded by panzer and motorized divs. On the theory that if my troops are going to die they're better off attacking than defending, and attacking as few Nazi divs as possible, as far forward of Nazi supply as possible, I had the Minsk infantry go out and shoot at the 18th panzers nearby. I think under the circumstances I did reasonably well, but all too soon I was out of mpoints and had to get back into the city.

The Western Army HQ superstack is busy being surrounded in its swamp, and couldn't move further in (having failed to activate), but did have enough movement points to punch back the 20th Motorized. Unfortunately, a wave of grey and black, led by the Reich Mech Div, pushed my ailing Western Armor stack into the swamps, where they'll most likely die next turn. The zombie corpses of the 3rd Army continued crawling east on the swamp road, chased by the 31st infantry; odds are good it won't get out of the swamp, but being a moving roadblock for a turn or two is better than nothing.

The only good news, such as it is, is that 21st and 22nd Armies got most or all of their divisions, and next turn I may be able to try marching to help Dunaberg and Minsk. Also, three more HQs arrived on the Central Front (only two shown on the map), but it'll be another two turns at least before I can do anything with them.

I'll zoom in for Lvov's area this time.


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So, Lvov held out one more turn, but I doubt it can stand any more punching. I've told everyone nearby to retreat if they take 25% more casualties in fighting; I fully expect my armor stack outside Lvov, at least, to be murdered next turn. Bart is sending some light infantry divs around my southern flank on the railroad to the Romanian Roadblock, which will somewhat affect my supply for that area.

The 5th Army 3hex revanchment is taking a heavy pounding, and is unable to even retreat (except hopefully under fire next turn). One little broken infantry div at the top of the screenshot, though, might end up causing a bit of havoc in the backfield -- I think there's a good chance Bart has misplaced it. That completely depends on whether I can even activate it later, but we'll see.

Last but, technically, not least:


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The Romanian Roadblock at Czersneezl is keeping the Romanians busy as they try to figure out a flank around it. But because only one Army activated down South this turn (not anyone useful), I couldn't get any of my troops into the mountains across that river; and even with activations I'm dubious about whether I'll be able to plug that little hole near Odessa. The Romanians down there can't exactly cross at will, but that day's coming soon. I just don't have enough to prevent them from crossing the river somewhere. That being the case, if I'm given a chance I'll shuffle chits southward and force them to cross it near the mountains. Ideally I'd like to have some reserves back there to hunt over-extended divisions if that happens, but ideally I'd rather not be curb-stomped by the Finns either, so... :P

Here's the score at the end of the turn.


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And, since this is becoming ever-more-important, here's what my reinforcement schedule looks like.


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Note that my schedule for the north and south theaters will feature only conscripts; and worse, for the North Front we can see all the reinforcements I'm ever going to get! -- most of which won't be arriving for another 8 to 11 turns! It'll be another 3 to 4 turns before the South gets any reinforcements, although 6 turns from now I'll have four conscript armies able to move and do things. And 9 turns from now, I'll get a fresh if terrible Army able to move every turn for a while.

The best and most reinforcements are heading for the Center Front, which is good because they're in dire need. But once I shift everyone to defensive mode I'll be looking at... well, actually I'll be looking at saving up capital to get more political points per turn (at the cost of paranoia). That's an investment which, like getting everyone to defensive asap, will pay back a long time if done early-ish.

Note however that arriving HQs are set to neutral, so while they won't get offensive bonuses neither will they be so crippled on defense compared to the troops currently in the field. Whether that'll make much of a difference anytime soon, I guess we'll see starting next turn.

So ends Round Four.

Readers, please be sure to opine on whether I should use larger screenshots you'll have to scroll, or keep these smaller but blurrier ones (which for all I know you may still be having to scroll.)

Quote from: JasonPratt on December 06, 2015, 02:00:22 PM
ROUND FOUR

[snip]

I'm going to have to write a "Finnished them off" pun. Sigh.

[snip]

That, to follow your lead, would be Swede. And we're off!  :coolsmiley:

There is Norway that pun would work.  :P

My turn came in last night or this morning, but it'll be sometime after noon when I can poing it back (much less write up an entry).

But it's coming.   O0

Note: the game only alerted me to a new version after I had loaded the current turn, which meant that to be safe I had to quit the turn, and the game, update, and then reload. This will almost surely trigger the reload warning for Bart when he gets my turn, but I've sent him an in-game message explaining why I hope. Up until now I've always remembered to try updating before loading the game. Argh.

ROUND FIVE -- July 4, 1941


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That's the good news. Such as it is.

That, and I'm still winning by a crushing amount.


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I'll be sure to mention this in my propaganda. God Lenin knows I'll need it.

I forgot to get a screenshot for comparing my divisions and HQs to where I was last turn. The new update still doesn't seem to have included an easy way to track my own unit losses, although I know it can't be that hard because the game has always included a way to summary-track any German units I've managed to kill.

Which of course is still currently zero.

As far as raw casualties, well:


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I think the Germans must be using each other for target practice. Still, 60 thousand casualties in half a month is nothing to be ungrateful for. And as for our, cough, 700+ thousand casualties, well...


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I barely went down any tic. I'll be curious to see what Barth's reaction to that was, eventually.

That's because a ton of my main reinforcement divisions arrived this round. And more are on the way for the next few rounds. I wasn't able to do much with them this turn, but he won't be able to just steamroll his way into Moscow by the end of July.

August maybe, but not July.


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The reinforcement schedule shows a new grim limit: 9 turns from now, I'll have to make do for a lonnng time with whatever I've got on the Central Front by then -- which admittedly will be a lot of more-or-less fresh troops, only two armies of which will be conscripts. By then, however, I'll have gotten all but one of the reinforcement armies I'm ever going to naturally get up north (all of them trash).

Okay, enough of the abstract things. Here's where I started the turn.


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I haven't checked historical records to see if Barth is booking along ahead of schedule anywhere; and I'll be curious to see what he thinks of his advances so far. I know he has to be disappointed about going around Lvov, but we'll get to that later.

God knows I'm disappointed in a couple of areas, which even remembering I'm RATSOB seems corrosive to morale. Certainly Stalin's morale corroded, as his paranoia shot through the roof for reasons you've already probably noticed on the strat map; and he's practically certain to keep shooting generals for another few turns. I was hoping to space some of those problems out longer, but... well, I'm RATSOB. :P

At least he didn't shoot my recently arrived Tsarist General at Kiev; he only shot a front Army HQ general who was a War Buddy but who had 0 paranoia score and yet was one of the more competent fellows with a +19 administration. The toady replacing him won't be good. This also means all my Ppoints were lost, although I still got 10 more this turn (for a new total of 10), so my plan to get all armies onto defensive for free will be delayed who knows how long: I can expect those 10 points to be lost next turn, too. Worse, I can't even spend what 10 I have on strategies! -- all I can do is deploy reinforcement HQs this turn. Although fortunately, Stalin's freakout doesn't stop divisions from arriving to previously deployed new HQs.

Despite everything, two armies activated (one only partially) in the north (perhaps thanks to Zukhov's arrival at North HQ), and one army fully activated central. No armies activated in the south, again; and I may have to blame Kruschev's arrival at South HQ: his presence erodes administration skills because people are afraid to try anything while he's around. I had meant for him to keep Stalin from being afraid of the Tsarist, but one way or another that won't be a problem anymore (everyone's threat level decreases with every general shot -- it might be the Tsarist next turn). So now Krush is only getting in the way.

Okay, let's roll north to south for the particulars.



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The 7th Army HQ commits suicide, or something, up in its forts, even though it still has two perfectly good Rifle Divisions holding ground surrounded by the Finns. As far as I can tell, they've not even lost a single soldier. We shall remember you, 7th HQ! -- you bunch of cowardly traitors.

The retreating north-most stack could have gotten to Petro, except one of the divs didn't feel up to it after being pushed by one division of Finns. Guys, no kidding, next turn I'm taking whoever I can get to Petro and if the rest of you want to stick around waiting for that Finnish Rambo guy to snipe you from the trees, you can do that alone.

With Zuk lending some passive activation aid (so to speak), parts of the trapped 23rd Army stack managed to get away from those few pesky Finns, almost. I should be able to retreat everyone back beyond the Finnish border next turn -- or if he tries to stop that by spreading his forces out farther, maybe I can concentrate fire to start snapping those divisions. Eventually I want to get the Leningrad HQ (or whichever one has the most armor for quick traveling) to chugging south. But I figure that's going to take a few more turns.

Down to my southern Northern Front:


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Look, no matter how thin I slice it, it's still going to be baloney to say that my gamble with Riga didn't fail. At best it contributed to about 60 points of paranoia (if it hadn't fallen the other Big Red Losses wouldn't have scaled so far up), crippling my political actions for the foreseeable future, and for what? The capture and destruction of one motorized division at best. Which I'll now have to fight crossing rivers, with a whole German army or two at my back. Not only that, but Riga falling might help trigger a Finn political release, which would mean they can mess around in my own backfield and lock down defenders at Leningrad, until I find some way to cut them off and reflank around them.

This is a disaster I could have prevented just by leaving those two divisions in Riga. I couldn't have stopped the other disasters this turn (as far as I know), but I made everything exponentially worse by taking that gamble. If I eventually lose, that one failed gamble will be a big reason why.

That being said, I'd be stupid not to try to pull the Baltic Army together to retake Riga. And Baltic managed to fully or at least partially activate (thanks to Zukh's help). So there I am.

I feel like that heroic extended pocket of the 11th Army (the one several hexes south of Riga) should have been able to hold on one more turn. But alas, it got smoked. I don't know how much damage I was able to do while taking them out, but based on the casualty numbers I'm going to guess "not a lot".

Was there any good news down here at all??

Well, Jacobstadt is still holding (for now), and the remnants of the 27th HQ stack fought a retreat back across the river into Dunaberg. Insultingly, the German 36th Motorized crossed the river and into the fortifications I had hoped I might park some survivors in to hold that salient, but fine whatever. Dunaberg is harshly surrounded on four of six sides, but most of those will be attacking over the river, and the zones of control between Jac and Dun will slow down anyone trying to zip between them to flank around me, at least for another turn.

The new 24th Army HQ arrived up the road, but it'll be another two turns before I can do anything with it. By next turn I should be able to roadblock with it if necessary, at least.

And while it's technically in the Central Front, the 21st Army (invisible in its stack due to the stupid stack-top rules; it's in the stack with the 151st MotorInf) got finally ready to roll this turn -- and even though it didn't activate enough to do much, I've tried to position its leading elements so that I can either support Dunaberg directly against anyone having crossed that river (presumably the Totenkopf SS division over there), or if I really luck up on the activations perhaps I can surge them across the river in a group and make a run for the German backfield, crossing over into the Northern Front a little where appropriate. (My rules for that are looser than for the Germs.) I dropped the new 28th HQ in the town they left, so that a couple of turns from now there'll be some more defensive or counter-offensive punch behind the 21st.

Speaking of the Central Front...


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Sigh. I should have expected Minsk to be rolled over, but in my heart I was hoping for a single turn's delay. I would have been in position to take advantage of their blitz up the road to Smokensk (or rather to whatever town that is between them). But now, they'll be able to consolidate next turn. In hindsight, I should have pulled all of my 22nd Army out of whatever town that is and parked it behind the river next to the 19th Army. Dumb, dumb, dumb!! Instead I'll be lucky if the HQ itself and its remaining infantry divisions can fight a retreat under attack. But I wanted to see if I could smack that 10th Panzerdiv on his spearhead, and, well, I couldn't: I just didn't have the activation left by the time I moved into position. AARRGGH! So dumb. So very dumb.

Well, next turn the 20th Army should be ready to try causing some havoc, along with the 21st if I'm very lucky (a happy state of affairs found only in fiction); and who knows maybe the 28th on the north side of the front, arriving next turn, will be lending a hammer of a hand somewhere two turns from now. Eventually I should be able to start whacking at his logistical tail.

Pursuant to that plan, the 16th at the southern end of the Central Front is ready to take the Swamp Road westward next time to start making Bart question the wisdom of running ahead so fast; and I dropped my two other new HQs along the same road to act as defensive bumps next turn and maybe even to chug back westward, too, a few turns from now. These new armies won't have the horrible defensive maluses of my starting armies, since they're arriving on neutral stance, and they aren't crappy conscripts yet (and won't be for several more turns), so if I can keep popping up competent new armies on rail lines behind him, I may be able to turn this mess around early.

Relatedly, the 4th Army zombie corpses are still alive and crawling east through the swamp, serving as a distraction for anyone trying to come up that route. And by a miracle, the Western HQ Superstack punches the 263rd Infantry out of the way to retreat another step deeper into the swamp. Those true Soviet heroes have performed admirably under the worst imaginable conditions -- but I'll be surprised if they even exist next turn, much moreso if they can actually do something again.

Down to the Southern Front, where General Mud has arrived!


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Hey, what happened to that broken infantry that was part of the 5th Army (except north of the 5th Army block) last turn?? I guess I lost radio contact; did it die? Pack up and go home? Will it be there next time? Who knows?

Anyway. Let's talk about weather a little. This time of year there's a small but increasing chance of rain causing mud, in the Southern and Northern fronts; but to be fair to the German player the game is programmed to ignore weather the first couple of turns. Barth got away with it until turn 5, and man that helped him a lot! -- but the mud has started to rear its ugly head. Fortunately for him, it'll only last a turn, this early in the year. But it has slowed down his attempt at encircling my big block of armies outside Lvov.

It didn't slow him down in punching me out of Lvov, but I had set things to retreat. I'm actually surprised my tanks in the new forts survived; but I'm not entirely sure they even got hit last turn. (I've stopped watching the turn replay, because I think they operate without the fog of war, and that wouldn't be fair to Bart.) Ideally I'd step back my main core of armies there, but instead I had to face a cruel choice: retreat who I could, or keep the stacks as strong as possible and hope they can all retreat together. I chose the latter, since at this moment only superstacks have any hope of surviving. But if he hangs back, he can send that expeditionary force around my rear to cut us off from supply, and then we'll have to risk weakening the line to open a route again.

I did notice that his crew at the northern end of my biggest block was temporarily vulnerable while he reorganized; and I had a choice between trying a spoiling attack on a three stack in the forest (mostly comprised of cavalry and tanks), or a two stack on the plains (mostly comprised of tanks and truck infantry in mud). I chose the forest, but it doesn't seem to have done much good. Better no doubt than waiting for my horrible defense numbers against a total surrounding attack, but still... sigh.

The smaller 5th Army block took a punched step backward this turn, and that's really all I can expect from them right now.

Down lastly to my Romanian Roadblock...


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Look. I'll accept that there was nothing I could have done to stop them from taking Odessa this turn. But I'm not willing to accept that they somehow rolled across a river AND through mud AND through a zone of control, to get there. I know they don't have tanks down there, or even cavalry (I think). I can only guess that the German High Command haxored things with a political point superpower somehow. (But not one of those special powers, or my game would have gotten harder which it didn't.)

In case you're wondering, that little airplane symbol doesn't mean they airdropped troops. (Although for all I know he did just that.) It only means Odessa is somewhere that he can feasibly move his South Front Air HQ.

Anyway, between the mud and the Creature of Evil who flopped into Kiev this turn -- and whom I can't move out thanks to Stalin's paranoia, so he'll be there next turn gumming up the works, too -- I didn't get any activations at all, and so I had no hope of pulling back my 9th and Southern Armies to try to surround and (now) start retaking Odessa. But I made as much of a start on that as I could this turn, without overly weakening my remaining river line.

I wish those undead Cav divisions down south (off the map) would get their whatevers out of their horses' hind ends, because they are ripely positioned to do some classic cavalry rumbling. But I just have to accept that that isn't going to happen, I guess. sigh.

Otherwise the roadblock at Csneezy seems to be nicely settled down for now, although I should be able to consolidate a little more next turn. I wish I could feasibly attack across the river at some small Romanian stacks, but that seems like a recipe for disaster -- although maybe better than waiting for him to attack into my horrible defensive maluses. (Though again by turn 5, my special nasty debuffs for being RATSOB should have largely disappeared. Just my usual nasty debuffs for being positioned to attack instead of defend remain.)

My loose strategy from last turn remains the same: pull back from the river to Odessa, see if he takes the bait to cross the river and try to go somewhere, then strike to cut off his supply.

We're only at July 4th; things can only get worse, and they probably will, especially with all that paranoia socked onto Stalin all at once. But on that topic there's one thin silver lining, sort of: these are the last red-dot cities he can take easily or anytime soon. From this point on, things will start to get a little harder for Bart each turn.

Will it add up fast enough to matter? Only God knows. ... .... LET'S GET THOSE ORTHODOX CHURCHES BACK IN ACTION YOU GUYS!!

(Sadly, not an action I can take in this game, for some reason. Historically it helped morale a lot.)

Finally, my turn!

I won't be able to send it back until much later today, though, since I'm camping at Dad's hospital room at the moment (to see if he gets to come home today). But I wanted to keep readers up to date on where the ball is.

Poing, the ball goes back to Barth; but I won't be able to do an AAR until tomorrow morning.

ROUND 6 -- JULY 8, 1941


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I'm going to be murdered even faster than before?! Wheeeeeeee.

I forgot to get a screenshot of the relative manpower and losses this time, but I did get a shot of the division/HQ list.

Since I also forgot to get a snap of that last time, we'll have to compare it with the div/HQ list from turn 4. Here's that again for comparison.



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I'm... uh... actually substantially ahead on Infantry and Motorized divs, and not too far behind on early Tank Divs. About half of the total currently are completely fresh, or nearly so, and arrived on neutral stance instead of offensive; and they're trained troops (more or less) not conscripts yet.

I still have another 23 Divs which could field at any time (they just failed to deploy this turn) and another 22 Divs immediately on the way once I place my two new HQs (both still center front).

The bad news, which is also kind of good news, is that they're all arriving at the central front, so he'll have that much more trouble getting to Moscow.

The other bad news is, well, the other two fronts. The southern one of which is probably his chief strategic goal. More on that later.

Back to good news: almost half my armies partially activated up north (2 out of 5), no doubt partly thanks to Zhukov at North Front HQ somewhat offsetting that guy's dreadful administration. 4 out of 9 armies fully activated for the Center Front; and half my Southern Armies fully or partially activated (3 of 6) in the South. The more often my armies manage to even partially activate, the more likely they'll be able to activate again in the future.

Even better, Barth definitely got too greedy back on turn 5: sure, he overran a bunch of high-value cities, which caused a paranoia episode that put my strategic plans back by two or three turns. But because I was saving up political points, Stalin calmed down completely after shooting that general, so his paranoia was -141 this turn: so not only effectively zero, but likely to remain 0 for a very long time, even if another major city or two is taken.

Strictly speaking, Barth should have tried to stagger taking those cities, maybe two per turn, to cripple me much longer, which might have been completely fatal to me in the long run.

