8MP Team Game - The Axis team

[Telemecus]

I have played Soviets little so perhaps this should not be surprising - but digging in 1941 during the Soviet blizzard offensive for the Axis in summer 1942? Is this not too early?

[thedude357]

Turn 28 Army Group South

Lots of Soviet attacks during the blizzard as expected. The Soviets were able to blast a decent sized hole northwest of Voroshilovgrad but are not able to exploit it due to lack of armor and cavalry in the area. 6th Army and 3rd Panzer Army are able to conduct deliberate attacks to rout a Soviet division east of Orel and cause another to retreat. Another surprise hold by the Romanians who are performing decent so far this blizzard except in the far south west of Rostov. Instead of retreating to the fort, the Romanian unit routed and the Soviets were able to conduct a hasty attack and cause a fort to surrender and break the level 2 fortification. I will have to scurry some German infantry there to cover up that hole.

Way down south in the Crimea, the German and Romanian infantry continue to make the Soviets run straight back into their holes. 11th Army is able to catch and light up Soviet infantry parked north of Sevastopol.

[timmyab]

Turn 28 Army group North

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire....dumdy dumdy dum.....ahhh a fine brandy in a cosy bunker with my best secretary Eva helping me to....erm....sort some important files, total bliss.
And best of all at long last the war is finally over. Although thinking about it there does seem to be quite a bit of fighting going on out there still. Maybe they meant next Christmas [&:]
Oh well who cares, the bunker is warm and the night is young......(and Frau timmyab is far away)

South of Kalinin a breakdown in communications led to the reserve OKH divisions being sent to the wrong place and before the mistake could be rectified three Soviet cavalry corps had broken through our front at Konokova. However our strength here is such that this offensive is unlikely to make much further progress.
Just South of Lake Ilmen Rokossovsky's cavalry is thwarted when they run into an x corps rearguard position expertly commanded by the newly promoted and highly regarded Generalleutnant Balck.
The Finns continue to push East of the Volkhov.

[Telemecus]

1 German infantry regiment, supported by a Finnish artillery regiment (two hexes south of where it is not supposed to move!) losing 10 men taking out 73 tanks seems like a good weeks work to me!

[Telemecus]

Turn 28 31-December-1941 Intelligence

Meanwhile Abwehr reports yet another breakthough as again they intercept and decipher high level Soviet electronic communications.

[SparkleyTits]

I don't remember any of that [:D]

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: SparkleyTits
I don't remember any of that [:D]

I do! [:D]

Besides we know the camera never lies!

[Telemecus]

Turn 28 Allocations
For information only - team allocations for turn 28.

[Telemecus]

Turn 1 22-June-1941 to Turn 28 31-December-1941 Air: A Retrospective on the 1941 Air War

With the skies clear of everything except Christmas carols and Santa's sleigh it is a good time to look back on the 1941 air war.



Our campign plan was to continue to pursue an aggressive airfield bombing campaign throughout Barbarossa to suppress the Red Air Force's ability to support its ground troops. And in addition to reduce its capacity to supply partisans and to conduct reconnaisance.

By August we were finding Soviet interception to be weak enough to allow for many bombing missions to go ahead without escorts. Many Axis air offensives fall off from this point for logistical reasons, but by keeping heavy aircraft on airbases on repaired rails and using staging bases we overcame this. Indeed we even had three successive turns of destroying over 1k of aircraft each.

In response our opponents moved their airgroups further and further away from the front meaning they were effectively no longer engaged in the ground war. By September all types of airgroups except those with fighter missions had effectively been taken off the map. The air war had entered a period of very long distance fighter combat, or interception of our strategic bombing campaign only.

By October the whole Red Air Force was gone apart from a few brief reappearances.



The flip side to the air war has to be the strategic bombing campaign which was not envisioned to be extensive in our initial war plans, but grew with the opportunity as our opponents failed to defend their industry. In particular the advance of our land forces enabled us to start bombing fighter bomber factories in August, and the LaGG3 '11 series' factory actually got overrun in situ. Expansion of interceptor production was effectively choked and production declined as damage levels rose.

By September with Moscow threatened MiGG-3 production ended seriously reducing their interceptor production - it was by then well under 100 a week. We estimate they would then not have had enough aircraft to fill the fighter trained airgroups the scenario data gives them, let alone any new ones they may have created. By October with fighter trained airgroups not able to defend themselves let alone anything else they were taken off the map and the fighter bomber factories along the Volga started to be evacuated to the Urals.

