How Large a Pocket Should Be?

Gary Grigsby’s War in the East: The German-Soviet War 1941-1945 is a turn-based World War II strategy game stretching across the entire Eastern Front. Gamers can engage in an epic campaign, including division-sized battles with realistic and historical terrain, weather, orders of battle, logistics and combat results.

The critically and fan-acclaimed Eastern Front mega-game Gary Grigsby’s War in the East just got bigger and better with Gary Grigsby’s War in the East: Don to the Danube! This expansion to the award-winning War in the East comes with a wide array of later war scenarios ranging from short but intense 6 turn bouts like the Battle for Kharkov (1942) to immense 37-turn engagements taking place across multiple nations like Drama on the Danube (Summer 1944 – Spring 1945).

Moderators: Joel Billings, elmo3, Sabre21

Post Reply
bin618
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu May 19, 2016 7:53 am

How Large a Pocket Should Be?

Post by bin618 »

[font="Verdana"]I know the axis should trap as many Soviet units in pockets as possible, especially in the first several turns.But how large a pocket should be? What's the best distance between the units that are conducting the trapping mission? Do you divide a division into smaller units when you are trapping the soviet units? I am a beginner. Can anyone help me? Thanks.[/font]
User avatar
morvael
Posts: 11763
Joined: Fri Sep 08, 2006 9:19 am
Location: Poland

RE: How Large a Pocket Should Be?

Post by morvael »

Early pockets are really big, sometimes 20-30 hexes in diameter. Later in the war it is very hard to make them those big, so even 10 hexes would be considered big. It all depends whether you need to screen the hexes of the belt or not. Early not much can hit you back, and the belts are wide, so you're safe to even split your divisions and put one every 3 hexes. Later you are hard pressed to make a narrow corridor so must guard every hex with full division or more. Then it boils down to the number of divisions you have, they determine the size of the encirclement.
jwolf
Posts: 2493
Joined: Tue Dec 03, 2013 4:02 pm

RE: How Large a Pocket Should Be?

Post by jwolf »

Best answer IMHO is to experiment with some of the "Road to City X" scenarios and see first hand what works well and what doesn't. Ultimately, the answer to "how large" is "as large as you can secure" and in actual games there have been some enormous pockets, larger than you would believe.

Splitting a division into regiments can help to close out a pocket and this can work well early in the war. But you have to be careful as the smaller units are more vulnerable to counterattack. It won't matter against the AI but against a human player you might get burned. Another problem with the regiments is that they have a bit higher movement costs so you lose mobility that way. As with all things, it takes practice.
bin618
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu May 19, 2016 7:53 am

RE: How Large a Pocket Should Be?

Post by bin618 »

ORIGINAL: morvael

Early pockets are really big, sometimes 20-30 hexes in diameter. Later in the war it is very hard to make them those big, so even 10 hexes would be considered big. It all depends whether you need to screen the hexes of the belt or not. Early not much can hit you back, and the belts are wide, so you're safe to even split your divisions and put one every 3 hexes. Later you are hard pressed to make a narrow corridor so must guard every hex with full division or more. Then it boils down to the number of divisions you have, they determine the size of the encirclement.
Thanks morvael.
bin618
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu May 19, 2016 7:53 am

RE: How Large a Pocket Should Be?

Post by bin618 »

ORIGINAL: jwolf

Best answer IMHO is to experiment with some of the "Road to City X" scenarios and see first hand what works well and what doesn't. Ultimately, the answer to "how large" is "as large as you can secure" and in actual games there have been some enormous pockets, larger than you would believe.

Splitting a division into regiments can help to close out a pocket and this can work well early in the war. But you have to be careful as the smaller units are more vulnerable to counterattack. It won't matter against the AI but against a human player you might get burned. Another problem with the regiments is that they have a bit higher movement costs so you lose mobility that way. As with all things, it takes practice.
Thank you jwolf.
Post Reply

Return to “Gary Grigsby's War in the East Series”