8MP Team Game - The Axis team

[Crackaces]

The below map shows the plan for turn 65 with anticipation of the Soviet response. Fundamentally the plan is to reach critical rail junctures on the Volga. I think it is appropriate to discuss at this point in the light of EvK's discussion. Clearly the 2 & 3 Panzer Armies are in position to take a huge chunk of units to the south that combined with 4th Panzer army would reduce the Kessel. However, reaching the critical rail junctures puts the whole Kessel at risk with Turn 65 not isolating the Kessel but making some units as far as 70 MP's away from supply. So the Germans chose not to "PacMan" but continue a thrust toward key strategic and operational objectives.

[Crackaces]

Here is the end of turn 64. The Germans are in position to execute the above plan. There are opportunities for 1st Panzer Army to join 2nd and 3rd sealing Saratov .. but we shall see what the Soviets give us ..

[Beria]

That is starting to look very worrying for the Soviets. I would be panicking at least a bit with this. East of 1st Panzer army is very very open. There are few units digging to stop 3rd Panzer army getting to the Volga? But how is the fuel situation, did the Soviet side wreck your rail line to them this turn?

[Crackaces]

The map below shows the anticipated Soviet reaction to turn 64. Reduce units in the Kessel and secure the front. M60 was a little more aggressive ..

[Crackaces]

The diagram below shows the plan for turn 65. Simply units from 18th Army fill in the gaps that will be left behind by 2nd and 3rd Panzer Armies. 4th Panzer Army will be moved along with 18th Army but only after all units have made it to their planned places. The thought is that the 4th Panzer Army will be the reserve to fill in gaps left behind that the Germans did not think about as the plan develops ..

[Zorch]

Congratulations to all players on both sides! An epic game!

[Telemecus]

Operation Treppenwitz

With tension mounting as we reach the climactic turn 65 I thought now is the perfect timing to present Operation Treppenwitz - the 8MP Axis team's summer campaign plan. This was the plan we developed as a team for our 1942 summer campaign and which we passed on to Crackaces to use or ignore from turn 55. He will have to tell us if it was used or useful?

[Telemecus]

Operation Treppenwitz: To Baku Or Not To Baku?

Any summer campaign has to decide on whether they will go for Baku or not - there are no half way houses. The game design tries to funnel you down to it - only Baku and Stalingrad are cities left with Victory Points even though cities like Saratov are just as big and industrially more important. I think a game design flaw.

Our South commander was naturally very keen. But Baku has some serious flaws to it. For one it is a very very long way away. In rail repair terms it would take 21 clear turns of rail repair to get there - three times more than Stalingrad or other big cities on the Volga. And in the case of Baku for long stretches there is only one rail line repairable - there are no loops for the Axis. This means one partisan strike and everybody is in trouble. Most Axis offensives fall apart at the Terek river and Dagestan - and that is before the latest patch changes reduced Axis supply even more.

And finally there are no second prizes for missing out on Baku. The game mechanics mean the oil is irrelevant here to either side. There is little other industry. To the south are mountains and to the north is semi-desert. Cities in the Caucasus, unlike other cities in Russia, do not have a cluster of size 4 towns around them. While Baku is a large city, the actual manpower production captured in this area is comparatively small. In short going all the way to Baku but not capturing the final city is almost the same as not bothering at all.

Contrary to popular perception the original Fall Blau plan did not intend to get to Baku. In the Caucasus it was only planned to capture Maikop and Grozny and extend from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea. So an alternative "Not Baku" plan could emulate this without having to worry about getting past the Terek river and Dagestan. The price would be having to clear out the Crimea by force rather than by isolation. Another alternative would be to cross the mountains and get to the Turkish border or Batumi - cutting off Crimea from supply that way.