At no time while Soviet fighter trained airgroups were on the map giving battle did production exceed their losses. Only by the end of the year did expected production start to come back into three figures.



A special mention should be made of Soviet reconnaisance. Although the Soviet side does have use of the cheap U2 reconnaisance planes they are extremely short range. They start the game with 615 reconnaisance planes in their airgroups or in the pool, of which 447 are the longer range SB2 recon model. 24 more can be added from arriving air groups. But their production is restricted to 6 Pe2Rs (or their upgrades) and 6 U2 recons a turn. This is quite a chokepoint. Yet from turn 2 until turn 12 they were losing between 20 and 50 a turn.

To complete the feast to famine story from turn 14 they never once lost more than their production in reconnaissance - but mainly because they had little or none on the map. Effectively they had gone blind.

[Telemecus]

Turn 29 07-January-1942 Team

Here is the posting in the opponents wanted section you did not see

8MP Axis team - Analyst wanted

A very different post from the others you will see in this opponents wanted section. The axis team of the 8MP team game are looking for an analyst.

Salary - zero
Pension - none
Health cover - you do know this is a wargame don't you?
Fringe benefits - immense

We have had enquiries from others interested in knowing and participating in the game without wanting to take a turn as a commander themselves. Being a spreadsheet nerd myself I empathise. What we are now doing here is outstripping my capacity to do it. Many of the spreadsheets I am creating for this team game are also being uploaded to the WitE library of resources for use by the whole community. Hence we saw this as a valuable extension to the team. Our Soviet opponents did not want this team game to go down that path. But in any future team games it may be something to consider.

[Crackaces]

Turn 29 shows a full blizzard and ICE level 10. There are no rivers anymore -- just frozen ice think enough for tanks to cross. The single biggest impediment to the Soviets is the MP's to attack, and move into an enemy controlled hex. It is the Moscow defensive strategy to maximize that constraint. What the map below shows is the defensive line at turn 29. Vorozenth sector is in deep trouble. But more northerly you begin to see the effects of counterattacking 2 and 3 hexsided targets, and routing the heads of thrusts into the German lines. This costs blood for sure, but the lower morale of the Soviets means having to pay more MP's to reoccupy a hex and attack. Turning the Soviet blizzard offense into a WWI attack .. counterattack affair.
The red line near Moscow going southeast is the urban/fort line I plan to have a nice surprise for the Soviets. Right now I am simply retaking the hexes in front of this line and then setting units to reserve behind it for possible activation.

[Crackaces]

This battle reports seems like a futile effort, but in the traditional Soviet mantra of using blood strategically Soviet units are doing multiple low firepower/ low CV attacks to burn up reserve activations, ammo, fuel, and supplies. This low CV attack gets the 17th panzer and the 258th inf division to activate. Then once they see the right hand corner showing a deficit -- they attack. The term "soaking attack" I believe originated in the ol' AH days with locked ZOC's and forced attacks you would have some attacks at low odds (1-6) to get a (3-1) where you really needed it .. the MO continues in this game [8D] Notice in the battle report a total of 6 attacks to that point.
One other detail to note -- the very high costs of using AFV's in a blizzard. That "soaking attack" damaged 32 AFV's mostly SP flak. Yes panzer divisions are superhuman! [:'(]

[Crackaces]

Another Soaking attack. Of note is the loss of around 1K men with each attack -- the logistics phase will not be kind to the Soviet or the German. This turn we trade about 2:1 in manpower (after the logistics phase) and keep precious hexes on my ridged defensive lines.

[Telemecus]

One thing I still find bizarre is the impact anti aircraft weapons are given in WitE in ground combats. The 88mm AA gun is a special case as it was a dual use anti aircraft and anti tank gun. But the use of lower calibre quad guns and so on does feel strange. These are dedicated anti aircraft guns with no real historical accounts of them being deployed in a ground role. They were never designed that way, if they were effective I have no doubt many weapons of this type would have been designed for that purpose. Crackaces has studied the effects of these in battle reports on a high message level and tells us they are effective - especially against cavalry! [:D] If so I would say this is a flaw in the game design. With no red air force flying the obvious real life thing to do would be to mothball these weapons, not use them for ground combat!