Anyway, things aren't all great for me this turn (see e.g. having lost a bunch of main cities previously). Here's the overall strat map at the start of my turn.


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You'll notice it might have been a good idea for Southern HQ to relocate to Kharkov from Kiev.

The first thing I did, since I've accumulated 20 Polipoints, is admit the crisis again, reducing the cost of shifting my armies' footing to 5 points. In another two turns, that'll be 0.

It occurs to me now, though, that there's a good chance the cost will start going back up again once I use it. Sigh. Well, no point changing oxen mid-river.

I had been wondering if I was just being ignorant about where my special activation super-power button is located; but I noticed it appearing for the first time today, as a little raised fist on my main control panel. Okay, I suppose that makes sense, since if Russia could use that power from the beginning the game might be disproportionately easier. That means Bart (probably) started getting access to his powers, too.

Okay, time to do the doomy maprun of doom. Again.


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With the 7th Army HQ having committed suicide or something a couple of turns ago, its main stack of infantry finally falls to the Finns; but while the 168th of the northernmost stack has no idea what HQ it ought to be following now, the 237th infantry (still pretty-much-unharmed) reorganized to follow... um, the 23rd Army I think, not Leningrad's HQ. Anyway, it marched into Petrozavodsk away from the Finns, and can now run down the road starting next turn.

Zhukov's admin help down at Leningrad, allows me to pull back everyone behind the Finnish border, and since the 23rd Army has more tanks than the Leningrad Army, I manage to get them (mostly) untangled from the city and on the road to Talinn. Unless the Finns activate, my worries with them will be over. For a while.

I need to remember there is one German division up here, though (it's the grey chit in the northern Finnish group), which may be able to run beyond the border. I don't know what its supply situation will be like, but it could be a problem.


Down to the Riga-to-Dunberg line.


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Even though some of the Baltic Army's main stack still had movement points, I couldn't get them across the river to where the 4th Border Division (and its smaller stack, originally from Riga) are hanging. The path to flee-dom still seems to remain in retaking Riga (briefly). Whether the main Baltic stack will even exist next turn, who knows? -- at least they're still in supply, which is more than I can say for the Nazi's 3rd Motor. But I fully expect Bart will be able to push the 11th Infantry and maybe something else in there next turn.

I may have made a serious mistake keeping the 182nd Infantry stack in Jacobstadt as a roadblock across the river, instead of trying to get it in position to help bust a path to flee-dom.

The 27th Army at Dunaberg gets fully surrounded, but I radio in for them to find supplies so they can hold out a little longer. The 24th Army (diverted previously from a Central Front deployment) is mostly on the field now, but won't be ready to move even a little until next turn. The 21st Army moved a little closer to helping relieve Dunaberg, though and much of the 28th Army crossed the Dvinar River from its staging point, so I might be able to start using it as a raiding army soon.

Finally, I plopped one of my two newly arriving HQs, the 31st Army, at Polotsk, where some previous armies have arrived and moved out.

Down then to the Vitebsk-Orsha-Mogaliv line.



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The main thrust of the Naziarmy paused a turn to regroup (after finally destroying my poor heroic Western HQ superstack), which I suppose will be bad news in the long run. But it gave me a turn without harassment to get a bunch of new armies shuffled into a defensive line. These fellows are still front line trained troops, and won't be crippled by all the horrible debuffs of the first defenders, although neither are they on defensive arrangements yet.

The 20th Army was able to push forward from Vitebsk, either to probe for a surround or (more likely) to spread into a defensive line. The 19th Army in Orsha moved forward out of the city into the forest, except for its armor which it combined with the 22nd's for a new group in the grass to shoot at anything trying to come out of the woods. One of the best things about Barth's pause, is that it allowed me to get all of the 22nd pulled safely in a couple of stacks behind the river to defend. Last but hopefully not least, I risked dropping my other new Army HQ for this turn, the 32d, right behind the line into Orsha where next turn it should have a crop of new Divs to help the defense (even if they can't move yet).

At the top of the snap, you can see my other new HQ this turn, the 31st, getting ready for new Div arrivals at Polotsk; and as previously noted the 28th Army crossed the river en masse to either help set up a thick line or maybe do a bit of flanking. We'll see. Barth has wisely moved his forward supply base up to Minsk, so I doubt I'll be able to do much against him on cutting supply; but I hope this roadblock will prove a much tougher nut for his Panzergruppe to crack.

In and near the Dnepr Swamp next.



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Only another step or two and I would have been able to save my brave Western HQ Superstack. Its ultimate loss is a bitter pill to swallow. :(

And yet the undead 4th Army, with its few remaining troops in its one last division, keeps dragging itself backward up the swamp road to Gomel! At least it now has the newly constituted 29th Army to keep it company.

The 30th Army isn't ready to move yet; that'll be next turn. I'd like to set up a defense along the swamp road (but not on it if possible, since German armor is quite good about fighting on roads even in a swamp or forest). The 16th Army must have a terrible general in administration; most of its divisions still aren't ready to move. But since I can't move them to Kiev (though I sure wish I could), I send them forward on the road through the swamp a little.

The 5th Army is somehow still alive, sort of, and has even retreated behind a river in the southern part of the swamp. They can probably last another turn or two, if they can keep retreating.


I wish I could say the same for my Lvov defenders.


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Remember that "Weeeeee" from the 1st PGruppe? Well, this is why: the road to Kiev is basically open, except for a garrison I could plop in Zhitomir. He could in theory just drive around that, since it can't move, but his supply trucks won't be able to keep him in supply with that garrison sitting on the main road. Still, how long really can that little garrison last?

My 26th Army has been pushed together into such a superstack that they're probably hampering each other more than helping. Barth, as expected, got a division around to close the pocket; but my Southwestern HQ stack bravely moved out of its mountainous stronghold to open the supply again, if only a little (through mountains and across a river, and through zones of control). The 26th Superstack can't feasibly move, alas, and Bart would be insane not to drive at least one tank div in there to cut it off completely again next turn, preventing it from retreating south under fire.

Moreover, I have no realistic hope of being able to save the other small SW Army stack, also camped in those mountains; it couldn't move this turn, not having activated and having nowhere it could try its limited 40 point move (through mountains or a lot of ZoC).

My one thin hope for saving any of SW Army, is to slightly denude my Romanian Roadblock defense of a couple of (quite weakened) armor divisions, belonging integrally to the SWHQ, which happened to be able to roll across the river northward this turn. I don't know what they can accomplish there, but they're in position to try something. So far Bart has been willing to let the Romanians just sit on the other side of the Roadblock rather than push northwest, waiting for their German allies to catch up and surround us; weakening my eastern wing could be the beginning of a quicker end for them, though.

Lastly, down to the fallen Odessa line.


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Not much to talk about here; I got a stack pulled back to try to fight for Odessa next turn, but I'm going to be pressed by Romanians and Germans as I try. And then what? Honestly, I'm better off, now that I think of it, just running past Odessa, rather than risk being trapped there. Which this turn gave me a start on doing, too. That stack in the southern tip of the mountains managed to retreat across the river, where I may be able to get them on the road away from the evil Dracula troops next turn.

Oh, and my little cavalry stack down farthest south finally died, the worthless things.


Here's our updated reinforcement schedule:


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The truly scary thing about this, is that I've now seen the end of the Central Front reinforcements, albeit sometime next year. But still with half the game (theoretically) to play!

Southern Front Reinforcements, on the other hand, will start arriving over the next three turns, and that'll be nice. (Also one army for the North.) And after a four turn hiatus, they'll start steadily arriving one per turn for the foreseeable future. Only God knows what I'll do with that bunch of conscripts, but we'll see.

And here's the score for the end of this turn.


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Good grief, he almost tripled his score in one turn! And that's with adjusting down!

And it's still only mid-early July.

Let's see if Barth can get another turn or two back before he goes traveling on the 9th...

...oh wait, he already has?! AAGHH! ...I mean, uh, GREAT! :D

Annnd ponged back to Barth. AAR will be delayed until early this evening.

ROUND 7 -- JULY 12, 1941

General Mud strikes again, rather more extensively, and I either learn something new about game mechanics that could have been more clearly stated somewhere, or else I found a grievous bug.


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Welcome to the party, Comrade.

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Look, Tasha, either help the Motherland or get out of the way.

I look forward to the day when Soviet C&C is good enough to allow most of my armies to activate. Or more than a few. But today was not that day.

I did however remember to snapshot all the bling, so let's start with the horror.


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No, no, not that horror, the other one. Although an amazing amount of horsepoop revealed itself immediately when I checked this map, so it does have plenty of horror on its own accord.



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Now, that's what I'm talkin' about!

And yet, relative amounts actually improved a bit...


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While his numbers in the field dropped to near record lows!

Why? Well, I imagine he had a harder time than previously wiping out some troops. Sadly, he did wipe them out. But we'll get to that soon.

Four new HQs arrived this turn -- without any divisions yet of course, but also a ton of new divisions. Here's the OOB comparison between last turn (left) and this turn (right):

(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F1024x768q90%2F903%2F61b4Nr.png&hash=eaf2cb5aeaaa7f6f0033962bbac11d0e0af941f3)(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F1024x768q90%2F911%2FemkzQ5.png&hash=c60071851fbe2fa35b3b596fabac99aa033cc884)

 

I know it looks like I'm down a little, and in "map units" I am, but in manpower I'm up a lot. That's because (as you may have gathered from the casualty snapshot) Bart crushed a number of divisions on the map which all together didn't have as many troops remaining as the incoming divs.

I think I forgot to mention last time, that I flew Kruschev the hell away from anyone whom I might want to be actually moving any time soon. Unfortunately, I couldn't send him back to STAVKA, but since the Leningrad Army should sit in Leningrad for the foreseeable future, I flew him out there where he arrived this turn.

So let's start the usual doomscroll!


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Nothing much happening in the far north for a while, as various units have finnaly escaped from the Fearsome Finns. That lone German unit (the grey chit) could still cause me some serious problems next time if, as I suspect, they have permission to cross the border; but there isn't much I can do about it if it happens, so I'll just continue. The game's notion of what counts as map-control continues to puzzle me: how in Thor's left lung does that stack get to exert control so far ahead as to cut the road?! But whatever. I honestly doubt either of those two surviving upper-guard divisions will ever contribute materially to the war.

Down to the lower North Front:


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Here comes General Mud again! This time it's almost a Rasputinista (or whatever they called it). It didn't keep Dunaberg from being overrun, but it probably saved my Baltic Army, still trapped near Riga, for another turn. On the other hand, it probably also prevented my Baltic Army from escaping for another turn (and maybe ever); whereas it didn't keep Barth from reinforcing Riga dangit. Well, sealed roads still work fine in mud; I knew it was going to happen.

This makes Ostrov up there very important as my next major roadblock, and it's in a swamp where his tanks won't work very well. Moreover, he's going to have at little trouble swinging his North Front troops around to the right of that swamp, as long as I keep spawning fairly sizable armies (like the 21st) nearby! As my newly operational 24th Army splits up to settle in for the defense, I send their few armored divs south around the swamp for a chance at some spoiling attacks. To be honest, I didn't mean to move so much of the 24th into that stack outside Ostrov, which inadvertently solved a deployment dilemma I was having about where to put the first indigenous North Front army HQ as it arrived: obviously, I need to spawn some divisions in Ostrov itself to protect it. Which is annoying since I had been debating whether to risk plopping them on the railroad between Riga and Talinn (way north of this snapshot), in order to help Baltic HQ escape -- if that was even possible!

But that wasn't nearly as annoying as what happened before I did any of these deployments and movements. Between the Baltic Army and a few other things, I decided I really, really, really did need to use my one and only superpower this turn to activate all my armies. So after thinking about it hard, I clicked the button, and then after thinking about it hard again I clicked it a second time (you have to click those buttons twice in case you mistakenly clicked it the first time). And it gave out the message: all armies will get full activation this turn! Yay!

...and then nothing happened. Nothing. NOTHING.

Now, one way or another, this has to be a bug. Either the full activation will happen next turn -- in which case the printed rules and the in-game text need changing); or it just didn't happen at all -- in which case I made my points worth less and Barth's worth more for NO THINNNNNGGGG!!![/I]

I mean seriously, if Stalin is going to shoot someone over something, this would be a good reason.


Deep breaths.

On south again:


(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F1024x768q90%2F911%2FLmW5Me.png&hash=bc43ec2d77489571260f91a718095153cf666a8c)

The mud kept the Germs from surging forward again, so another turn of consolidation -- especially since it also kept me from surging forward! I have got to stop trying to look for ways to screw with his backfield: I'm Russia in mid-July 1941, I can't feasibly do that sort of thing! Still, he isn't going to like having to deal with multiple lines of defense lining up, such as the newly arriving divisions of the 31st and 32nd Armies. I may however wish I had shuffled some divisions down to the new fortifications I freely made behind the south bridge of Mogiliv: it would very much suck if they manage to blow over the new free garrison there and into those trenches our own people dug. But if they do, they'll be surrounded by forces from the 33rd Army, too, which should start arriving before he can move next turn (although not being able to move and so not to attack yet.)


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Not much is happening on the Brest/Gomel swamp road yet, thanks to the mudbath, although at least the 16th Army is finally together. 5th Army still isn't dead yet (probably thanks to the mud), and the 29th is holding the road against those few infantry divisions which, I guess for RATSOB is something.

Most importantly, I got my first southern Army HQ this turn, and promptly dropped it onto Kiev. Those rampaging panzers should find the 47th divisions there waiting next turn.


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So much for what passes as "good" news. The Lvov superduper-stack is gone; and my Romanian Roadblock was always pretty doomed but might be marginally less doomed if I abandon the roadblock soon to go try to help the Southwest Army which is, well, the next in line to be doomed. Fragments of the Romanian defense upper line have nowhere 'real' to go, so are just pulling back as they wait for their turn to die. Couldn't be much grimmer here. But I know it will be, soon.


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Things are slightly better near Odessa, where by some miracle of bullpoopery the Romanians, THE ROMANIANS, managed to hike all the way around me to the north to make a pocket.

I did manage to move a lot of my troops partly out of that pocket, but the 9th Army HQ itself will surely be blitzed tomorrow leaving only the Southern Army HQ to try to shepherd everyone together if it can.

And then also, that little stack which has been holding ground in the mountains up there found enough activated gumption to run for the riverbank, too. Is this where the term "bugging out" came from??

The tally for the end of this turn:


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He only went up two points, but that's another two points. I note with deep annoyance that the game did indeed hike up his difficulty and put mine down by proportion -- despite giving me NOTHING!


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Speaking of giving me nothing, that one army was my last North Front reinforcement for quite a while; and my final non-conscript reinforcement army HQ will arrive next turn. But I'll be getting three more conscript armies to play with down south next turn, and that won't be nothing. Right?

I suspect from the existence of a Bart update on his thread, that it's my turn again; but my main cooling fan bit the dust (no pun intended) on the computer I'm using to save videos for my AAR snapshots. It'll be several days before I'm up and running again. If anyone is reading both threads, please let Barth know (and pass any other messages back and forth.)

Ouch, that sucks  :(

Posted your message in his thread.

Hi Jason,

Developer here.

The full activation from the Helper button kicks in the FOLLOWING turn.

Stavka are sending a staff officer with a new set of glasses as this is how it's presented in-game and in the manual.

However they understand the stress involved in having to defend Mother Russia and have sent a bottle of their finest Vodka along with their best wishes.

Cheers,
Cameron

Looking back over my video log of that turn, yes it did say (with some emphasis) next turn, on both the game screens.

Also it clearly says next turn on page 56 of the manual.

Also, it clearly says, "They [i.e. helpers] enable you to obtain instant bonuses in return for a lowering of your difficulty rating (and a raising of your opponents)," on the same page 56 of the manual. No distinction that this only applies to (some? all?) German helper buttons.

Also, it clearly says, "Helpers provide immediate benefits at the cost of lowered difficulty," on page 57 of the manual as part of the summary. No distinction that this only applies to German helper buttons.

I happened to see only those two, not the third statement in the manual -- which is itself entirely clear, but which is not those two other entirely clear statements. ;)

However, I should have seen the text on the two in-game screens, which were both entirely clear, and more immediately in view. For that, I can only appeal to stress in protecting the Motherland, and will gladly accept the vodka in consolation.  8)

(Trivia note: a vodka screwdriver is, to date, the only alcoholic drink I have ever been able to tolerate enough to finish.)


While I'm at it, due to scheduling fluff I won't be able to play my turn tonight (much less do the AAR), and probably not tomorrow night either as I have a birthday party I'll be glad to attend. Definitely Saturday morning, though, God willing and the Bug don't rise.

I hope the AAR from Barth and I will be helpful in promoting this wonderful game.  :smitten:

Well, the Bug kind of rose, but I got the turn out (a tad later than I intended). AAR to follow later today sometime probably. ;)

Before I get going, I want to report an actual bug in the game which I have never once seen before but which, so far as I can tell, doesn't seem to be causing gameplay problems. I checked for updates before loading my turn to play, and found none, so I don't know how this has started.

But if I have my User Interface open, and I click any hex that doesn't have a troop in it while my main UI tab at the bottom of the screen is open (so that Stalin and his chiefs are all shown as the default), I get this message:


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I can't tell if all three error messages pop up at once, or if new ones are generated after clicking "OK", but clicking that will bring up in sequence two more error windows. The second reads, "Error in Check command in event #292 - Special_Tab_Sov1 - on line nr #140" (very similar to the first one). And the third reads, "Error in Check command in event 152 - Direction_and_Distance - on line nr # 11".

After clicking those windows (which are the same regardless of which non-combat-force hex I click), the hex will be finally selected.

This bug doesn't happen if I minimize the UR, however.

I suspect, from the lack of a new update which might have introduced it, and from it never having once appeared before, and from the only signally new thing this turn being that last turn I used the Soviets' only "Helper" power, that this is some kind of side-effect of that.

Whether it will continue doing this henceforth, or go back to normal next turn, I'll report when I get to it.

Note however (Cameron or whichever dev may read this) that in my strategic map snapshot coming up, Moscow is still reading as though I had selected the HQ there. Which I haven't, I've selected another hex off to the east.

ROUND 8 -- JULY 16, 1941


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Well, under the circumstances, I had no real hope of keeping him from taking Kiev, but I have to say I'm a disappointed that the two divisions who arrived to help that army couldn't have held on against one panzer division in defending the city. Especially since that thing has to be outrunning the supply chain by now.

Also, I'm disappointed that only two divisions deployed for that army! On a major railroad junction, at a politically important red-dot city. Trotsky wept.

At least Stalin didn't freak completely out. He might roll badly next turn but not this turn.

All my armies technically activated this turn, but some of those points got burned away anyway by defending against Nazissaults: Barth always gets to go first, remember (or if that changes later it hasn't changed yet and I doubt it will for a very long time), after the points get assigned.