[Telemecus]

Operation Treppenwitz: The West Caucasus Raid

As an alternative to a big commitment in the Caucasus I proposed a raid. Unlike going all the way to Baku, just taking the big manpower centres in the West Caucasus offers some big manpower centre gains. In the attached picture there are 42 manpower points in the green circle when adding all the cities and towns together. Typically when Axis offensives break out from Rostov into the Caucasus, the front lines for the Soviet side expand rapidly in a place where they do not have troops to spare. With Soviet forces spread thin, progress into the West Caucasus could be rapid. The aim however would not be to hold this ground but give it up when the Soviets go on the offensive. Not only would the manpower centres then have to be repaired, but so would the Azov ports that could otherwise have been used for sea invasions on Ukraine taking away another headache. Although if the port of Novorossiysk was taken, an enclave could be left there, as was the case historically in the Kuban, with swamps, mountains and cities providing an excellent perimeter to defend.

Having had so much success with strategic bombing in 1941, it was an obvious thought to consider could this be used in the Caucasus in 1942, or from the Kuban enclave? Blue arrows indicate air attacks.

Going with this option did leave the contingency of going for the Eastern or Southern Caucasus if plans had to change.

[Telemecus]

Operation Treppenwitz: The Northern Lights

The same analysis applied the other way would say why not go North instead. As manpower is the constraint for the Soviet side, why not take the big manpower centres in the North. And we had seen the novel success we had had with strategic bombing. A lot of factories had been evacuted to the Ural mountains. Already on turn 17 we were thinking what if we could get to Kazan in 42 - the factories in the Ural mountains would then be in range.

[Telemecus]

Operation Treppenwitz: The Fighter Factory Killer

If, like 1941, we could bomb their fighter and fighter bomber factories again, then they would have no fighters to defend those factories. And this time with no place out of range left to move them to. With no fighters in the air or being made, ground forces could continue to go pretty much where they wanted to, and bombers could bomb anything they did not reach. Getting to bomb the fighter factories in the Urals in effect meant a victory in the true historic sense - and not just a slow withdrawal to Berlin ....

We dropped any idea of a thrust north of the Oka pretty early. If we wanted to break out in more than one place, they would need to be close enough to support each other, and this was just too far north. But the idea of integrating strategic bombing into our campaign plans had been established.,.

[Telemecus]

Operation Treppenwitz: One Pincer or Two?

Attached is the plan submitted by Crackaces for the 1942 offensive. It proposed a single thrust up through Boguchar towards Saratov capturing major manpower centres. And if successful could be carried on to Kuybyshev and beyond where we would then be in bomber range of the Urals.

But the bigger question was is one pincer enough? Some (including myself) thought that two pincers are so much more potent as they can join enclosing a large area which the enemy can be forced to choose between evacuating without a fight or loosing as an encircled pocket. Our experience of Operation National Garden, the 1942 spring snow offensive, was that a single pincer would just get attacked from either flank with no relief if cut off. However the strong counter-argument was that two pincers would each be too weak on their own.

[Telemecus]

Operation Treppenwitz: Two wins out

Eventually we settled on two. timmyab made the plan below where he incorporated Crackaces thrust through Boguchar, but made it the weaker of two pincers. The stronger pincer was to thrust through the center. The options would then exist to join the two pincers in a big encirclement, or join smaller breakthroughs through Svoboda or on the rail line to Stalingrad.

My problem with this plan was that is still left Boguchar as the point of one main attack. But Boguchar itself is in the middle of the rail network cul-de-sac. At least by advancing along rail lines you could start rail repair east as early as possible.

[Telemecus]

Operation Treppenwitz: Panzerball of Death

At Stelteck's urging the central thrust was strengthened to three Panzer armies and for a while was nicknamed the "Panzerball of Death". The other main thrust was to be along the rail line to Stalingrad. And only a weak connecting force was deployed to the Svoboda rail route to provide some glue between the two pincers. The Boguchar thrust was dropped and instead painted as being the area for a large encirclement. All the main thrusts would follow rail routes with FBDs following close behind.

The point of success or failure was becoming clear though. If the centre thrust through the central plain could meet the south thrusting out to and up the Volga valley in the vicinity of Saratov we succeeded. If they failed to meet we failed. By threatening to meet the Soviet side would be left with a dilemma - evacuate a large amount of territory without even a fight or risk losing the army.