[Crackaces]

ORIGINAL: Telemecus

One thing I still find bizarre is the impact anti aircraft weapons are given in WitE in ground combats. The 88mm AA gun is a special case as it was a dual use anti aircraft and anti tank gun. But the use of lower calibre quad guns and so on does feel strange. These are dedicated anti aircraft guns with no real historical accounts of them being deployed in a ground role. They were never designed that way, if they were effective I have no doubt many weapons of this type would have been designed for that purpose. Crackaces has studied the effects of these in battle reports on a high message level and tell us they are effective - especially against cavalry! [:D] If so I would say this is a flaw in the game design. With no red air force flying the obvious real life thing to do would be to mothball these weapons, not use them for ground combat!

a real example of game vs simulation. I do not get too wrapped up into simulation or I will get frustrated and lose my love for this game. For me, I just except that all devices and squads close from maximum to zero range with bizarre results as a defensive MG device destroying an offensive artillery device .. it is just part of the game and the combat engine. Albeit bizarre results ...

[Telemecus]

Yes it is right that you just have to accept it and play the game engine as it is. But I think a better game engine would not simply match up ground elements at random. Road vehicle mounted anti aircraft guns would have been deployed to the rear of the front lines, they would have met infantry in battle on open country less often than by random chance. The commanders of each side would have directed anti tank guns to where there was a concentration of enemy tanks - so they would encounter each other more often than by random chance. I feel because they have no special algorithm for matching up ground elements from either side by type, anti aircraft guns have been given these special anti infantry and anti cavalry effects to compensate.

Here the results are not just under the bonnet. There is an advantage to a player who can deploy AA support units against non-air targets.

[leverkuhn]

ORIGINAL: Telemecus

One thing I still find bizarre is the impact anti aircraft weapons are given in WitE in ground combats. The 88mm AA gun is a special case as it was a dual use anti aircraft and anti tank gun. But the use of lower calibre quad guns and so on does feel strange. These are dedicated anti aircraft guns with no real historical accounts of them being deployed in a ground role.

Obviously you did not watch Waterworld [:'(]

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: leverkuhn

ORIGINAL: Telemecus
One thing I still find bizarre is the impact anti aircraft weapons are given in WitE in ground combats. The 88mm AA gun is a special case as it was a dual use anti aircraft and anti tank gun. But the use of lower calibre quad guns and so on does feel strange. These are dedicated anti aircraft guns with no real historical accounts of them being deployed in a ground role.

Obviously you did not watch Waterworld [:'(]

Others have mentioned this too - but I cannot remember anything from when I saw it long time ago. Do you have a pic or video clip?

[leverkuhn]

ORIGINAL: Telemecus

ORIGINAL: leverkuhn

ORIGINAL: Telemecus
One thing I still find bizarre is the impact anti aircraft weapons are given in WitE in ground combats. The 88mm AA gun is a special case as it was a dual use anti aircraft and anti tank gun. But the use of lower calibre quad guns and so on does feel strange. These are dedicated anti aircraft guns with no real historical accounts of them being deployed in a ground role.

Obviously you did not watch Waterworld [:'(]

Others have mentioned this too - but I cannot remember anything from when I saw it long time ago. Do you have a pic or video clip?

Forum rules won't let me post links, but you can search for the following youtube video:

Waterworld (4/10) Movie CLIP - Attack on the Atoll (1995) HD

Hope that's convincing enough

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: leverkuhn

ORIGINAL: Telemecus

ORIGINAL: leverkuhn

Obviously you did not watch Waterworld [:'(]

Others have mentioned this too - but I cannot remember anything from when I saw it long time ago. Do you have a pic or video clip?

Forum rules won't let me post links, but you can search for the following youtube video:

Waterworld (4/10) Movie CLIP - Attack on the Atoll (1995) HD

Hope that's convincing enough

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoSLZP0e-M4

[:D]

Given if you can get a quad cannon to point in the right direction and press the trigger I can see it will be very damaging against soft targets. Just a big gun like that mounted on the back of a wheeled road vehicle is too cumbersome in open country battles. Not too mentioned being a big target itself. If it had been effective in the ground role I am sure they would have replaced tanks with it. But I think most tankies would prefer their panzers to a quad cannon.