And yet, it wasn't in time to save Baltic HQ or to help in several other ways. If you ask why the Sovs' one superpower couldn't show up sooner, the answer is that Barth must have told the Luftwaffe to stop harassing my command and communications structure. But I did wait one turn -- because I thought (from two of the three manual descriptions) that it would happen "instantly". Had I activated it one turn earlier... man. sigh.

This game is necessarily grim for the Soviet player. I'm still about 4-times ahead in score, but it's only July 16 and I honestly don't know how I can hold on until winter. Or even until autumn muds.

Strat map at the start of my turn.



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Again, note (Cameron or whichever dev may read this) that in my strategic map snapshot coming up, Moscow is still reading as though I had selected the HQ there. Which I haven't, I've selected another hex off to the east. This may be related to that weird new bug that appeared out of nowhere.

Also, note that I have no hope of holding the south. :P

But my North and Central Fronts might hold a while longer. Especially Central. We'll see.

Here's the new OOB comparison between last and this turn:

(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F1024x768q90%2F911%2FemkzQ5.png&hash=c60071851fbe2fa35b3b596fabac99aa033cc884)(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F1024x768q90%2F903%2F7EfeED.png&hash=e946f72cb05196dbb2c4f4592a0f5cf7a17a47d7)

 

I don't know where the NKVD divs had been stationed -- my guess is South Front -- but they got murdered finally.

Those two new "Tank Div Late"s, by the way, feature a few KV unit tanks. Nice but not much help yet.

His casualties continue to creep up at the same slow rate, almost surely more from accidents on the road (troops getting jostled out of APCs as they tread over broken Soviet tanks, that kind of thing).


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Mine have levelled off a bit, but probably for the same reason his overall troop numbers increased between turns:


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Namely because he's still holding up to consolidate in the middle before his next push.

Doomscroll, commence!


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Ignore the counter-intelligence mis-label in the snapshot above, just in case enemy spies see it: I want them to think Stalingrad has an army in it. Um, just to be safe.

In hindsight I should have maybe left the 227th up in Petrov (where the 188th cowers unwilling to answer the radio and be reassigned to a new HQ). Until that German division passed by anyway, and then ran down to cut their supply line (which can't be great.) But maybe it'll be delayed now by wanting to punch on the 227th.

Other things continue up there, according to plan (such as it is, mainly involving moving that army to Talinn), and so down to the next map-stop...


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...where my all-activate superpower came too late to save the Baltic Army. Those two mangled divisions trying to help path (pathe?) a way out for them, managed to march into the mountains, where they'll most likely die a turn or two from now.

Zhukov had been en route to help the Baltic get out, but with them being overrun he got rerouted and so will probably appear back at STAVKA in Moscow next turn.

Jacobstadt still stands, probably because Barth hasn't cared enough to take it yet.

One of my first Conscript Armies, the 48th, largely deployed at Ostrov, in time to prevent its capture by a lonely panzer div, just as planned, and just as should have happened at Kiev down south but didn't. Toward the end of my turn, I chose Ostrov to put this turn's free minor garrison, since they're most likely to be hit with a strong force next time.

The big news, though, is that my plan to push the 21st Army over the theater border toward Dunaberg, succeeded slightly better than I had dared hope it might: with support from (mostly) the 31st Army, and some mobile divisions from the 28th, and a couple of tank divisions from the 24th (up helping guard the Ostrov line), two Germy infantry divisions were punched back, and... oh look, Barth parked the 4th Panzergruppe HQ there in Dunaberg all alone!!!

The 21st, mostly spent in movement points, could barely damage it...


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...but for the first time in this game, I slapped an Army HQ!

Maybe more importantly, the push by the 21st has narrowed the corridor of Barth's advance here to only two hexes!

I can't even imagine I'll be able to capitalize on that more than having him rush back down to open the throat again, but for once he'll be reacting to something I did. Considering how loosely the area was guarded, that has to have been a sobering surprise, if not quite a stinging one.

Down south again.




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This area of Central mainly involved shuffling divisions around into some better spread-out defensive positions. That included moving up all of... I think 32nd?... out of Orsha for the new 43rd Army HQ to start arriving next turn. They'll be my final non-conscript army for a long time (possibly for the whole game), and my final Central Front Army for several turns. I feel pretty confident about holding the Central Front for another 5 or 6 turns, though.

The 20th and 28th Armies, with a little support from farther south, pushed west a hex to a meeting engagement with elements of Barth's 9th Wehrmacht. I don't think I actually accomplished much, other than making one infantry div back up, but he should be forced to at least consider spreading out his forces rather than risk a counter-thrust breakthrough. Especially now that he knows I can send armies across Front boundaries! (It only costs me more movement points to operate while I'm there.) 4th Panzergruppe HQ especially has to be feeling a bit exposed up in Dunaberg right now.

Oh, and I spent my free fortifications this turn helping stiffen the line behind Mogiliv and its brave, doomed garrison.

Down south again to the Central/South border.




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Not a whole lot to report yet here either, but what little there is, is good.

My counterthrust back up the swamp road to Brest is finding not a lot of guarding at the moment, although the few divisions there aren't having much trouble holding up two or three armies. :P Still, it's a start, and at worst may require Barth to pull back some armies to secure the area.

I sent my new Army in Gomel, now ready to roll, up the rails a little toward the Mogiliv line. From here I can either support a defense against an attempt to flank us, or if I get a chance I can strike across the river and try to flank them!

Last but not least, I dropped my first new Southern Front Army this turn (all to be conscripts for the rest of the game, or at least the foreseeable future) on the rail line past on Gomel's side of the bridge leading to Kiev. They won't be ready to do anything for another two turns, but I may be able to counter-raid with them, or at least protect the river bridge in case he tries sending someone up that way.

(Oh, and a few stragglers of a couple of 5th Army divisions still live and are still being pushed back through the swamp. So does that one undead 4th Army division and HQ! -- which moved back into friendly cover at last this turn, and then accidentally participated in one of their attacks! Yeah, that won't continue to happen...)

That's... pretty much the end of any good news. It's all Southern Front afterward, and it's all different shades of terrible.


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First, in case I didn't mention it sufficiently yet, only two, yes, !!only 2!! divisions of the 47th Army arrived to help defend Kiev against an opportunity capture by... looks like the 14th panzer div. What did Alexander the Great used to say? "My logistic officers are the most nervous men in my army, because they know if I lose they'll be the first men I kill in punishment." Someone somewhere should be shot for this. I am legitimately surprised Stalin didn't roll for a paranoid episode and randomly shoot someone not involved with this debacle!


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By contrast, the martyrs of the Southwestern Army continue showing all Soviet citizens how true Soviet heroes give their lives for the Motherland. (Not that the two conscript divisions at Kiev didn't fight and bleed themselves, to be fair.

That stack that escaped the mountains eastward, couldn't benefit (just too encircled I guess, and too far away from their new HQ) from all armies activating, and so couldn't escape across the river. God knows what will happen to them now. (Well, God, Barth, and me: they'll no doubt be slaughtered by the Romanians. BY THE ROMANIANS! sigh.)

The Roadblock hasn't started coming apart yet, but only because Barth is in no hurry and can afford to let the main German thrust come down to it. The SW HQ's detached tank divisions try to shoot their way past an infantry div to die closer to their HQ, but it just doesn't work. Relatedly, by some kind of miracle, the 44th Inf Div marches out of mountains and across a river, through zones of control, to get closer to the Roadblock and their HQ; which, in turn, decides maybe it's better to go down fighting and attempts an attack on what passes for the main Romanian stack protecting the Rom HQ. With what passes for a signal failure, but at least they're trying. Since the 12th HQ is now pocketed, I tell a nearly-dead Tank Div to disband into partisans, and radio the HQ where to find some supplies for next turn.

And last:


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About half the surviving 9th Army makes it across the Bug (including the HQ). The other half, well, will surely die next turn slowing down the Romanian and shot-down-Luftwaffe-pilot advance. Sigh.

My last two new Armies this turn, I should have probably both dropped into or near Kirovograd, so that I could have the best chance to move the strongest force back west a few turns from now to cause trouble (and maybe help retake Kiev). But I just couldn't resist putting one in Nikolajev, to see if it can help the retreating South Army. I'll most likely rue that decision, but almost all the decisions in this part of the game are something I'm most likely to rue.

Final score for the turn:


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Still winning! Woo...

And the current reinforcement schedule.


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No help able to even defend (much less move) for another 5 turns. After that, North and South will get most of their reinforcements for a while, and then... man. Grim-ness.

Just a note that it's my turn but due to various reasons I haven't felt like I had a certainly free hour to work on my turn. Hopefully this afternoon!

And poing back to Barth.

My AAR entry will follow probably but not certainly sometime tonight. Or tomorrow at the latest.

For those who have been mournfully following my desperate and pitiful catastrophe (of being, after all, Russia At The Start Of Barbarossa)... well, at the risk of spoiling things, I'll just say I'm still, after all, RATSOB.  :crazy2: :buck2:

ROUND NINE -- JULY 20, 1941

I'm not going say there's hope now. Or that we've turned a corner. Or that things are even better. In some ways things got a little worse again.

But not in every way.

And there may, there might possibly may be a daring opportunity.

A daring opportunity related to today's communique from Barthquarters.


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More on that soon.

I completely lucked out on the paranoia roll this turn. With Barth having taken Kiev last turn (argh! -- I couldn't quite get reinforcements there in time to prevent a minor blitz taking the city), Stalin's paranoia jumped high enough that between one thing and another I had a 50/50 chance of him blowing his stack. But I rolled out. My next few turns will be dicey, too, though increasingly less so. I would like to spend my turns saving up Polipoints again for reinvesting in more Polipoints per turn, and then only spend the balance every few turns as I upgrade my Ppoint income; but until his paranoia cools down I'm probably better off spending most of them per turn (but not all, so that some remain to cool him down after blowing his stack).

So yay, good luck works for me once!

Relatedly, General Mud returned for a turn this turn -- and mostly hampered me. sigh.

Time to do the stat calls!

Here's the strat map at the start of my turn.


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As always, it is full of catastrophe and insanity. But Central is looking, currently, better than bad. More on that soon.

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I didn't lose any HQs this turn! I did lose a motorized div, and two early tank divs, on the net, but I gained a ton of conscript divisions and even a few regular infantry divs, plus I'm picking up some late tank divs. (Late being relative to the start of Barbarossa of course.) And my cavalry divisions are steadily increasing, although I haven't quite been able to figure out how best to use them yet under the circumstances.

Now, that may all sound great -- and it is -- but most of those are early conscripts, who are like late conscripts but with worse equipment. And you're looking at the last influx of troops AT ALL for another three turns after this one, and another four turns before any of those can possibly start defending anywhere, much less moving.

So for most practical purposes, I've got to hold the line with this for five turns. If I can.

Putting that a little more positively...


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...I'm finally back to having more troops than him. But he's also back to beyond his high tide of troop numbers, too. And his troops are, well, not RATSOB.


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And I did still lose a freakish number of troops on his turn, even though my losses are slllooowwwwwlly smoothing out their upslope.

What sayeth then the Doomscroll?!

(Split the doomscroll off to get past the 20Kcharacter post limit.)

Only 1 out of 4 armies even partially activated up north (sigh), but that isn't surprising since the North front has the worst Field Marshall by far -- something I debated hard about rectifying this turn -- and with Zukhov having finally figured out Baltic HQ doesn't even exist anymore, he's on his way back to STAVKA so won't be available to help inspire activations for another two turns at least.

Up on the Talinn-Leningrad line that was hardly a problem, of course.


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After all, I only had one job to do up here -- one job!! -- which was to get the 23rd Army to Talinn in time to help keep that city from being overrun.

So naturally, I decide to send my rather disorganized tank divs and my HQ back along the road to see if I can get into activation contact of those two stuck infantry divisions up by Petrov.

This is stupid for two reasons.

1.) As things stand, I'm in much more of a race to Talinn than I was estimating. Check out that Nasty Div on the road down there at the bottom edge of the map. One of the few things mud did for me this turn, was keep that thing from being several more hexes up. Even now, I'm not entirely sure I won't wake up next turn to find a bunch of smirking Germs in the city waving at me! -- even though I sent all my infantries forward, far enough to exert some zone of control limits to the approaches. What I should have done was surge my dang tank divs forward into the city itself, and be SURE. Nor should I have left my HQ potentially divided from my infantries.

Note that Soviet tank divs, or early ones anyway, are still mostly infantry with only a few tanks. They're more like motorized infantry with a little more tank support than normal Soviet motorinfs. I have a probably false belief that putting them into a city is a bad idea generally, although certainly their mobility is nerfed that way.

Stupid reason 2.) The tanks might get nearby enough to flush out that rogue German infantry division which crossed the road into high-Russian territory, but that almost certainly wouldn't even help activate the 237th Inf (which recognizes the 23rd HQ as its leader), much less the 168th (which the North Front hasn't been able to reintegrate anywhere yet.) So until the HQ gets in some kind of range, they're not going anywhere. But it'll take three or four turns to get the HQ in range. Whereas, in three or four turns I'LL HAVE A BRAND NEW (terrible early conscript) ARMY I CAN DEPLOY UP THERE AUTOMAGICALLY!! Which won't help the 237th still (probably -- unlike the Germans, I can't shuffle divs from HQ to HQ, and I'm somewhat doubtful the front HQ will do that for the 237th unless I flat lose the 23rd HQ), but which should help the 168th. And give me boucous of firepower to dare cut off the supply tail of that lone German division.

So that was not only a stupid decision but potentially a fatal one for the north front; because if (when) the Germans take Talinn, the Finns could decide at any moment to politically release for crossing the border. {smackingmyhead}

But things aren't worse up here yet. We'll see next turn.

Down to the real North Front problems.


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Even so, things aren't as horribly hopeless as they could be here (yet).

On one hand, my biggest current problem(s) here are those two wings of advance around the Jacobstadt pocket, including the mountains northward. I can't stop either of them, and not only can they roll up to Talinn fairly easily, but they could cross behind Ostrov almost as easily -- which is why I spent my one minor garrison this turn on fortifying Pskov. I still badly need to reshuffle some infantry north of Ostrov (where my 48th Army are parked, and the more experienced 24th in support southeast of it) to try to plug any gaps there. Alas, those armies didn't activate, and mud (plus marsh) would have prevented most of my movement anyway.

On the other hand... well, much to my astonishment Jacobstadt still stands; and even more astonishing, so does that small pocket north of them in the hills. If the weather holds up, and they can manage to hold out, those troops in the hills MIGHT be able to cut a supply to the line of advance! So Barth would be well advised to delay another turn or so to finish them off. I can't say they've done any more than keep his forces spread out instead of concentrated for a couple of turns, but I also can't say they haven't heroically done their Soviet duty.

Meanwhile at Ostrov itself, Barth clearly isn't looking forward to trying to punch across the river directly. So that's good, so far (for now).

And most importantly, down at the interfrontal line near Dunaberg, I'm still able to hammer at his weak spot -- now less weak because he (duh) pulled out the 4th PGruppe HQ, and dropped in an SS Police division plus the 25th Infantry who are no joke. But if I can keep pressure on that point...! Especially if I could just cross the river east of it and get around behind him (through his 125th presumably, although as we'll soon see he has more troops down there than that).

All these troops are pretty fresh; they aren't conscripts; they're set to neutral stance, so they don't have any horrible debuffs (and no bonuses but in this case no debuffs are better); and we're well past the initial extra-debuffs of early Barbarossa.

Now, do I seriously think I can snap his supply line at Dunaberg? No, although I'll take whatever chance I can get for that. But the low yet real possibility I could do so, should force him to pull back troops to secure his line. That truck icon you see down there, means his supply line ends at the HQ marker under the infantries at Dunaberg. He's still pushing supply north of course, but from that point -- and much less effectively. That task force east of Riga, which I would guess is on the way to Talinn? -- they've got to be stretching their supply awwwfully thin, and thinner the farther north they go. He absolutely needs to take Jacobstadt just to secure his supply line better, and even then he's got to move it farther north again to supply his coming assault on Talinn (not even counting Leningrad). If I push Central Armies west enough to feasibly open dropping some North Front armies in his rear five turns from now, his whole northern Theater would be very seriously in trouble.

Worth keeping in mind: the North Sector is where (1) he has the fewest troops facing (2) the most of my troops (relatively) with (3) the best interfrontal Soviet support -- and (4) if I manage to destroy all the troops on any front, I win.

As distant as it looks, this is my first real possibility of winning the game! -- depending on whether he recognizes the possibility, and how seriously he takes it, and on whether my new buffier troops can capitalize on it. I'm still fighting the Wehrmacht after all.


While my first (albeit distant) possibility of yanking victory from the jaws of disaster opens up here, the Central Front still looks solidly better overall and some decent developments here, too. 8 out of 14 armies activated at the Central Front (and most of those fully so), where I happen to have the most armies available to do something. Also where I happen to have the most armies sitting and waiting for trouble. Also where I happened to have the most mud hampering my own armies. So there's that.

Not much specifically to talk about at the northern and central parts of this front, so I haven't bothered zooming in and marking up this snapshot.


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Clearly there's no way I'm getting Minsk back any time soon. Also clearly, he's loath to try punching through all that any time soon. Worth nothing, all the mud fell on me here, barf, so neither did I have much wherewithal to try hitting some of his weaker portions of the upper line.

But let's talk about that upper line. Pretty thin, and that's all he's got supporting his supply trail for the 4th PG, which in turn is the chief front HQ. Moreover, I can cross interfrontal lines a lot more easily and at less cost than he can. At the top of that snap, you can just make out his HQ supply marker sitting on Dunaberg, so you can see why I badly want to push across over there behind him.

Now, in case he hasn't explained in his thread, he can ship supplies by rail as far as he wants to his forward supply base; but he can only ship by truck beyond that, and then only to the logistics HQ for his overall front. Which in this case is the 4th Panzergruppe HQ, that little flag icon I swatted last turn, and which Barth moved out of Dunaberg toward Jacobstadt this turn. (Before I get too optimistic, keep in mind my giant army only scared the 4th PGHQ. I'm not sure I could even count it wounded! sigh.)

But that's his military command HQ. The logistic HQ is currently still parked at Dunaberg! -- better guarded now, but still.

And whenever he moves his logistic HQ (and I'm honestly a little fuzzy about what the rules are on that -- I get an impression he can't move the FSB at all once he plops it, though that doesn't make any sense), he has to spend a turn (or two?) out of re-supply for everyone downstream of the move.

