REALLY OUT TO GET ME! -- DC:Barbarossa JasonPratt vs Bartheart (finished)

[JasonPratt]

ROUND 6 -- JULY 8, 1941




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.







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.




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.





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.




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.





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.





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.




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.




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:




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.




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

[JasonPratt]

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

[JasonPratt]

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.



Welcome to the party, Comrade.



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.




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.





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

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




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):



 

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!




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:




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:




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.)




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.




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.




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:




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!




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?

[JasonPratt]

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.)

[Crossroads]

Ouch, that sucks  :(

Posted your message in his thread.

[lancer]

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

[JasonPratt]

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. 

[JasonPratt]

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. ;)

[JasonPratt]

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:




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.

[JasonPratt]

ROUND 8 -- JULY 16, 1941




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.





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:



 

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).




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




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

Doomscroll, commence!




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...




...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...




...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.






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.






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.




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!




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:




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:




Still winning! Woo...

And the current reinforcement schedule.




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.

[JasonPratt]

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!

[JasonPratt]

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. 

[JasonPratt]

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.




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.




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



 

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...




...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.




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?!

[JasonPratt]

(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.




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.




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.




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.




(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.




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...




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...




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:




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

[W8taminute]

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.