[Telemecus]

Operation Treppenwitz: Team Decides

We had come up with the following options for Treppenwitz

i) Caucasus - with variants for Baku, not Baku or Batumi - or an alternative raid
ii) Traditional Stalingrad
iii) Thrust through centre

We had already eliminated any option north of the Oka and through Boguchar. We had deprected the move through Svoboda. But the feeling was we could only go with two of the options - one had to be dropped.

It was a message from Stelteck that finally made our minds up. Steleck had a repeated habit of catching the zeitgeist of the team, encapsulating our thoughts into one sentence and drawing us to a conclusion. And that in spite of the Frenchisms! [:)]

Because it caught the moment it is worth reproducing in full.



Stelteck also convinced us to drop even a raid into the West Caucasus and instead put everything into the other areas. We could simply use the lower Don as an anchor for defence of our flank.

Until we got the name Treppenwitz, the summer plan became known as the Stelteck Plan with the byline of "From Stalingrad to Kazan"

[Telemecus]

Operation Treppenwitz: Team Decided

I became more convinced over time it was the right thing not to go for Baku in 1942. timmyab joined the team already convinced it was a bad idea. Once we had the buy in from our southern commander we knew it was a decision made. From then onwards it was a plan all were committed to and keen to get on with. Everything else, including our campaign during the blizzard, then became a feed in for this common goal. It is amazing to think that we made this plan at the end of 2017 (in real life).

[Telemecus]

Operation Treppenwitz: Too Ambitious? Not ambitious enough?

The plan was given the following SWOT analysis



The big worry was were we way too ambitious - would we come nowhere near to these plans. Crackaces produced analysis of his own which seemed to indicate any Soviet OOB below 6mn could be pushed back at will. We were still below the magic number. But we made a contingency we called "Plan B." We hoped South would be able to surround Stalingrad and then travel up either side of the Volga river to Saratov where it would meet centre. But if the going got too hard we would just have to cut short this grand encirclement and meet the two pincers west of Saratov.

But on the other hand if we succeeded well in making our grand encirclement then the final phase of our summer campaign would be our four Panzer armies together racing up the Volga to Kuybyshev and beyond. With this our bombers and even fighters would have the staging bases to start bombing the fighter bomber factories in the Urals - meaning a true historic irrecoverable win ....

(I have found out since the South Supply Bonus was nerfed out in a previous patch of the game)

[Telemecus]

Operation Treppenwitz: The Plan

The plan was finalised at the start of normal 1942 clear weather in the game. And after 29 version changes. Many objectives in the plan had indeed been captured during snow periods and random clear weather beforehand. The plan is displayed in the best resolution I could get while still being able to embed the file here. However clicking on the picture should take you to the original high resolution of this picture in pdf format. This can also be found by clicking this link https://drive.google.com/file/d/17T7dbs ... dYIdG/view . The key to this picture can be found in the next post.



I have to thank EwaldvonKleist for hosting this pdf. I suggested it might also be useful in the library of WitE resources for others who may want to take this as a template and adjust it for their own. If so I can recommend using Foxit Reader which is a free downloadable reader - but which when opening this file will enable you to easily edit this pdf by clicking and dragging any of the lines or boxes around or making your own. It is not a complicated picture or pdf editor if that is what you are looking for - but it does save on all the complications of layers or flattening that other free tools use so it means this can saved, opened and edited again whenever you want to. I already made a 1942 plan for another game adapted from this one, so it fits the bill for me.

[Telemecus]

Key to the above plan

[joelmar]

This discussion has taken a very interesting twist since EvK's last comments and all those details about the 8MP Axis team initial plan.

Of course for the casual solo player this is all very remote, and as for many reasons short term gains are usually prioritized, I fully understand EvK's comments about missed packman gains in the snow, and I will certainly continue myself to take decisions based on the same kind of ideas as they have immediate impact, even if small scale. And probably they have some merit on their own in the long term view too. I guess there would have to be a separate discussion on the attritional possibilities of the Axis based on such regular packman operations in adverse weather and their cost in KIA and equipment.

But still, this gives much food for thought and experiment thanks to all.