Minsk, obviously, is much more well-guarded, and he has reasonably put his Center Theater Forward Supply Base there; with his lesser front supply base (the one supplied by trucks from the FSB) nearby on the road, currently, two hexes southeast of Minsk. I might add here that this means his upper line might be a lot weaker than it even looks, because I'm pretty sure he can't supply those 9th Army troops from the North Front main supply trail. They have to be supplied from the 9th Army HQ which is well ahead of his FSB and even (currently) farther away from the secondary logistic HQ!

Got that so far? Okay, good, now let's scroll down to the swamp road.


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(You can't see them in this snap, but the road from Kiev to Gomel was plugged at the last dang moment. More on that soon.)

Remember his communique? The one where he shows he knows I've got a lot of troops on that road now? Well, unless he has a bunch of hidden reserves west of where I'm at, I'd be FREAKING TERRIFIED if I were him. Because I can run tanks west back along that road and retake Brest-Litowsk, or if not that at least sever his main supply artery. Heck, I could even take the poor undead 4th Army HQ and its tattered remaining division, and maybe that last undead division of the slaughtered 5th Army which he's currently ignoring (having better things to do on his southern front than chase it farther into the swamps), and run them back west! -- although I only thought about that after my turn was done (where I plodded them back east toward more safety.)

Strictly speaking, I ought to be spreading out my armies in a thick defensive line north of the road, and saving the road itself for running troublemakers back west. But he's too close to the road (on the western end of his line anyway) to feasibly do that. But that's probably okay. More importantly, I ought to be spreading back east somewhat along the road, to keep him from cutting me off, which wouldn't be so bad for me as for him, but would still be bad. Thinking ahead on this, but not quite ahead enough, I ran a tank div back toward Gomel. I'll be sending some infantry that way, too.

Meanwhile, note that instead of trying to fight my central defensive line head on -- which he could probably still win at if I'm being honest, but why not try to do so with less cost to him after all -- he's sending a probe of divisions south toward Gomel. Which could have been, and might still be, a real problem for me! Fortunately, much of my new cavalry were deployed in this area last turn, so YAAY MY CAVALRY ARE COMING IN USEFUL SORT OF, AT LAST! Any plugging of that hole at all is something. I'm more worried about him successfully thrusting down to snip the Best-Gomel swamp road.

Yet, even in that worst-case scenario, his supply situation would be grievous, and I might be able to recover it.

Barth may not realize how much potential danger he's in up on the North Front, but I bet he sees a cruel dilemma here. His 4th Army by itself may be able to keep me from going north out of the swamp, but he probably can't use it to stop me from going west all the way to Brest(-ish) -- cutting his main central front supply line waaaaaaayyy the hell back of where he's staging.

But if he pulls back, well even assuming he can still move his FSB again once he's placed it, he could only move it back to Brest, so he would have to pull A TON of his troops back of the line to secure the Brest-Minsk rail, enough so that I might be able to push back into Minsk. If he can't change his FSB (or not any time soon), that makes his pullback even screwier because now he's got to protect both Minsk (where the trains are arriving) and Brest (where the trains are being routed through).

The only bad news is that I won't be receiving more Armies on this front for several more turns. But friends: this is a serious game changing opportunity! I have stopped his advance cold, and one way or another I will be forcing him to pull back hard.

He could, alternately, try a middle ground of thrusting for Gomel harder, to cut off my swamp-road armies, on the theory that this way he wouldn't have to pull back. But even if he succeeds at that, I feel relatively confident I can push enough troops west at this point that I can screw with his train line. If that happens, he'll have at best doomed another two or three armies of mine, but left all his central front armies open to being Soviet Steamrolled by a vicious counter-offensive. (Maybe after a brief Sitzkrieg, just to let them simmer.)


Too bad I have no hope of even slowing him down much on the Southern Front. Although, my activations (full/partial/not) for South Front were 2/2/2, which all things considered is pretty good, except that the army I most needed to move didn't (and maybe couldn't) activate.


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I'm still super-annoyed that his one panzer division was able to oust the 47th Army HQ and its first arriving divisions out of Kiev. And I'm only slightly more understandingly annoyed that many more arriving divisions didn't look able to go back across the river bridge and push those tank divisions out of the city again. After all, a German tank division is mostly tanks (unlike a Soviet armored div, which mostly isn't), and they shouldn't be quite as good at defending in a city. But on the other hand, this is an early conscript army, so sigh. That being the case, I'm doing what I can to spread out south of the rail line out of the city, to block his advance out of Kiev. (This is also where I put my free fortifications for this turn.)

Moreover, at least the 44th Army got enough in place to keep his 1st Panzer Div (who took Kiev previously, you might recall), from rolling up the line to Gomel! So it isn't likely he's going to be able to threaten my swamp-road armies from this direction in the next few turns; and by then he'll either have had to pull back north of the swamp, or I'll have cut his supply there and he'll be in trouble regardless.

That doesn't mean things are peachy here. I'm slowing him down from passing Kiev, but I won't have more armies arriving, even conscript ones, for another three turns after this one, and even then they won't be maneuverable for another turn. But I'm slowing him down for now on the north South Front. And notice, one of his two logistic HQs is nearby. (He gets two such HQs for the South Front because area to cover gets so large eventually.) That means he's already placed his Forward Supply Base, a lonnnngggg way from Rostov, much less anywhere past Rostov (like Stalingrad). And his forces here are several hexes in advance of the logistics HQ, with nowhere really to plausibly move it up (unless he can place it at a railroad junction, like the one east of Zhitomir.)

On the other hand, I may very well regret not thinking to move a three or four divisions of the 44th south of the bridge into that hex I marked between the rivers. I won't be at all surprised if he crosses the river there on his next turn, and that will make my holding this crossing much harder. If he's able to push up into Gomel and screw me into a giant pocket on the Swamp Road after all, that one oversight will probably be why. Argh.

Going farther south...


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The Romanian Roadblock has been completely pocketed off; and they're who I most wish had activated. At this point, their distant chance of being useful would have been to punch off that division on the train tracks outside the city, and then make some kind of run back up the tracks to Lvov, where he put the South Theater's Forward Supply Base. But, alas, couldn't do it this turn, so I have less hope on all subsequent turns.

That stack of three divs I marked on the Bug River, no longer have an HQ and so have no real hope of ever activating, much less crossing that river now. But for now they're still there.

Lastly...


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I'm just waiting to die here on the shores of the Bug. I can't try running away again, because of the mud; and they have enough crew that they can loop around and pocket me at will. Nor will I be getting any more armies in the South any time soon. (Nor by the way could I evacuate the 177th across the river thanks to the mud.)

My only distantly possible option is that I can use the 46th to counter-attack back over the Bug somehow, a little later as they're trying to pocket me, making a run for ruining their supply line.

But to be bluntly honest, there isn't much reason at the moment to suppose that I'll be able to stop him taking the whole southern front by mid-August. And if he kills all my armies here, he wins. Which seems feasibly likely.

So there we are. I disbanded one shattered division over at the Roadblock to raise the southern partisan level to 6%. I was under the impression that as he takes cities and advances farther the partisan level should be going up from that, but as far as my own reports indicate the only partisan increases have been from me disbanding divisions.

As for political actions, this turn I managed to set at least half my remaining armies on defense (although they'll be crippled next turn first) before STAVKA rolled a bad result and shut down strategic re-dispositioning. And I spent 5 points pulling another Tsarist general out of the NKVD prison and sending him to the Central Front, where his ability to activate armies might be more crucial soon than for the Northern Front.

Final score this turn:


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Reinforcements, you might as well not ask about for a while.

This whole generals activating armies things has got my interest.  Good idea getting that guy out of the gulag and sending him to the front because it sounds like you need to get more units activated.  I shall be watching the next turn with interest.   O0

Hang in there Jason, more of general mud and general winter are on their way if you can hold out somehow. 

Yeah, but General Mud (the Rasputista) won't really kick in until late September or early October. I'M NOT MUCH PAST HALF-JULY YET!

I was joking with Barth in another thread that my grand strategy was to trap him at the Urals and the Persian mountains when autumn rains arrive. i.e., with all the board lost! -- and at the rate he's been going, that's where he'll be by autumn!

I'm perversely curious to see to what extent he'll try to crack the Vol Wall at his Central Theater. But I'm more worried about how to even slow him down on the Southern Front. Based on cues I've seen -- special arty and air support, and his capability of running stacks a lot faster than one would expect even given the fact that he's the Wehrmacht blitzkrieging -- I very strongly suspect his war goal, either permanently or temporarily, is to take Rostov. If I'm lucky, his various political situations would either change his goal on Hitler's whim, or require him to go on (somewhat as in real life) to take a further city (Stalingrad or something else). But man, it's a long time until I start getting more armies down south.


Re army activation:  I think he has some kind of mechanic for that, too, but it's a lot different than mine if so. Activation is a key Nuffle factor for the Soviet side. {/BloodBowlRef} Much moreso than for the German side.

I haven't talked a lot about it recently, because I chose a very different political strategy for the early game, but there are ways I could have been improving our activations a lot earlier. In hindsight, I wouldn't choose this strategy again (I think): not only does the game have a semi-random limit on how many armies per turn I can shift over to a different operational stance (offensive, neutral, or defensive); but by the time I earned and spent enough Poli-points to be able to do it for free (or almost so for the neutral and offense stances), all my armies stuck on offensive in a defensive situation (against a foe whom they couldn't feasibly fight on offense anyway), had been annihilated and replaced with fresh armies starting on neutral.

Now, I'm going to make the most I can out of the strategy I chose -- it sure isn't useless -- but I would definitely try a different early game strategic use of my limited Political Points next time.

Okay, my turn again; but I won't be able to play and send it back before late this afternoon or early evening.

Poing back to Barth. The AAR may not arrive until tomorrow afternoon, but it might be tonight depending...

ROUND TEN -- JULY 24, 1941


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Well, I can't say I'm altogether surprised. I am a little surprised about a related factor though. More on that as we get to the swamp road.

Stats first!


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You can see there what he's talking about. More subtly, you may be able to see that he has started probing forward along the Ostrov - Orsha - Gomel superdefensive line. No huge problems for me yet, but those days are surely coming (again).

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I can't quite tell if we went up much in the arrival of any divisions -- I'm pretty sure eleven divs are still failing to arrive (we'll see mostly where at the end of this entry). But as far as overall troop numbers...


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Not that those new troops are useful per se. But they exist!

Worth noting, is that he must be receiving new divisions by now himself, since he has certainly lost none and has very solidly increased his troop numbers, too.

In other words, the true battle begins now.


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In other words, the true battle begins AFTER I'VE LOST ALMOST 1.25 MILLION SOLDIERS!!

In other words, the true battle begins AFTER I'VE LOST ALMOST AS MANY SOLDIERS AS I'VE STILL GOT ON THE FIELD!!

That loss rate won't be decreasing anytime soon. Or maybe it will for one turn, I dunno.

The doomscroll won't take quite as long this time, because while the next stage of the war did start this turn, it hasn't kicked fully into gear yet. I fully expect that's coming.


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The most important news here is that the Panzers (and/or MotorInfs) didn't race up the road to Talinn, and so I was able to zip the 23rd Army into and around the city after all. Except for the tanks which I had foolishly tried to send off to help the 237th get home faster. But I've lost so many tanks simply from equipment breakdowns, that those divisions will probably be useless anyway. (In other news, the 168th is still stuck in Petrov, Northern Russian water is still cold and wet.)

I did send out the Leningrad tanks to scout the road for the 237th, especially since I have no idea where that German division which passed the Petrov road is supposed to be. As far as the game is concerned, it's exercising no control in the area, and I managed to cut off what little control it had achieved getting in. But it isn't like there's a hex left over still under German control up there. It's more like they were eaten by bears, or maybe Alamasts (the Russian version of Bigfoot, if I recall the word correctly). Maybe Barth disbanded them...??

The Krusch-ing Malefic Presence is still looming up there. He'll become slightly more useful, maybe, when my last new Tsarist General arrives to take over the Northern Front HQ: I spent 5 of my 15 point tally on that, my only Polipoint purchase this turn. I'm hoping to hold off spending more for another 3 turns so I can put a belated Polipoint reinvestment plan into place.

Scrolling down to the more important action (although I fully expect Talinn to be in trouble next turn):


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Well, that could have gone a lot better, but it could have gone a lot worse, too. I haven't lost my low-chance gamble here quite yet, and I even made a key bit of progress!

Sure, my 21st Army (with a bit of support) got punched back, hard, by a couple of elite SS divisions and three other Werhmachts -- I seriously don't know that they could take another hit like that -- but parts of my 28th and 31st Armies swatted one German division out of the way! Which, yes, sounds embarrassing to type, because it is, but! the 31st HQ itself and three divisions then crossed the Dvina, with something like a clear path to the 4th PGruppe's supply line!

This is not something Barth can afford to ignore, and the fact that he moved his HQ back into Dunaberg after evacuating earlier, tells me he's underestimating my chances of seriously screwing with his Northern Front supply. Other parts of my 28th and 20th Armies held the wall against some attempts to cross, too; next turn, ideally, I need to push that hole open in the line and keep surging.

I doubt the random numbers will let that happen, much less Bart himself, but I've done all I can to put myself in a position to take advantage of any good luck falling my way.

In other lower North Front news: Jakobstadt and its nearby allies in the mountains finally fell (making up most of the losses this turn no doubt, since last turn they still had a ton of troops remaining). If my countersurge ends up working to any degree, their sacrifice holding down nearby troops while I built up strength elsewhere will be partly why. This does however mean I've lost track of that whole western wing of Bart's advance. Wherever they went (or didn't go, since they're far ahead of their supply line), it wasn't up to Talinn (yet). I suspect there are more Germs in that area of grey blank chits than I can 'see' right now. More interestingly, Bart hasn't moved his truckline over to J'stadt yet. Either he hasn't noticed the problem (unlikely) or he's loath to disrupt his supply for a turn until he feels safer about the troops protecting Dunaberg. After all, he'd be a lot better off in several ways if his truck route was running up that road south of J'stadt instead. (There might be some kind of political problem on his end, too.)

I thought hard about starting to run my Leningrad Army out of the city to help support either Talinn or (at the top of this map) Pskov, but I figured I'd be better off in the long run trenching up as much as possible, even though I'll surely lose the town soon.

Relatedly, I was serrriously tempted to march my 21st Army out of their temporary defenses and over the river into that swamp south of Ostrov (and the 48th Army) so that they (and the 48th) might try to harass the the line of Bart's advance better. But I finally decided I would be setting myself up for him to attack me better sooner and later if I did that, so I stayed put.


Staying put was mostly what I accomplished on the next screen south, too:


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Bart has started his 3rd PGruppe push, if a bit tentatively. Panzergruppes, to remind readers, are the German equivalent of Front HQs on my side, but intentionally mobile like any of his other Army HQs. You can see his Center Theater's one and only PGHQ beyond Minsk now. What's important about that, is that his logistic marker for the 3rd PG is still parked down somewhere near his Forward Supply base marker, i.e. near Minsk. Which is fine for the part of his line that has to try to push through Mogiliv (where that garrison spits alone in their general direction for the past week-ish) and into Ostrov; but not so great for that long line of divisions stretched north which, at this point, are partly there to stop me from a general counter attack back down the rear of his advance on two fronts!!

Now, granted, my troops there, while stronger than before, are still rubbishy compared to his. But I'm in better supply, and he has been sitting there, beyond supply, for quite a while now. I'm hoping that part of his line is getting more fragile than he's expecting.

Not that that will make much difference if I don't get more activations more regularly soon. I had two places, including tanks in the forest, where I could have concentrated some local counterattacks, but I just didn't have the movement points remaining (or at all) for it. Maybe in the long run that will be for the best, though, since most or all of those divisions were still reorganizing after my massive success at getting STAVKA last turn to issue defensive stances. (I only succeeded in issuing one this turn, or maybe two, before STAVKA shut down in a snarl, argh.)

Anyway, aside from shuffling a few more divisions south of the line, to plug a remaining hole and to stiffen the line with some of the 43rd's cav divisions (which are basically light tank divs), the main interest here remains the question of whether I can push parts of the 31st Army through their brittle northern sector and into his North Front's supply corridor. Still not impossible, but still very dicey.

As for his Central Front's supply train-line...


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...well, we haven't snapped it yet, by far, but we made a hex of progress, which was the best we could do under the Zone of Control circumstances this turn.

This is what Bart's quip about marsh-mallow pockets was about, of course. Well, not surprising. I was tempted to turn my Armies around and try to smash my way back into supply eventually; but I don't think his 4th Army is going to be up to killing us for another few turns; and if I can just project my tanks beyond my advancing blob in the next couple of turns, then it might not matter if three whole armies get annihilated on the road. This is still my best shot at turning Barbarossa around in my favor, and I've got to take it. I've gotten farther than I dared imagine to seriously hope already. The fact that he decided to advance the whole front toward Ostrov rather than protect his train line, tells me he either doesn't yet know how endangered he is, or he's underestimating the threat.

Or, maybe he has reinforcements coming in from the west. His troop numbers have super-increased above his divisions' full capacity, so new divisions must be on the field somewhere. And I notice something south of the road is projecting 5 mpoints of zone of control, including over the road. I may have already lost the race, but I don't know that yet for sure, so I've got to keep running -- and maybe even keep running if/when I know I've lost the race!

Besides, I've shuffled three cav divisions down to the start of the road back from Gomel (where I prudently put my free minor garrison this turn, by the way), and even ran a tank div up from the 44th Army holding the bridge north from Kiev. Maybe in the next few turns they can help open supply again?

Speaking of Kiev:


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It's still a disaster, but it still could be a lot worse. And probably will be next turn. But not yet.

At least they have a slight fighting chance, unlike the other people on the next doomscroll south...


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No point even marking that up. If only the 12th could activate, at the Romanian Roadblock, I feel like we could punch past those relatively minor numbers and try to raise some havoc back toward Lvov!! I had to make some hard choices about where to send Zukhov this turn (since he had finally made it back to Moscow after missing the defunct Baltic HQ's demise), and in the end there was no real question: I had to send him where his activation bonuses could contribute best to my best chance at smacking Barth hard, namely the 16th Army on the Swamp road (whose tanks are trying to run forward to ruin the Brest supply line). Next would have been one of the armies trying to snip the North Front supply line. But third would have been here, at the Romanian Roadblock -- just to see if putting him in direct command would result in a surprise breakout northwest.

Last, but not quite least:


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The 45th Army, up there by Kirov, is where most of my missing not-yet-deployed-divisions will be going; and now that they're literally back on the double-track, they have some hope of stacking up better next turn. Until they get surrounded by the blitz anyway. But I really want to know how the heck the Romanians and their German allies are being supplied down here. Because I feel like I could be messing them up if my 46th Army would just activate reliably, punching back west along the coast, and surging up their backside (not even bothering yet with retaking Odessa.)

That's all wishful thinking: however he's supplying those troops, I expect he'll be rolling the Germans around in a pocket to trap the South Army and the 46th soon. After which, he might be literally at Persia before enough new armies arrive in this theater to even slow him down a turn or two.


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It's hard to believe we're still technically winning, and by a lot. But it's also hard to believe we aren't even out of July yet.

Next turn, still no reinforcements for a while, and August begins! ...uh, begins to approach, I mean!  :'( :-[

Epic tidings! Following with an interest  :)

What? Can it be?? Two turns this weekend at being curbstomped by Nazis??? Be still my beating heart! (...ripped out of my chest and set on fire. See: curbstomping. Also: Nazis.)

TURN 11 -- JULY 28, 1941


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Yeah, well, right now mud is an annoyance keeping Bart from winning more quickly.

But mud may have just outright killed my first real chance at turning this war around.

Not helped by this.


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In theory, his random executions are supposed to be weighed toward high levels of perceived threat, and since threat is tied to competency then it's just too bad that they tend to help activate armies better.

In practice, his two paranoia fits have killed off low-threat-level targets who just happened to be experienced at getting armies to activate.

Incidentally, I did check for, and receive and install, a new version of the game before running this turn. If there's a bug, I hope it was fixed -- the results here were technically generated by the previous version of the game at the end of my previous turn.

Maybe more importantly than two relatively experienced generals being wiped out and replaced with less experienced ones, Stalin's fit means I can't play any cards this turn except for deploying reinforcements. Which I don't have any of.

Strat roll says...!


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Not a lot of change there, but fewer divs on balance I think.


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Practically no change at all there in my net numbers, but the Germans have massively upscaled the number of their divisions. This cannot be good for me in any way, shape, form, or fashion.

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My rate of losses flattens out a little more, but still losses. Worth noting, my loss-slope seems about equal to Bart's this turn! -- still a little steeper, I think, but more importantly there's no way that semi-parity can last. I'm still Russia in Barbarossa after all.

Speaking of, let the doom scroll freely!


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One bit of good news is that the stuck 168th up in Petrov has finally made contact with Leningrad HQ, and so can move (sometimes, maybe). So it's on the road south at last. With a German division meandering around up there somewhere, doing God knows what.

Next turn I'll be able to start dropping new HQs for a few turns, but doubtless that'll begin at Luga, to try to block the road from Pskov up to Len. Until then, I know from looking farther south that Bart will only have minor troops trying to cross the river swamp to get past the Pskov garrison (although strictly speaking he could just leave that garrison alone and go around it.) My Ostrov line is still holding strong.

Consequently, I felt pretty safe taking a risk of moving half my Len troops (including the motorized and armored divs) down to that little town halfway between Talinn and Len to guard the bridge there.

This won't stop Talinn from being cut off next turn; but I've jiggered people around (and punched an infantry division by the way) so that I have the smallest possible chance of getting someone around back behind their advance from the west. I even toyed with sending those divisions farther west to the coast, but I knew he'd only cut me off and mostly paralyze me (moreso than he already probably will). I've done all I can to protect Talinn, a major city, from falling for another turn or two. Maybe next turn I can even send them a major garrison -- Stalin's paranoia prevented that this turn.

Remember, if/when Talinn falls, the Finns will almost certainly release for operations beyond their borders. And that will be all kinds of bad.


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Bart ought to be thanking the mud, not whining about it. The primary reason (aside from paranoias screwing with my activations this turn) that I don't even have a chance of gapping through there to get to his exposed truckline, is because of the mud.

But the 21st Army survived another punch, and should be better prepared to defend itself henceforth -- only two of my armies are currently still re-orging to defense, and so taking some minor debuffs while they do so.


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Nothing much happening here yet, but he did punch back a stack despite the mud; whereas I can't even get enough points (thanks to mud and paranoia) to hit those tanks in the trees. At least I'll have enough movement points to defend a little better next time.

Oh, and he finally got bored with the Mogiliv garrison taunting him, but that was going to happen eventually anyway. I'm just going to imagine they all evacuated safely over the bridge after the civilians got out, and now they can filter back into our ranks as reinforcements someday.


Here's where mud and paranoia really hurt me though.


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Those tanks could have run across to snap the line at Brest. With my starving armies one hex farther west along the road, to help keep that line snapped as long as possible.

Instead, my starving armies starve in the swamp another turn, with no movement ability at all. Oh, and next turn is likely to have more mud, whee. Not incidentally, Zukhov didn't arrive at the 16th HQ this turn.

Look, I understand the random numbers aren't going to go my way much in this game, and that this plan always had a significant chance of failing. I suppose I can take some comfort that it'll fail due to a single bad dice roll, and not by a misplan on my part (although in hindsight I could have done a little better here).

Still. It's bitter. So very, very bitter.

I do have some fast-movers nearby ready to help re-establish the supply line a bit, but they weren't strong enough this turn to punch a single German division aside. The 34th Army will be sending some troops to help with that next turn; but I doubt it will make enough difference quickly enough.


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47th Army has done all it can feasibly do to block the bridge out of Kiev; and by the way, Zukhov has been entirely unable to serve one of his primary functions so far, being able to blow such bridges (because I can't get him anywhere useful yet).

So, to be blunt, it's every division for itself, in a race back in the general direction of Karkov. A race I expect to lose.

I might as well not even show a snapshot of the Romanian Roadblock. It still exists, more starved, for now. But its easternmost stack has died. Two stacks remaining.

Lastly...


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The one place mud clearly helped me this turn (I suppose it's possible the mud kept him from hurting me worse farther north), was in keeping him from looping around my South Army. But he still punched a stack very hard up there; and the mud kept my 45th Army from getting more divisions activated, and from being able to try maneuvering to retake Kirov.

And the mud kept my 46th Army from crossing the river and trying a southern punch back south across his line. Maybe that's a fool's dream anyway, and the mud saved me from disaster thereby.


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Still technically winning by a lot, but we all know better.

Next turn, though...


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...more cursed frogurt armies start to arrive for a while, on my North and South Fronts (and even Central for a couple of turns). I don't know what I can possibly do with them, but considering how spread out he is, maybe they can be of some assistance.

You've got him held pretty well up north.  Keep him away from Leningrad!

You can afford to lose more land in the center and south, more so in the south.  Give your armies a chance to refit and regroup. 

Unfortunately, he isn't giving my armies time to refit and regroup. That's part of the point to blitzkrieg.  ::) :buck2:

Still, I'm glad someone feels optimistic.  8)

A brilliant AAR, well written, great humour, and an excellent read. Well done. O0 I look forward to your next instalment.

Yay, I can finally get back to being molested by Nazis!  :buck2:

Unfortunately, I have a headache this afternoon (and also was planning on working on something else), so probably my turn won't go back until late tomorrow afternoon at the earliest. And then the AAR for the turn sometime after that.

Besides, it would bad form if I got my AAR up before Barth does!  >:D  :2funny:

You, sir, are a scholar and a gentleman.

Well, since our previous turn, DC3: Barbieroast won the Grogheads Reader's Choice Best Game of 2016 (and some related award iirc, like Best Strategy), so allow me to provide the award advertisement blurb.

Ahem.

"The premier gateway strategy game for S&M couples!" -- Grogheads.

...not that Barth and I are an S&M couple.

Though we might as well be.

TURN 12 -- August 1, 1941


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Not a euphamism!

As expected and hoped, no pique from Stalin this turn, so I could accrue some more Polipoints. My current political strategy is to horde points with a primary goal of reinvesting them to make more points each turn; and then to use any remaining points after I buy more points to finally start 'playing' with them. This will tend to bump up Stalin's paranoia, but I'm hoping I'll be able to afford some action by the Reaper to offset that. Eventually.

In effect, I won't be able to spend Polipoints on anything else (if possible) for the next three turns. I hope I can survive that long.

But hey, I've survived until August! Woo!


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...for certain values of "survive".

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He killed off a net 4 Divisions on his turn. I picked up a few, arriving late to their HQ, but not many. I still have over 20 divisions ready to deploy to their HQs who just haven't yet.


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I did tick up a little more than 4000 troops on the balance!


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Losses sloped back up again, though, since Barth started his panzers moving again. So did his losses, too -- maybe at a slightly steeper slope than any previous four days! But let's be real, we all know there's no hope in that.

Also no hope for Talinn.


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I thought long about trying to move that detached corps around south behind the German advance south of Talinn. But ultimately I just couldn't trust that those divisions would activate reliably enough, as they got farther away from the 23rd Army HQ (or even if they didn't!) to make a run for the back field.

Also, I accidentally told them to move back into Talinn when I wanted to click that hex to see how the troops in the city were doing. {shaking my head} If there's one goofy user interface mechanic in the game, it's that one. Hard to explain to someone who hasn't played the game, though.

Instead, I moved up my Leningrad HQ to support the four detached divisions rumbling down the road toward Talinn, and currently setting up in... uh, whatever that town is on the river. I'll be getting reinforcement armies each turn in the North for a little while -- starting with the 42nd Army which I plopped on the last town before Leningrad on the road from the southern Northern Front. I'm not sure I dare to run any new armies on the northern railroad to Finland (north of that lake north of Leningrad), but I might be able to relieve the siege of Talinn while still guarding Lgrad from the nigh inevitable surge of the Finnish. And maybe bears can fly.

Bears are plodding south from Petrozav, too, and the 227th should be in range to help defend L'grad in... oh, another two weeks. Or three.


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By which time I fully expect the 24th and 48th (conscript) armies to have been pocketed and wiped out. A few near-shattered armored divisions from the North Front manage to retreat back into the Central Front staging town of... uh... Polotsk? I forget. I'm hoping I can pull back the 21st Army superstack at least one hex soon (I've got them set to retreat on 25% losses) so I can create and keep open a supply channel for the North/Central Front's big Hail Mary (or the Eastern Orthodox equivalent)...


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...the 28th and 31st Army Stacks (somewhat intermingled) daring the second slowest counter-blitz ever, to strike at the 4th PGruppe's logistic tail.

By all rights I shouldn't have even gotten this far -- especially considering the mud I've had to put up with -- but I'm one or two turns away from knifing his truckline. And maybe even retaking Dunaberg.

I am beginning to dare to hope this insane plan will work. But surely, surely Barth won't just let me do that. He'll just rejigger his truckline up another road, right? Or is he using his own logistic trail as bait for a trap?? After all, this is nominally a suicide run.

My one free fortification this turn goes to that stack of six divisions between the 28th and 21st armies. I'm hoping I can pull back the 21st (in a fighting retreat if necessary) to solidify a minimum supply chain out to the 31st on the counter-blitz spearhead. Relatedly, I'm going to get two new conscript armies for Central over the next few turns, and while I didn't plop the first new HQ up here, I'm definitely plopping the second next turn, somewhere in the area. Polotsk would make good sense for supporting the counter-blitz and maybe helping to snip off any dogs trying to roll and run around the swamp toward my main remaining Northern roadblock. But if not there...


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...then maybe at Vitebsk. It's about time for me to start pulling back the northern Central Defense line to the Vitebsk road, and probably also to send an army or two up past the river (from where I started this surge originally, hoping to find a weak area to strike into Barth's backfield.)

Ideally, Barth would thin his line enough trying to push north, that I can launch a general offensive back across the river near Mogiliv. But I'm not ready to do that yet, and certainly want to wait until I see whether this plan fails...


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...the actual slowest counter-blitz ever.

Although by all rights I shouldn't have gotten so far to the north, by the same token I really ought to have been able to push this home already, maybe even to retaking Brest.

But no, between mud, and sucky organization (thus sucky activations), and Zhukov failing to arrive on time, and failing to do his dang job when he got here at last... one twiggy little hex of advance by the armored divs. sighhhh...

When I lose this game, you-all are the reason why. I hope Barth-ler puts you all up against your own dug graves and has you shot. How hard is it TO FREAKING WALK A ROAD?!?!

So I dropped my first of two new Central conscript army HQs into Gomel; because my southern elements of the defensive line are too scared to try to help rescue their damned comrades. We'll see if Barth stops laughing at the hideous comedy here next turn to bother to do something about it at last. If he leaves me alone, I will snap the only supply line he's got for two whole Panzergruppes.


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Things are slightly less dire on the upper Southern Front, with the first elements of the 47th arriving in Kharkov (the next big VP station on the blitz train), and the first of several new armies to be arriving for a while in the Southern theater making an appearance in Kursk. Oh, I'll be reinforcing other parts, too (starting with Kharkov), but my tentative plan is to gather up the 37th when they sufficiently finish arriving, and run them back west across the Central front, to help support the line there and maybe catch Barth with a little surprise. I suspect he plans to run or walk a few divisions around the 44th to completely pocket them before trying an attack across the river and bridge.


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Not much to say here. I finally got impatient waiting for the mongoloids of the 45th Army to shamble into place, and struck out northwest without them.

I'm hoping this counts less as "impatience" and more as "making a move before I'm caught outside Kirovostad by the next rampaging surge of the southern blitz." I trust y'all can see what I'd ideally like to mess with over there to the west.


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Not quite last, and not quite least, the good weather didn't just give Barth a chance to surge his divisions of shot-down pilots in a new pocketing maneuver; it also allowed me to push the 46th conscript army across the river at Nikolajev, so that I have some bare chance to try doing something with it instead of just sitting and starving in town when that pocket collapses. I strenuously doubt this will come to anything, but unless I'm there I can't even try, and at least I'm "there" now.


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Actually last, and actually least, the brave 12th Army was finally pushed out of Czernowitz, which in their honor I'll fully spell at least once. The Romanian Roadblock now shall die, but at least they'll die in a mountain defense. (This is where I disbanded my one division per turn for partisans, too.)

What sayeth the current score?


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Still solidly winning, if you can count it that! But Barth's non-adjusted score is finally starting to catch up.

And we have a lonnnng way to go to even get to September.


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The cruddy reinforcements will continue until morale improves! -- or the beatings. Whichever improves first.

TURN 13 -- August 5, 1941


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If you want to know where he's getting that term, you should be reading his DAR (dang action report), too!

24 divisions deployed this turn, but... well, you'll see. 20 divisions tried to deploy but failed; and I still have 27 divisions that could deploy but haven't yet.

Plus I'll get to drop another three Army HQs, one per Front, this turn; but that'll be the end for the Central front until, God help me, sometime in September. And not early September either.

Let's strattle up!


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The first thing you should notice not noticing, is that my Romanian Roadblock has finally fallen. This was expected, but still tragic.

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I wish I could say the net results there only reflect the destruction of some shattered divs that didn't even have many men left, but...



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And that's with 24 fully manned divisions arriving.


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This sort of thing is why historically the Japanese Empire thought it had a reasonable chance at taking over Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific. I keep having to invent new chart notches to describe how horrible the casualties are.

Keep in mind. These are never going down. And even toward the end of the historical war, Germany's will never get that high. And this game only gets to the end of Barbarossa. Assuming I even make it to the end. Which at this point...

Well, let the doom scroll freely on the winds of time.


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The 23rd Army did manage a punch of part of its forces out of Talinn; but even with (most of) the Leningrad army pushing westward out of Narva, I don't think it's going to help. Still, I learned that superstacking more than 200 points in a hex leads to radically increased casualties, and this'll be one less hex they can attack from, so.

My one new Northern army, the 52nd, I put into Narva so that if the situation is even a little salvagable two turns from now maybe they can help. Next turn, I'll be able to move the 42nd Army out of Luga, but whether that's south to help hold the main line, or west to help on the Narva road out of Talinn, I don't know yet. I assume I'll be putting my next arriving army in Leningrad, so despite how I marked the screenie I don't think I'll be moving it north.

Zipping down south to the Pskov-Ostrov line:


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I put my free fortifications for the turn up there with the 1st and 12th Inf Divs.

Mostly here I just spread out more, to minimize problems with superstacking leading to increased casualties. This allowed me to try a few spoiling attacks on some nearby groups; but despite taking the time and effort to arrange my counter-attacks more intelligently, I don't think I really accomplished anything.

Speaking of superstacks being not so great.


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Those two large stacks protecting Polotsk from western advance, got pushed together; and their supply cut off; and next turn Barth will be able to attack from five sides at once. And that'll be the end of that. sigh.

I did force him to reshuffle his main supply train to Riga; and I did push a few divisions farther westward, where maybe they can loop around to help mess with Dunaberg. But since he surged troops past the river behind me already, I'm pretty sure it won't be enough.

I've done the best I could here under the circumstances I think. The incipient failure is harsh, and our losses will be monstrous, but at least I tried something.


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My more standard defensive line at Orsha continues to hold, with a sound smacking of the 7th Panzers who advanced a little too far and got slapped back. But things look dire at the north end of this line, so the 42nd Army in reserve at Orsha surged some troops forward to help plug the gaps, and my new Central Army for the turn plopped its HQ in Vitebsk. It is entirely possible and even probable that Barth will run back southeast from his surge and push them out next turn, but the town won't just be sitting there waiting defenselessly.


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I have a strong suspicion that I've seen the last of any movement by my swamp-road armies -- even with Zhukov around -- unless I can mount a rescue. That rescue didn't happen this turn, and I doubt it'll ever succeed in happening at all. Again, losses will be monstrous, but at least I tried something. Perhaps next turn I'll be able to maneuver something a little better: did push some strong corps across the Dneiper, and I'm pulling back and spreading out the army guarding the bridge to Gomel. Plus next turn I'll have the 49th conscript army ready to move.


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The developing Karkov line continues to develop. I'll be putting all my new Southern Armies over here for a while, including the 38th HQ arriving in Kharkov itself. The 47th is now being regularly hit by advancing Germies as they slog to Khark, but the 171st bravely volunteers to hole up in some nearby low mountains to act as a sacrificial rearguard.


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Since the 1st Romanian Armored Div was so kind as to chase my 45th Army out of Kirov, I've returned the favor by attempting a nice textbook encirclement! I doubt it'll come to anything, but I might as well practice while I've got something like local superiority of numbers.

Meanwhile, my free minor garrison for this turn goes to Dneipetrovsk, which may help give my Southern Front HQ time to pack up and head out ahead of the advancing blitizies.


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Lastly, northeast of Odessa: the most that can be said here, is that the 46th (or 48th, I forget which) got its chance to push those Romanian borderguards out of the way, and failed. This, in hindsight, should have probably been a full superstack operation and to hell with the casualties. But I've spread out our failing divisions around Nikolov a little better, so maybe we'll last a tad longer.


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So, will next turn be when his score finally catches up with mine? -- or will it be the turn after that?

I very, very seriously considered using my superpower to activate all armies next turn, in order to try to save those advance counter-thrusts, or maybe even to make them effective. He's already getting a 13 percent bonus on his scoring, and that would increase it again. In hindsight, after I sent in my turn, I feel like I should have gone ahead and done it. What's the point of those attempts if I can't do anything with them??

I did spend all my Polipoints on Demanding More Power from the Politburo, so I'll start getting 15 Pp per turn henceforth -- but then I learn that card can be only played once. So, so much for trying to reinvest in growing my Polipoints.

Also, just like last turn, my first attempt at trying to turn some armies to defense failed, shutting down all further STAVKA action; but at least I had enough sense to wait until near the end of the turn to do that. I suspect if I had tried at the start of the turn, my chances would be higher, but being on "neutral" isn't bad.


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I'm going to need some hard decisions next turn about where to put more southern reinforcements. Northern reinforcements will surely be near L'Grad. And it'll be early-mid October before I can expect any further reinforcements in the middle. But I can't complain, I've had a huge surge there and if I can't hold with those, then... well, then I shouldn't have tried running a counter-thrust back up the swamp road toward Brest, huh.

TURN 14 -- AUGUST 9, 1941


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That's true, sort of -- I mean on the points, it's a lonnnnnnnng way to any reliable Rasputista, and in my past experience it hurts me as much as him (if not moreso). But the actual gamescore that counts is the one I always show at the end of my report. Where his unadjusted score is rapidly catching up, although I'm still way ahead of his divided-in-half adjusted score.

I have a hard time imagining how much worse things could be in early August for me, though. I've certainly bungled a number of key things, beyond the usual Soviet difficulties.

Losing Talinn on Barth's turn, although mostly expected, didn't help. Aside from helping his supply situation, and adding yet more VPs to his tally, he also thus releases his allies to FINNISH ME OFF! :P And also thus triggered another Stalin paranoia which totally handicapped my strategic cards this turn (except for reinforcement arrivals -- and Zhukov, more on him eventually).

This time he shoots three generals, none of whom had a large threat perception. I'm convinced there's something wrong with the programming here, since literally the whole point of the threat perception is to give Stalin targets for execution. Instead he's killing off high-activation generals, more often than not: including a 60 point general this time.

The other two generals, fortunately for me, were replaced by almost equivalents: I only lost a net two points there. But going from 60 to 5 activation on a general hurts. A lot.

21 new divisions did arrive, and another 18 will start arriving into distribution next turn, but 25 divs are still held up in transit. And most of my armies either partially or didn't activate.

At least there wasn't mud. Yet.

Stratmap at the start of my turn:


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I want everyone to notice the giant gaping gap leaving Moscow totally open. Sure, he has a long way to go to get there, but I have literally nothing in the way to stop him. And nothing more arriving in the Central Front for another 15 turns.

Well, after that depressing realizing there's nothing but harshness!


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Don't let those numbers lead you into hope. Sure, I'm glad the overall troop numbers improved again, but once my two aborted retarded counterthrusts get murdered off, those numbers will drop like a rock.


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I mean, sure, his losses continue to slope up slightly. But my losses barely slowed down. And they'll be speeding up a lot soon.

Doomscroll, advance!


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My gamble at leaving only a couple of divisions entrenched at L'grad, to give myself more flexibility in helping farther south, may well have been fatal. The Finns, and their pet Wehrmacht division, may easily roll over the city before the newly sited 54th Army starts to arrive at all; certainly the 52nd won't be getting back in time (much less the actual Len Army), and the 42nd Constript Army will be lucky if its cavalry are even at L'grad's gates four days from now.

One slightly soft spot in the harshness, is that the heroic 23rd Regular Army, running away from Talinn, managed to run away to the forest and back into supply (for now). You go, guys! I mean, I'm honestly amazed they could even make it out, and if they're alive they can pretend to fight again later. But the Finns. The Finns... {smh}

The Finns raiding Leningrad are the least of my worries, but:



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...the Pskov / Ostrov line is still holding out decently, despite my armored corps (or detachment or whatever) being punched back a hex by the 6th Panzers. I could have moved them forward again, but I'm taking a slight gamble in seeing if I can draw evildoers up into more of a surround.

That would be better than that SS division down there deciding to hell with Ostrov, let's just go for Moscow before September. I cannot stress enough that there's NOTHING standing in their way, and that one division by itself would win the game.

And God help me, Barth has more than that one division by itself in position to run for Moscow.


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Since it is literally impossible for Soviet troops to walk anywhere, my northern counter-blitz will die where it sits. I don't foresee any help coming for it, ever. You all deserve to starve to death for refusing to ruck up.

The defense of Ostrov is still holding for now, but things look dire for the near future. And for Moscow in the slightly less near future.


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Still holding the bridge to Gomel, but the attacks have begun. I shuffled some of the 44ths infantries around to keep them fresh, but naturally sacrificed the entrenchments doing so, because entrenchments magically disappear in this and most other games.

The 49th Army is able to move out of Gomel now, or some of it, so I send what can move south, where I may be able to help the 44th, or perhaps push west into the swamps. Both of the 44th's armored divs are up at the swamp road now with various cavalries, but no one wanted to try helping elements of the 33rd and 34th Armies shove two Germy divisions out of the way.

I would have flown Zhukov out this turn, since I'm doubtful he can do anything to push the stuck counter-blitz onward -- they just don't have the fuel, and refuse to ruck up for the sake of WINNING THE WHOLE GAME! But thanks to Stalin's insane fit, I can't move Zhuk out. I can however spend my 15 Ppoints this turn (which I receive after Stalin's fit would have drained any remaining out) on experimenting whether encouraging the 16th's General is worth anything in these conditions. Should supply ever get back to him, he ought to be a beast at getting things moving now.


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The Kursk / Kharkov line is shaping up nicely (considering the total disasters leading to this being a line at all), although I'm now doubtful that northern army will be able to move westward in time to be of any help. Still, it might be possible to hang out over the Front border and catch the oncoming Germs in an enfilade. There's also still a question of whether I'll be able to get the 47th to Belograd, or what if anything I'll be able to do once I get there.

Going back to the total disasters, though...


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...a miscue sends the 45th's tanks into the mountains instead of around to help catch the single Romanian armored div, parked in a forest, in a three-way ambush. I still try anyway because what the hell. This little dare will soon no doubt fail. In hindsight, I should have gone ahead and moved the rest of the Army into the mountains, too.

Then to the last disaster:


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Still unable to break into the Romanian rear with a whole (albeit conscript) army, but I spread the defense team out a little more in and around Nik, so as to be less vulnerable to surrounds and overstacking.

I thought seriously about sending my reinforcement army for the South this turn to Perekop or Meli, but I honestly don't have confidence that the Nikol pocket will survive the turns necessary to bring them help from that direction; and given how bad things are elsewhere, I've decided to start building up some kind of defense in front of Rostov farther east.


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I didn't feel confident enough divisions would arrive to protect 40th HQ if I deployed them at Pawlograd either before an opportunistic panzer division arrives; but if I drop them into Stalino, and future ones in that area, too, maybe they can come forth to try something later.


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I have to say I'm doubtful three more conscript armies will arrive in time anywhere to accomplish anything worthwhile on the Southern Front. But I'll sure try.

TURN 15 -- August 13, 1941

Well, let's see what fresh horrors shall lurch from today's news...


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Oh thank the Theotokos, the 54th arrived in time to save Leningrad! Phew. Barth thinks his intelligence reports were wrong, but he had actually done the right thing. I just barely pulled that hash out of the fire.

Not that this will save Moscow. To quote Steve Martin (not that wild and crazy guy), "Nothing can save the city now." I can only hope Barth doesn't know that yet.

15 new Divisions deployed this turn, but almost 30 are still failing to deploy. Another 18 will be arriving for distribution next turn with two out of my last three Army headquarters until almost October.

Our positions at the beginning of my turn:


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Only mud can save us now. And August is only half through. The weathermen don't want to hazard a guess about weather next turn, though, which seems both hopeful and ominous.

I've been forgetting to put up the comparative inter-turn division list for the past couple of turns, so let me start rectifying that for next turn:


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Now, I don't really have any late conscript infantry divs, but I have 25 divisions with tank battalions, and a little more importantly (at least in theory) I have 9 late tank divisions arriving recently. Those things have early models of the T-34 and the KV-1.

That doesn't begin to begin to deal with Panzergruppes, but it's something.

And hey, I'm glad to see 18 new divisions arriving, since that helped create this new graph plot.


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That's the first time German numbers on their East Front have gone down in some kind of improving relation to us since half a game (8 turns ago).

But it's important to keep in mind, I kept my relative field numbers from last turn despite...


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...the continuation of absolutely horrific losses, which are only going to continue and possibly escalate for a while. In fact the Germans suffered fewer casualties last turn than since about 6 turns ago. They only dropped in overall numbers because they stopped getting reinforcements in the field last turn apparently. Whereas they slew 18 fresh divisions worth of Soviet troops last turn! The only reason my numbers stayed level was because 18 fresh divisions arrived.

As bad as things are, and friends they are bad -- possibly worse in some regards than historical Barbarossa -- the north front is seeing some glimmers of hope.


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As already noted, my desperate gamble of sending the Len HQ and most of its army south to try to rescue the Talinn defense, opened the Finns to try to take Leningrad itself when Talinn fell anyway. The 54th managed to deploy enough divisions in the city in time to convince the Finns and their pet Nazi division to pull back to the border.

With L'grad safe for now against any attack from the north (although I'm honestly surprised he isn't going to try an encircle siege -- something I will definitely put a block on next turn once my divs can move), I'm thinking of moving my long-suffering surviving 227th infantry down to its newly assigned HQ trying to help the escape from Talinn. That'll still take a while, but I'd rather keep my armies together if possible.

The wounded, staggering 168th infantry, the only other survivor of Army North, took a slight detour on the rail line to scout that, yep, some Finns remain up there. I truly don't understand why he hasn't swarmed me with Finns down that track from Petro -- even a few would be cataclysmic, but I am damn well going to put my final North Front army until autumn up there, just in case. Also just in case I see a chance to move back north and get revenge for my lost north Army.


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Baby's first real chance at knocking out a German division! He'll no doubt escape south next turn, and I can't exactly fault his assumption that he'd be safe there as arrogance -- because it no doubt helped launch a stunning attack on my 23rd Army trying to escape. But while I may still lose a few divisions, there's some hope of pulling back through the Narva corridor now.

I very, very seriously thought about whether to try to send the 42nd across the woods to Narva, or down the tracks south to Pskov, since I wasn't going to need them at Leningrad after all (or not directly, since action either way would help forestall the advance toward L'grad.) As you can see from the 42nd's lone cavalry division, I first thought about sending them over to Narva and trying to add to a push. But eventually I decided with dubious weather coming to march them slowly south to Pskov. The cav will be a turn or two behind, but they'll catch up eventually.


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The Pskov/Ostrov line is still holding for now, partly because he diverted some forces down to start finishing off the superstack that tried to snip his supply. But you can see why I want more troops down here, not only for defense but also to try pushing across the river at Pskov.

Meanwhile I've been trying a few spoiling attacks here and elsewhere to test his line and keep him honest. Maybe not the best idea, admittedly, but I have trouble with the idea of sitting around waiting for him to kill me.

Which unfortunately is all that the northern counter-blitz can now expect.


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The superstack won't last another turn (I sent one division to the partisans, who for all I can tell are doing nothing but what the heck why not); and the small advance stack won't last much longer than that. This'll be the last I show of them, probably. It was a long dice throw, and I'm going to be sorry I opened the front to try it. But it would have worked if not for the damned mud.


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This is the unmititgated nightmare I have to deal with now as a direct result of that gamble. I'm pulling back some forces from the defensive line at the river to try to prevent a total pocketing by threatening to snip off his pocketers... but I'm dubious. Very, very dubious.

The red circles show where I've tried a few attacks, less as spoilers to keep him honest and more as prodding for any possible way out of this mess that might screw him over.


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Which would have been devastating had those clowns on the swamp road done their damn job. And yes, mud didn't help them either, but they had real chances. And they blew it, because they couldn't be arsed to wake up in the morning and win. Much to my not-surprise, Barth finally gets tired of laughing at us on the swamp road and easily pushes in for the win, wiping over half the three armies out with what amounts to one spread out small army.

Speaking of people who can't be arsed to win, my rescue attempt finally stumbled across the river at another point, and pushed two German divisions back one hex. Woot. Better than nothing. But not better than catching them in a three way and saving the swamp road armies two turns ago. At least the 44th is still doing its job, aside from its tanks failing to help rescue the swamp team.

You know what would be hilarious? My armies can operate outside their front, and could theoretically march safe from harassment westward south of the swamp road. But I doubt that's going to happen.

Speaking of doing their jobs...


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...the 37th Army splendidly got off their asses and probed back west safely over the Central/South Front border, looking for a way to either help relieve the Central Front or to push south across the river to snip 1st PGruppe's HQ. It looks like Barth's going to secure the river there, but that's four or more divisions he isn't using on the push to Kharkov/Kursk line. Which I managed to escape back to, to handily form up for a defense. Now we pray (and fortify, and garrison...)


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Moving south of that line, things are still looking bad on the road to Rostov -- which I'm nearly certain is Barth's chief objective for the game (plus whatever else he needs to secure Rostov, like Stalingrad). But not as bad as they could be. The rail line out of Stalino will have two armies ready to rumble soon.

To be honest, if I hadn't spent all my points on assigning Central Front as the key supply front, and on reorganizing the Red Army (which could stand more work, but it's a start), I would have diverted both of my coming final two armies to the Moscow region. As it is, South Front will get one more conscript army, and then Central will get a diverted one two turns from now as I re-direct. So until near winter, this is almost all I've got to work with in the South.


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And whatever complaints I may have about incompetency on the Central swamp road, I have only myself to blame for opening up the central line to try that northern counter-thrust. Just like I have only myself to blame for trying to be cute in deploying 45th Army near Kirovograd, when I should have put it back behind Dneprpetrovsk (or even farther). Now they're stuck in the mountains near the Dneiper, and will probably be fully caught soon. They may slow down some troop elements, but I expect they're lost.


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Last but not least, I have only myself to blame for the nonsense going on north of Odessa. I should have at least gotten the 46th there to pull back over the river from Nikol to Perekop. That should have been a fighting retreat. But no, I had to advance forward onto that little spit of land to slap in futility at the Romanians. And now that's all I can do, although two or maybe three infantry divisions may be able to make it out alive. Without a HQ.

As much of a continuing disaster as that is, I want to stress....


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...no, no, it's certainly bad that the unadjusted German score has now passed mine. But that's just the beginning. And almost incidental.


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Gape. Gape in the face of true disaster.

And standing in the way of that:


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Two turns from now.

In two turns, he could easily be in Moscow.

Learn from my mistakes, y'all.

Learn them.

TURN 16 -- AUGUST 17,1941


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Oh yay, he has discovered there's nothing between him and Moscow!


(https://i.imgflip.com/vo2sz.jpg)

Now the deepness of my strategy shall become apparent.

Let us consider the worst case scenario: he takes Moscow -- something he probably can't do for at least a turn anyway, because I had enough points to drop a major garrison there this turn and also enough points left over (thank God) to redirect my final arriving early conscript army to whatever theater I want next turn. Which I won't be putting near Moscow, by the way, but somewhere a little safer.

But assuming he takes Moscow, which I fully expect a turn or so from now:

so
the
hell
what
?

He won't catch STAVKA which has already flown out (nor the Central Front HQ which has already landed back up the road). He'll get a few extra VPs, and make Stalin paranoid enough that there's a good chance he'll have an episode next turn, which would be bad news for four of my generals and which would paralyze my strategic cards for a turn which would be annoying (again).

The only way he benefits farther from that is if he demanded at the start of the game to choose his theater focus -- which based on some other things I doubt -- and if he chose Central Front as his focus -- which based on some other things I doubt.

If both those conditions are true, then I think he'd win the game outright by taking Moscow.

If he pressured Hitler into sticking with a front, and that front was Central, then he'll benefit only at the end of the game. If he catered to Hitler at the start of the game, he only benefits if Hitler happens to be preferring to hold Moscow at the end of the game. I'll suffer because I did choose to hold Moscow, but he won't directly benefit except in those situations; and in any case, he still has to be holding Moscow at the end of the game. If I retake Moscow at any time, and hold it at the end of the game, I don't suffer and he doesn't benefit. And this is only Turn 16 of 54. That isn't quite 1/3 of the game yet.

Meanwhile, I get to have a strong central army group sitting in his new backfield -- something I was willing to risk less strong army groups twice over already to accomplish -- while he's forced to wildly extend his PG logistic Headquarters around us in order to keep his hyper-extended troops in something that pretends to be supply.

In other words, I have a better chance at snapping the supply line of a significant number of his troops, than at any previous time in the game.

In yet other words: I can make Moscow into a trap for him.

We'll see how or whether that plays out soon. First, the strats and stats.

For what I think is the first time this game, more of my armies fully activated than partially or didn't activate (without me having to use our superpower). And while 19 of my divisions failed to deploy again, 17 did, and 18 are still on the way into the theater. So I've still got 37 whole divisions theoretically on the way, even though I'll only get one more HQ.

Now, in practice, some of those divs belong to HQs which aren't in any position to receive divisions. I don't know what the game does if HQs die without receiving all their divisions, although I'm hoping the divs get reassigned to other HQs. But I realize it's possible not all those divs will arrive. And they're the consistency of frogurt, of course, being early conscript divisions. But still, they're strategic manpower.


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Which, granted, I'm going to need every erg of, because, damn.

 
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Yeah, so I lost two "late" (and two "early") armored divisions. They aren't really worth much compared to German armored divisions anyway, and on the net I picked up a bunch of fresh divs of all kinds.


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And sure my active troop numbers ticked downward again, which isn't surprising considering...


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...that I'm having to invent new graph numbers to describe our losses.

But those losses, although real, and tragic, and something I'd much prefer to not have happened, mostly this turn represent that superstack of divisions caught trying to cross from Central to Northern front to snap his main Northern supply line. They were going to die; that was already expected; and now they have. (Three more shattered divs remain in the area, but they'll surely go next turn.) Also some more of my swamp road counter-thrust died, also expected -- although a surprising number have survived to this turn. Whether they'll still be around next turn, who knows?

There were also actual combat casualties this turn (and during my turn last round which are just now being tallied in). But keeping in mind where the great majority of those numbers came from, the casualties aren't horribly horrible.

And Barth's field-numbers continue to drop for the second turn in a row.

And those numbers might be picking up soon. As we shall see farther down the doomscroll.

But first, the Lenin/Petrovzov line.


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I continue to hope I didn't make a long-term strategic disaster by ordering my final North army for the next 24ish turns, to deploy up on the road to Petrozov. But next turn they'll be in position to go probe up the rail line. And my 54th Army has started to spread out around Leningrad to prevent encirclements by the Finns (and their pet Wehrmacht Div whom I can't see right now -- wonder if he's heading north again...) More spreading to come there; but I'll be sending those two (actually three) red divisions, remaining from the Leningrad Army, southwest along the road soon to help with the retreat or counterthrusting there.


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And I'm now doubtful I can succeed in a piecemeal counterthrust, because I wasn't able to save any of the divisions of the 23rd Army -- a major actual combat loss this turn. In fact, I'm starting to seriously worry whether I can save most of the Leningrad Army which ran south to try to extricate the 23rd from the Talinn area! The 57th Army punched back a couple of small German stacks to keep the route open, so there's a little hope, but I'm almost certainly going to pull everyone back to Narva and a line behind the river, starting next turn. I just don't think my 13 divisions can nick his 9 (visible) divisions, even when they're spread out like this. And I'm dubious that he only has 9 up here.

I'd feel better about trying this later, if I could get behind them with the 54th, now south of Luga and trudging as fast as they can for Pskov; but I'll be hugely fortunate if the 54th can even save part of the developed pocket down there. Because...



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...Barth has finally swung around the 48th and 24th Armies.

His 1st Panzer Div has suffered a little for that, as we managed to gang up in a fighting retreat to whomp them from three sides. Whether I did the right thing spending my precious fuel and ammo on that, I don't know -- I was hoping to knock him back a step, which would put me a little closer to being saved by the 54th coming down the rails, but neither that nor the smaller attack on his 291st Infantry succeeded in moving them.

I did notice (and pointed it out in my screenie) that Barth looks like he's trying to send a North Front unit around the mountains, although I suppose that could be a lagging Central front division.

Although Lord knows he doesn't seem to be lagging anything through that gap:


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And that might, just might, be his downfall.

This is where the decisive battle (the "kessen" in Japanese military nomenclature) may be already being fought.

My main regret this turn (aside from forgetting to spend the final parts of it trying to put remaining armies on the defense until I fail the admin roll, argh!), is that I attempted two more spoiling attacks across the river at Mogiliv. I should have waited for that at best, and I hope I don't come to regret that more.

But friends.

Oh.

My.

God.

The minor news is that I've denuded my river defense some more (south of the Orsha core) to push back against his giant pocketing attempt, and that push backward has been great. Which is why I'm sorry in hindsight I attempted attacks across the river with my defenders. They should have stayed put and stayed sitting strong instead of weakening themselves any.

The major news. I can hardly overstate my hope here. But wow. Wow.

In order to try to stretch around the pocket, he had to over reach his troops so far past their logistic HQs, that he also had to move those HQs up to support the 2nd and 3rd Panzergruppes.

And I pushed north.

And I SNAPPED THEM!!!111!!

I didn't over run the 2nd Logistic HQ, and I didn't overrun his 3rd PG HQ, but I snapped his truck line in two places, and I've pushed a good solid thrust up to where he's got the logistic and PG HQs parked, almost completely undefended, in Vitebsk.

2nd PGruppe Logistic HQ? OUT OF SUPPLY!

2nd PGruppe Army HQ? OUT OF SUPPLY!

3rd PGruppe Army HQ? OUT OF SUPPLY!

Everything east of Vitebsk? OUT OF SUPPLY!

Whatever he's got rolling on Moscow?! OUT OF SUPPLY YOU SONS OF MOTHERLESS GOATS!!

You know what his Moscow roll means mainly? A few generals die (maybe to be replaced by better ones, who knows), and I don't get some strategic options next turn -- or whenever he punches through that major garrison, probably not next turn. But mostly it means he doesn't have a few divisions around to strengthen his pocketing attempt.

Look at it.

Look at it !

Let me try to give a technical understanding of just how endangered a significant chunk of his central thrust is now.

The colored stripe on the left of every chit, is essentially the HQ flag colors. It tells you which divisions are commanded by which HQs.

Now take a look at that screenshot, and find every dark blue flag and every light blue flag. Use his 2nd and 3rd PG HQ chits as references; I've marked them on the map, but they're the ones with the (standard) German flag on them.

Notice that about half the divisions on the west and south side of my line are flying those 'flags'? And all the ones on the east side of the pocket?

Those things are all out of supply.

Because one truck line (with 3s on them) goes up to the 3rd Logistic, which is then supposed to go to the 3rd HQ to be distributed back to 3rd Army Divisions. But that truck line from Logistic to 3rd HQ has been snapped.

And one truck line, with 2s on them), is supposed to go up to the 2nd Logistic, when is then supposed to go to the 2nd HQ to be distributed etc. And that line has also snapped. In fact, 2nd PGHQ is sitting east of me in Smolensk, no doubt supporting the push on Moscow, and they are screwed. That black SS division trying to wing its way around me on the southeast? Out of supply. That unknown div way out there pushing for the encircle? Out of supply? Some other units you can't see but which are working on messing with railroads out there already? Out of supply.

Now:

That doesn't mean things are peachy. My troops on the line up there have been battered, and I'm sure a stack in the forest will die next turn, and he could very well do more damage and even re-establish a truck line. Although he has to use political points to do that. But re-establishing a truckline to help the western side of his push, won't help the eastern side of his push; and he won't be getting 2nd PG HQ back to helping its units on the west side of my pocket anytime soon, and he'll have to do some quick dancing to get the 3rd PG HQ back to the west side of the push -- leaving most of its divisions trapped without it on the east side of the push!

Also, his divisions won't just run out of gas and food immediately. He may still manage to loop around enough to pocket me, and force a collapse of my river defense line to open (presumably) the southeastern joint of that loop.

But still. Wow.

This is so much of a muchness, I am honestly and seriously wondering if he did this to give me a sporting chance of not losing early! Much props if so.

If that wasn't his intention, I can only think he's feeling spooked about when and how bad the mud season will be. But if the mud strikes early, he's going to be ultra-screwed.

Speaking of being ultra-screwed by mud in an attempt to drive for an early surprising win:


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I kept that whole screenshot because it's all important.

Notice first that lone German division in the upper right. He's out of supply now, but he was aiming to snap that rail line into Gomel, which would be bad news for everyone on my line there. And he still might make it! If so, I'm going to have to collapse my river defense line to try to re-establish supply, or possibly even to open a southern corridor into the Ostra pocket. This would be several kinds of bad.

But that's the main bad news this turn; perhaps offset by that division being currently out of supply and not likely to be back in supply anytime soon.

The first great news is that despite being pushed entirely off the road now, my swamp counter-thrust still lives another turn -- and that includes the armored division at the far west of the thrust! Which Barth seems to have forgotten or is ignoring or just doesn't have the divisions handy nearby to deal with yet. None of them can move or even fight worth a poot, and they lost many divisions, and I honestly don't know if they'll survive even one more turn. But they still live to be rescued.

And the rescue is moving forward! Two hexes forward even! And along the way I shattered our first German division!

I won't know for sure until I see the aide report next turn, but that could very probably be the first division we've destroyed this game!!

Some of his other divisions on the south side of his central line are in trouble, too; and with Zhuk having arrived in the area to kick things into gear, they won't stop being in trouble very soon!
Now, even if I can push safely (without being snapped off again) another two hexes to bring up a supply trail for those trapped remaining armies, that doesn't mean I'll certainly be able to rescue them. Supply takes time to move. And that far-west armored division actually belongs to the 16th HQ, and so it's at the far edge of command and supply help already, if not outside it.

But there's a slightly improved chance now -- far from certain, at best -- that I might be able to accomplish the counterthrust mission to snap the main central supply line at Brest.

Which will of course seriously mess with Barth's central push, even if he can re-establish the supply trains and trucks a little farther northward somehow in the same theater.

Relatedly, the 44th is still holding onto the bridge, but if Barth can see the danger he'll surely start a new push northward there, and I don't know how long the 44th can hold against such a push.

But then also relatedly, the 37th conscript Army is still marching westward above their front-border. And while they clearly won't be able to surge south and mess with the supply of the southern thrust, they'll soon be in position to help defend the road to Gomel, or even to help solidify a lane back west on the swamp road!


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The rest of the 37th, back guarding Kursk, is still prepping along with the 47th and 38th Armies to defend Kharkov, which aside from Moscow is the next major city in danger. Barth is taking his time to get everyone refueled and his logistic HQs parked nearby for that battle, which promises to be... well, honestly if we lose here we lose the south. And I don't see how we can win.


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Unless these clowns, south of Kharkov and west of Rostov, working out of Stalino, can do something especially useful. My last southern front army until October, the 53rd, I've put conservatively into Stalino -- after very much internal debate -- and next turn the 51st will be ready to roll (at least partially) -- and this turn the bold 40th Army surged forward to the environs of Pawlograd.

Petrov on the Dnieper still remains strong, probably because Barth just hasn't bothered to attack the minor garrison yet, and by a miracle most of the 45th Army crossed the Dnieper out of the mountains -- but not their HQ for no clear reason, who could only crawl dispiritedly southeast toward besieged Petrov. I suspect the 45th HQ and its few remaining divisional guards will die next turn, or never cross the river; but by then I should have an army or two near most of the 45th, and can maybe pick them up. They're poised to do some interesting backfield damage to save Kharkov, if I can just manage to play them right. Or at all.

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It isn't very likely the 46th can be saved, much less the disintegrating South Army; but I was finally able to pull the 46th back across their damn-fool river expedition to try to mess with the Romanian line. So possibly, perhaps, I'll be able to push some of the 46th southeast next turn and work a fighting retreat through the swamp and river system toward Perekop. I very much doubt it, but it isn't impossible yet. Had I worked on using them to guard open a corridor, I maybe could have saved more of the two or three original army remnants holding the river there. But I didn't, so sigh.

As bad as things are in each theater, though, there are still some interesting and more-than-interesting opportunities to be had. I'm not beaten yet!


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Even though he's pulling steadily ahead on the unadjusted score.


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And will certainly continue pulling ahead for a while.

Thin times ahead. Thin times.

But let's see if I can make him thinner, too.


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Man you've got balls of steel, thats a hell of a risk.......budd approves O0 . we arent going to have to wait a freaking few weeks to see how this turns out are we...that aint right.

I honestly thought he had sent in the next turn already, but when I went to look about half an hour ago he hadn't. Probably won't see anything more until Easter weekend starts.

The snip of his 2nd and 3rd PGruppe HQs, didn't require anywhere near as much risk as either of the two slowest counter-blitzes I threw earlier.  :P Only one of which now has the faintest chance of partially surviving (much less accomplishing its goal, which was to snap the logistic trail for Barth's whole central theater!) On the contrary, I think he's the one who took a ton of risk trying to push for Moscow so soon, leaving his logistic trail parked within a couple of hexes of my strongest remaining mass of Sovs on the board.

Maybe I've misread him, though, and he actually chose pre-game options where taking Moscow at any time would be instawin. I know from reading comments not-on-his-AAR-thread that he's very worried about being behind his schedule. At this point in the game, losing Moscow would be annoying for me (and will have come from me taking one of those two much larger risks, that failed), but not probably fatal, unless he took those two choices (demanding to set his front goals, and choosing Moscow) -- both of which I have somewhat gambled he didn't, based on what I think are reasonable educated guesses from other evidence.

TURN 17 -- August 21, 1941


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I appreciate the compliment that I've punched him until he's drunk somehow. But it's time to embrace the horror.

There are spots of good news (y'know, relatively). As his message hints, Moscow hasn't fallen yet. My plans there seem futile, but, hey, not fallen yet. Consequently I got another turn of being able to use strategic cards; which I promptly played for a rousing speech (10 Polipoints, for a universal small activation bonus). I used another 6 points letting Zhukov inspire one of the swamp road rescue party HQs to greater initiative and activations, and then flew him to another rescue party HQ nearby. Other than that, we'll see what's left to use next turn.

16 divisions deployed this turn but 20 failed to, and I only have another 10 arriving soon. It's a long scary time after that.


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A long scary time of looking at this getting worse each turn.

 
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Does that look hopeful to you somehow?


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Hope is a lie.


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Sure, my losses slowed down quite a bit this turn. But look at that chart. I've reached the top. I'm about to break the chart with my losses. THERE IS NO CHART ABOVE THIS!

(Oh, don't worry, I'm sure my staff will add a new value next time and make logarithmic adjustments as appropriate...)

Well, let's start the doomscroll with a bright spot.



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A lack of a grey spot is like a bright spot, right? In this case, I mean I haven't found the Finns' pet Nazi division again, but I did find two more Finnish divisions (for a total of three, so far) sitting around near their northern border. The 55th reminds them that we are to be trifled with!

Hopefully they won't take that lesson too much to heart, because I had to thin out the Leningrad defense again. Why?


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Because there's an SS panzer or motor division running up the back road to Luga through Novgorod.

If I'm going to have any chance of getting that rescue army back from Pskov, much moreso keep it in supply while it's down there, I've got to protect the Luga line. Of course the SS might just strike off northeast and cut the main rail to Leningrad from wherever the heck we're getting our supply once Moscow is gone.

The Narva retreat isn't going so great, but it isn't an utter disaster yet. Yet.


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No, this is what an(other) utter disaster looks like. In accordance with the prophecy, my one turn of indecision earlier has cost me Pskov; and with Pskov, goes almost all hope of rescuing the Ostrov defenders. I pound at the single panzer division for all my worth, but my worth is worth nothing.


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Also worth nothing: my attempts at keeping his supply line snapped, or to do anything else worthwhile around Orsha. Unless I count retreating some heavily beat divisions in my northwest corner worthwhile.

In case you're curious, this is what Moscow looks like.


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My plan to drop my final Army somewhere I could run behind his line eventually, was foiled by him already having snapped too many rail lines; and I just didn't have confidence in my major garrison holding out -- even though only one division is here at the moment. But you know it's coming. Maybe I should have put it a little farther back on the line leading to Gorky, instead of gambling that some divisions will arrive to save the city -- but then they'll just be surrounded and cut off, so...

Speaking of being surrounded and cut off.


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Barth is pushing hard (as previously noted) to cut off not only the Orsha defenders but Gomel, too. Which naturally includes the swamp road rescue force. Which is making miracles, and has pushed another hex forward, but... sigh. I'm afraid the miracles will have run out. That final hex just looks like one hex too far.

The Gomel south defense is starting to pull back north under pressure from Barth; but I do have a bit of an advantage that Gomel is (a little insanely) outside his theater. So he'll have some trouble actually taking it.

But only if I can deal with that oncoming SS div and whatever is following behind it. My 37th Army keeps advancing westward to help -- it even picked up a division this turn, and its cav division is currently sitting south of Gomel (that far forward) -- but I'm thinking that maybe I should try seeing how far northward out of my theater I can go, to cut off that SS div. If I can.

Meanwhile, eastward, the area around Kharkov is so weird I had trouble figuring out how to get a snapshot!



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For no clear reason, I still can't get the 45th HQ over the Dnieper -- but I did get everything else, and they're running for the backfield in the fine summer weather! I have no idea that they'll be able to do a dang thing, especially if their HQ (very probably) dies nex turn, but if I'm not in position to take advantage of things then y'know.

By somewhat the same token, I've decided to largely collapse my defense of Kursk, or whatever town that is north of Kharkov, in order to shuffle units into a bit of an attempt at snipping those Romanians, and generally just giving a stronger, shorter line to the Germans. If they push me out of Kursk, so be it; that'll be above the theater line, so maybe I can exploit it.

My final armies arriving in Stalino are pushing up the rail to try to help in holding open a corridor for a flanking sweep on Barth's logistic tail there; but I badly need to devote some divisions to defending the river on the other side of Dniepetrov.

Last, and to be honest probably least right now:


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The Crimean retreat could be going a lot worse, and probably will soon! But I did get my tanks into Perekop; and I plopped my new minor division for the turn in Melitipol; and I've secured the bridge out of Barth's push for now. But he clearly has forces trying to zip down to Meli, to cut me off permanently before I reach the rail line south of Perekop, and I just don't know whether I can stop him. (I'm pretty sure I can't.)


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Barth-ler continues to inch past me to an actual victory score.

Long scary times ahead. Or maybe short scary times.

TURN 18 -- August 25, 1941

The unending horror of Barbarossa continues to... um... unend.


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No, no, that's a more hopeful picture of ending horror.


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Yeah, no, Barth-ler is being generous in that description. I'm the one with a giant central army cut off from any hope of ever getting supply again. And with no effective hope of ever cutting off his supply again.

A bunch of my armies either didn't activate or only partially did this turn, and man that hurt. At this point, I might as well use my superpower even though it's going to mess with my score and help his -- which I do. Next turn, every army that can will fully activate. If we don't bust this problem next turn, I can wave Russia good-bye west of the Urals.

15 divisions arrived this turn, and 14 more failed to deploy. But those 14 are all I'll get for the next 11 turns, whenever they finally arrive -- and I'm sure some of them never will.

Doomstats?


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About the only good thing on the map there at the start of my turn, is that my final conscript army arrived in time to save Moscow. For now. Frankly, as I mentioned with some detail previously, I would have gladly sacrificed Moscow to shatter his two central PGruppe supply lines and keep them shattered. But alas.

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Remember last turn when I said hope is a lie? I was telling the truth. Sure, I picked up 8 conscript divisions with tank battalions...


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But that didn't stop my overall numbers from continuing to drop, for reasons which will sadly become apparent soon.

Admittedly, that might have been Barth's single worst turn of net losses on the field all game. Which might explain the grim tone of his charitable interpretation of the slaughter in his opening communique. But...


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...if anything, his losses slowed down a little this past turn. He just didn't have anything (or as much) replacing them. My losses keep gushing like a gushy thing.

And friends, there's more of those losses to come. A lot more. I fear the end of the game may be effectively approaching, and might be settled for all practical purposes next turn.

As a sign of the time: so far I have spent a close average of an hour and twenty minutes playing each turn, sometimes a little more, never substantially less to my recollection (apart from turn 1 where the Soviets can't move at all). This time, 57 minutes.

Let us scroll the doom.


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Too many Finns still guarding the ultra-northern approach. My 55th Army is already taking troubling losses from attrition or whatever, so: never mind, I'll leave y'all alone.

Had I put the 55th down closer to Pskov, I might have been able to avoid the disaster down there. But, well, that was a choice and I made it and here we are.

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I don't think I even made a snapshot down at Ostrov, because those two or three stacks have been annihilated except for three un-rescuable divisions.

The 52nd Conscript and the survivors of the Leningrad Army, are getting the hell out of whatever x-tonia country that is, retreating past the river at Narva and I'll try to hold a line there as long as I can (along with my free fortifications this turn). But I've turned 42nd Army straight around and back toward Luga, to set up some kind of defense there. (Along with my free minor garrison this turn.) Had I moved them faster south, and just started them closer south, and had I given them some support from the 55th... but I didn't.

What I can try now, is to send the newly arriving 54th Army southeast along the main rail spur from Leningrad to the Moscowish heartland, to see if I can loop them around eventually behind Barth's northern push. That might take 10 or more turns, but I'm not getting another HQ even on the board, much less any more divisions, for another 10. So I might as well try. At worst, I may be able to keep Barth from... well, I don't think I can keep him from cutting the rail supply there, per se, but if when he does, I might be able to reforge it by surprise.


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I can't imagine how I'm going to reforge this. Originally there were two pockets here, but don't be fooled into hoping my little infantry division down there is helping resupply my final remaining roadblack to Nazi domination. It really isn't, no more than my failed attempts at snapping his own supply line again, or to snap the supply of that thrust between my northern and southern Central lobes.


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My swamp road armies still have a few decent divisions remaining (including that armored division near Brest), but even if I got to them I wouldn't have any way to supply them now. I can try marching the 37th Army north to open the gap (I've flown Zhukov in their direction to help them march faster); and I've thinned the swamp-road line as much as I dare, to pull some fast movers back (cav and tanks) to see if I can accomplish anything next turn.

But if I don't get a solid turnaround here next turn, those two giant pockets will disintegrate practically all my remaining central theater armies. And then all Barth has to do to score an instant early win, is find my remaining few central armies and crush them, too.

This is why I activated my activation super-power again. And dangit, I might even do it again next turn. That's how desperate I am.


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Barth started his probing assaults on the Kharkov line, and I counter punched him a little, but it's really only a matter of time here. I did spend most of my Polipoints on putting a major garrison in Kharkov, for all the fat lot of good it will do me. And I'm continuing to move up my last southern armies until winter, from Stalino, for all the ditto.


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My 53rd Army, the final to be deployed in the South until winter, has... well, actually fully deployed already! So I'm sending it southwest toward Zapor to see if I can maneuver into doing anything worthwhile down there. Some tanks escaping from the Romanian roadblock debacle even managed to (no doubt temporarily) cut a German division off from supply, ha!


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But that doesn't really mean anything less than a total disaster will be happening down in the upper Crimea or lower Ukraine or whatever that is.

The best news this turn, I suppose, aside from saving Moscow (temporarily), is that I managed to get most of my remaining armies switched over to defensive mode -- or to start the process anyway, which will take two turns.


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And I suppose Barth isn't technically winning on adjusted points yet, and still has a long way to go for that.

But if I don't pull a miracle next turn, he won't have to go far to go that long way.

TURN 19 -- August 29, 1941

August ends and the Huns haven't reached the Urals or even Persia yet.

... ........ woooo!


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Umwhat? ??? The Finns already crossed the border, game. They were at the gates of Leningrad already, and by sheer luck I managed to deploy enough of a conscript army there in time to keep them from overrunning the city. I RECALL THIS VIVIDLY, GAME, WHY DON'T YOOOOOOuuuu know what, never mind. If the game wants to sock Barth with Polipoint penalties for something that already happened weeks ago, fine. As we'll see soon, the Finns haven't actually moved over their border yet. Again.

I suspect, although I'm too lazy to check the rulebook next to my chair, that what actually happened was that Barth activated one of his own superpowers last turn (Germans have several such powers), and this is the result. Fair enough if so; he can afford to do so, and would be insane not to.

If he did, then I'm a bit disappointed that the game isn't a little clearer about what happened. There wasn't even a klaxon alert!


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Yes, I set that little joke up on purpose. I need all the grey humor I can get.

Let us consider the doom strats morbidly.

Only 4 divisions deployed this turn; and only 8 remain undeployed. I'll be shocked if they deploy -- but then again, maybe they will. I saw something peculiar in Moscow, which I'll get to soon!

Everyone technically activated, because I used our only superpower to trigger that last month. But that isn't going to help most of the central front: activation means nothing if you refuse to walk when activated, although in this case I'm going to assume in their favor the problem is a lack of offensive ammunition.


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The superpocket continues its sucking strangulation at the start of my turn. It won't be getting any better.

   (https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F1024x768q90%2F921%2FLaSBpP.png&hash=848c6d36365a66d803ca00ade0e8916b36492fe9)(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F1024x768q90%2F921%2FbNvmN4.png&hash=0787820f181c2bd35c4dfc9257b1d5006365a062)

That may look like a wash, but...


(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F1024x768q90%2F923%2FbR8v7A.png&hash=9368470c71a5360248d8ed21c794ef99af6240b9)

...it was very much not. The few replacement divisions couldn't replace the ones I lost. Technically our manpower on the field is drifting down in parallel, but he's going to be crushing unspeaking numbers soon.


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Yes, numbers even more unspeakable than that.

For what I expect will be the final few turns of the game, I'll be starting the doomscroll around Moscow before doing my usual north-to-south run.


(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F1024x768q90%2F922%2Fu0Uhic.png&hash=f5874bcc3e8b5492e605dd8b0067fcc5ee2e06ab)

This is what Barth meant when he said Russia is vast. But notice the 3rd PGruppe HQ down there to the far left. That's how close his main anaconda is to Moscow -- at this point he's sending only a few divisions forward, to see if he can cut off Moscow and start its siege early. But he may be running at the end of his tether, unless he brings that tether forward. Roughly speaking then, my plan is to surge out some corps of divisions (I would have sent my HQ, too, but I'm hoping I can pull a few more deploying divisions in first) and see if I can mess with anything. Remember, it doesn't really matter to me if Moscow falls, because if my central Army Groups die then Moscow is going to fall anyway.

Also, notice the shiny red regular infantry division there amongst my advancing conscripts? Yeah, that was a division intended to deploy to a HQ that has been overrun or something. So it deployed to my conscript HQ instead! This is why I'm leaving the HQ behind for a turn or two, to see if being at Moscow and the head of a major rail network will score me a few more divisions out of the undeployed pool.

With the prelude done -- and now that I think on it, maybe I'll just keep it with the Central report hereafter -- on to the usual doomscroll.


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I didn't bother showing the Finns I could see still on the border (with their pet Nazidiv), because I ran away from them quite quickly: the 55th Army has nearly caught up with that half-shattered infantry division that has been loitering around up there since the start of the game!

As the 55th turns the corner at Tichwin, I continue an orderly retreat of the 52nd and the poor remnants of the Len Army over the bridge at Narva; and the 42nd starts beating in futility at the Nazi assault that has crushed all hopes and dreams before it. The 54th continues its bold plan (which only happens to look like running the hell away) back up the rail-line, and hopefully down around the invaders eventually.


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No point even typing comments on the map, as I scroll down to the north part of the superpocket. The main difference between this turn and last turn, is that last turn I still had some ammo and gas left. I don't see how any of these poor doomed heroes will survive until October. Or even mid-September. Mud or no mud.


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Again, not much point marking this. Everyone's out of ammo and gas, and I can't even send help to break open the line. The swamp road army still has a surprising number of decently operative divisions left, but they can't do anything. And that armored division that failed to reach Brest has finally, I dunno, disintegrated or something. I can't tell that they were attacked.

Distances are indeed vast in Russia, as Barth said. And that is why I will lose.


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The wings around Kharkov may look sturdy, but notice that red circle down there? I attacked that single Hungarian infantry division with 326 points of divisional power, in a 20% flanking attack. And all I did was make the Hungarians scowl. And that is also why I will lose.


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Those red Xs at the top of this photo of the southern portion of the Kharkov line, will show better what I mean: I hit those Hungarians from THREE SIDES! -- WITH ENOUGH DIVISIONS TO BE A CORPS IF NOT A SMALL ARMY!

Granted, I don't know what I would have done with them anyway -- they were just at a 3 hex juncture by themselves so I spat at them.

The slightly interesting hope is at the bottom, where my 53rd Army (the last one I'll receive before Barth crushes me utterly, or 10 turns pass whichever comes first) has managed to send a couple of cavalry units over the river. Will I be able to send some more units next time? Maybe the whole army eventually? Who knows? But I dang well activated my "activation" superpower again, just to try. Frankly, I might as well keep doing it every turn at this point, even though it makes my points 5% less valued, and Barth's 5% more valued, each turn.

Last and currently least:


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My sad remnants of the second Romanian Roadblock, have strung out in a run north of the Crimean peninsula. Although I ran those three divisions past Perekumpf toward Melitipol, I'm seriously thinking of turning them around next turn and heading south to Kurman, maybe dropping some free garrisons each turn in those towns to slow down pursuit. I could be on the other side of the Crimea 11 turns from now when my last Southern Army of the game (so far as I can tell) arrives; maybe that'll be worth something. Or maybe I can bottle up at Kurman and keep a few of Barth's units pinned at Perekwhatever, to prevent me from breaking back out again, which might be a better use of their remaining strength.


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Just to remind you what my reinforcement schedule looks like.


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And just to remind you another milestone of the game is coming. Bart-ler may not instantly win when his adjusted score passes mine, but the game will regard him as winning at that point.

TURN 20 -- September 2, 1941

As I mentioned in my last entry, I'm thinking of concentrating on improving my position in Europe this Turn, at least up until Bart plays the Scoring Europe card and --

--

-----

-- crap, this is the Barbarossa game, isn't it?

Well, I guess I'd better re-read my previous entries to figure out where IAAAAIIIEEEEIIIEEEIIIIEEEEE ah, that's where.

In increasingly deep squat.


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It's adorable how Bart-ler has this weird superstition that the mud will somehow rise up and save me. Wait, our side still has rabbis, right? Can we get some golems going here?!?

This time I remembered to check our division-destruction tally screen. According to that report, we have killed exactly 2 German divisions so far. And also exactly no German divisions, on any front. I believe this report with all my heart.


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What can men do against such reckless disciplined and experienced and supplied and well-led hatred?

(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F1024x768q90%2F922%2FSoBUry.png&hash=2a4028da1e1749716bec0068ed2782baaed92b54)

(https://media.giphy.com/media/3rgXBS9XduS8G2UxP2/giphy.gif)


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And yet, this is a game that cruelly gives me tiny slivers of hope. Today's sliver of cruel hope:


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It sure isn't either of the remaining roadblocks, being punched steadily backward -- although I've got Zhukov flying for the bridge at Narva to blow it next turn, I hope.

And it sure isn't the 55th conscript army nearing Leningrad to be caught there with everyone else -- I'm seriously thinking of running them round the corner, or back up the rails, into central Russia if I can!

No, it's the 54th Army, having been visited successfully by Zhukov and galvanized permanently into better action (theoretically), starting to approach their river crossing three or four turns from now.

You may notice this plan assumes I'll even be able to cross the river; a deed that has rarely ever been accomplished when I need it. Frankly I'm thinking of abandoning this plan and running for central Russia with them, too.


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That rail line leads back to Moscow, and I could really use the help.

Meanwhile, alone up near Moscow, I send the 56th out with its HQ (sort of) to see if I can roll around and snip off that division to our northwest. There's simply no way for us to save those armies trapped in the two (or three) superpockets now...

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Even supposing I got the army down far enough to smack that supply HQ, so what? One army by itself (and itself vulnerable to being supply thwapped) couldn't break a hole for those divisions to march out; and Bart would just spend a turn or two reconstituting his supply and rolling me over for no gain.


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Same here except moreso.

Although, you can see I am trying to evacuate remaining portions of the 37th Army from Kursk, over the theater border, back up toward Moscow again. I've temporarily opened a bit of supply to most of the 37th, too, although I'm doubtful much use will be made of it. But a division or two of Barth's hordes might get trapped in a pocket as an accidental side effect.


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The line around Kharkov is still holding, but they're in poor supply because Bart has snapped the rail lines in and out of the area. In hindsight, maybe I should have ceded the rail lines to begin with and tried to set up behind the river...? But I needed the rail lines to bring enough divisions in (with their HQs) to hold for any time here at all!

A better hindsight plan would have been to gather up near Kursk and fade across the theater border, to try to threaten things later north or south of it. Far too late now.


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My hopes of crossing the river down here and turning the corner onto his forward supply base, were dashed by the Romanians. I don't know how great they were in the real Barbarossa, but they have dang well earned their pay and medals in this game.

I'm strongly considering rolling this army south next turn, as far as I can, trying to reach...


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...the Crimean escape hatch. I've already sent four divisions south to make a try of it; and I saved seven divisions (and 2 HQs) already, sort of (for various values of 'saved').

In this Godforsaken mess, I need any little projects I can temporarily find to amuse myself.


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Yeah, yeah, the Americans are coming eventually to save their Uncle Joe, someday. You'll see.

(In this game, the Americans can't and don't come to save Uncle Joe...)

SURRENDER -- September 6, 1941

On this date I have decided to haul ass for Asia across the Urals. We will build giant cannons with lots of antiaircraft and nukeahem I mean shell the Huns back to the Stone Age behind our mountains of stone.


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I haven't gotten this analysis yet, but let's just let the doomscroll speak my case for me, shall we?

FINALLLLLL DOOOOOOMSSTRAAATTTT!!
By the way, the game rolled a reveal of strategy and aims this turn (or round or whatever the game wants to call it from screen to screen ;) ), which on speaking with Bart about the irony I discovered that it also revealed my goals to him. It seems necessarily improbable that we would both fail (or succeed, depending on how you look at it) two low-chance rolls the same Turn like this, so my guess is that the roll is for both sides to be exposed simultaneously. Anyway, as I inferred he was going for Rostov in the Southern Theater -- but because he had agreed to support Hitler, Bart learned just this Turn that his goal had been changed to Leningrad!


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Not that it was going to make much difference.

Notice something missing in that shot? We'll get to that soon enough.


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There's a hint.


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Weirdly, the total casualty slope thinned out a bit! But the difference is that nothing could deploy to take the place of the losses. That's why the prior snapshot showed a massive irrecoverable drop of total troops in the field.


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Nor were any troops going to arrive any time soon in anything like sufficient numbers to keep Bart from autowinning the game.

Now, since he chose to lick Hitler's spit-curl, he couldn't autowin the game by holding a target for a month; he'd have to hold it until the end of January 1942, when the game ended. But let me tell you, an autowin was still on the way and well within his reach, mud or no mud -- and notably, no mud yet!

I won't run the doomscroll in the usual order, north to south, but in a topical order this time.

We'll start with the key fact in the Southern Theater:


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I miscalculated an ability to throw a decent sized (but conscript) army behind his thrust to snap his supply chain. Had I sent troops to keep the rail line across the Dneper open at Dneperpaulsk (or whatever that is), maybe that would have worked, but then again my regular troops had shown a marked inability to stop Romanians, so what would these conscripts have done? No need to answer.

I did manage to create an escape route south through the Crimean penninsula:


(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F1024x768q90%2F921%2FBlyw9z.png&hash=34dba19142d3cb208addb2e831f4969f5b1c9c0a)

But I'm very dubious how many of those divisions would have been able to successfully escape through it.

A little farther north:


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The Kharkov line, though still strong at the moment, is still completely doomed, because I just couldn't find a way to keep their rail supply open; and based on past experience I have no confidence in their ability to retreat back over the river system to the east.

I forgot to get a snaphot of the few divisions trying to leave Kursk (if I recall correctly) back toward Moscow, but while they weren't blocked yet, neither were they going to be going anywhere quickly. I might have been able to save one or two of them for directed partisan purposes, but their HQ had been cut off (with most of their fellow divisions) in the rush east to try to aid the main fight on the Central Front, and would soon be dying out of fuel. So when would those divisions be redirected to an HQ, and where would that be, and could they even reach it eventually? -- no, not with the whole Central Army pushing toward Moscow. More on that soon.

Although I didn't know it yet, since Hitler hadn't changed his mind until Bart's surrender-accepting turn, Bart would have had to take and hold Leningrad instead of Rostov starting on Sept 10 forward -- until Hitler maybe changed his mind again! (There are four times this might happen in the game, the last being in November.) So how was Leningrad area looking?


(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F1024x768q90%2F922%2Fdtu95Y.png&hash=94afd0a001ddd0ef2aaed8e682c38283a80c1a80)

Deceptively strong. But as soon as Bart pushes up a little farther northeast, which I can't feasibly stop, he snaps the main line, and that group withers with a little tiny rail line leading into Tichwin (and thence to Leningrad on a double line) being the only artery. And that portion probably snapped within by mid-October at the extreme latest, weather regardless.

In theory, 54th Army up there, at map-right, on the rail line to Moscow, might have been able to push its cavalry division across the river, but then what? Past experience suggests it wouldn't have been able to cross the river, too, with its divisions, or in a highly piecemeal random fashion, and the cav wouldn't have been able to keep going west far outside the HQ support (especially with the river in the way), so could the 40th cavalry by itself have snapped the supply line for the besieging Hunnies? Doubtful. Very doubtful.

Especially since the 54th itself would soon be out of supply thanks to Bart pushing for a surround on Moscow. And really, whether Hitler sent Barth consistently one place or another wasn't going to matter anyway.


(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F1024x768q90%2F923%2Fy7ABlw.png&hash=76d32437bd97b1856ea72612164489757b808fe0)

Bart doesn't have to take and hold anything, including Moscow. He can auto win by wiping out all my divisions in a theater, and in that screenshot you are looking at the sum total surviving divisions in the Central Theater. Some of which could be diverted from North Front (instead of trying to snap North's Panzer supply line), but whether they happen to live is immaterial. Once all Central divisions are gone, that's the end of the game.

Technically I still in fact had some remaining divisions on the swamp road and east of that, but they were going to helplessly die soon, with no possible rescue. All those armies and divisions north on the wall for the past month?

Gone. One hundred per cent gone.

Here's that strategic map again.


(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F1024x768q90%2F923%2Fkk2IGy.png&hash=fb422189157388641b53344e0ecbc281d6b3bb32)
Without major reinforcements soon, that's a game over situation in the Central Theater.

And there are no major reinforcements, or any reinforcements at all, soon.

That's an autowin in Central Theater on the way in maybe five turns, ten turns tops, purely depending on how much mud Bart has to churn through to push around my troops and cut them off again a few more times; or just straight up wipe them out with multiple attacks from different angles.

Thus... game over.

...

......

BUT I'M CURRENTLY A FEW POINTS AHEAD, ABOUT HALFWAY INTO OUR GAME OF TWILIGHT STRUGGLE!! (http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=16763.0) :D :D :D

Can the Soviets pull out a win in the future, against a foe not as ruthlessly dedicated to war as the Nazis?

(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F1024x768q90%2F922%2FDEsWyo.png&hash=eae98c925cda19a87b54c346b9adcccc2fa0f8e7)

Maybe. Maybe...



Okay, at the moment it looks like we're going to call the game in Bart's favor. It has been over 30 days since his move, so technically I could claim the win from the load screen (and might still do that anyway to move things along), but I honestly don't know what I could do to even survive until October. ...one moment, a Steam message -- Bart will be sending a brief turn so that I can load in and send the surrender.

After this, I'll start a new thread for the aftermath commentary so we can both talk about things together (along with any audience). I'll post up links as they get established.

Annnnd the new aftermath discussion thread has been set up here: http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=17083.msg449121#msg449121.

I'll also append a new link in the first post.

Thanks to all readers, from Grogheads and elsewhere, for both our threads!

Note: I have added a final "Surrender" doomstrat and doomscroll report, similar to previous entries, in its proper place upthread.