1st Panzer Army AAR

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ComradeP
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1st Panzer Army AAR

Post by ComradeP »

Although I followed the community response to Advanced Tactics and the first title in the Decisive Campaigns series with interest, this is the first time I've actually played one of Vic's games in years. The last time was when I tested on of his early games, I was unfortunately still too young at the time to test it for a prolonged period of time as I was only just beginning to play wargames at that point.

This game, however, is something I couldn't miss out on.

After reading the manual, I decided to play the linked campaign and as it's been a while since I wrote an AAR, I also decided to write this AAR.

As usual: feel free to comment.
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RE: 1st Panzer Army AAR

Post by ComradeP »

Scenario 1: Crossing the Don.

After looking at the map, I decided to try and use the road network to maximum effect and there's both a nice east-west and north-south Rollbahn that my forces can use.

The best way to unhinge the river defenses seemed to be to try and create a pocket, and as expected the AI indeed fell back all across its line on its turn 1 as we'll see later.

It took me a few restarts to get the desired result here and it might very well be possible to form a pocket on turn 1, but I came close enough.

The two understrength Panzer Korps are at the flanks, the understrength army corps is west of the center and is mostly there to help III Panzer Korps get across the rivers in the area.

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RE: 1st Panzer Army AAR

Post by ComradeP »

After using two Speed cards, one for each Panzer Korps, this was the end result.

2 or 3 regiments were destroyed and the Soviet river line has become completely untenable. The violence aimed at the couple of defenders I dislodged from their hexes was so substantial that their capability to resist was not substantial.

Losses: 5 light tanks,

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RE: 1st Panzer Army AAR

Post by elmo3 »

Do you have the AI set to Normal Pieter?
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RE: 1st Panzer Army AAR

Post by ComradeP »

At the moment, yes. Not sure if there's a "difficult" setting.
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RE: 1st Panzer Army AAR

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Start of turn 2. As stated, the AI's withdrawing but it can't possibly withdraw fast enough.

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RE: 1st Panzer Army AAR

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I don't have end turn screenshots for turn 2 or 3, so here's the start of turn 3.

The AI moved a unit into Proletarsk, which I had "captured" with ZOC.

The units that were originally near Bagalevskaya are pocketed.

As you can see, the AI abandoned an objective in order to preserve its forces.

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RE: 1st Panzer Army AAR

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Turn 4 start. Proletarsk is empty again and the AI used the unit in Salsk to restore supply to the units in the east, so this battle was kind of anticlimactic as all I had to do was drive into Salsk to win. Victory on turn 4 for the cost of 5 Panzer II's as there was no need to attack much after turn 1 (I only pushed some understrength units around after bombing/shelling them).

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RE: 1st Panzer Army AAR

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The end.

I noticed that when I loaded the last save from this battle, to take the end turn screenshot, action points were set at 100 and I also had the prestige points that I should normally have only at the start of the second scenario, after the victory. In other words: the turn 4 save had become sort of a "view battlefield" save after a victory instead of a turn 4 save.

For now, I need to figure out where the replacements overview is as the "replacements received" tab only mentions this turns replacements.

The opening blow was so devastating to the AI that it kept withdrawing. I'd like to note that it did try, cleverly, to restore supply, but the situation was quite hopeless for the Soviets after turn 1. I'm pleased with the AI's performance thus far. It didn't roll over and die, it tried to make a stand and at the least buy some time. My advance was just a bit too rapid.

Soviet casualties were about 12.000 men.

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RE: 1st Panzer Army AAR

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Another note: I must be doing something wrong with the Nebelwerfers, but during some tests when figuring out how to get a good first turn, the Nebelwerfers always (literally, always) took 6 losses. I never used them aside from as a ZOC blocking force during this battle.
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RE: 1st Panzer Army AAR

Post by stone10 »

Nebelwerfer and katyusha always destroy after one combat round, like a missile.
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RE: 1st Panzer Army AAR

Post by jjdenver »

Great win. I was noodling something like this but hadn't started trying it yet, just looked at a couple of setups without doing a turn. This is perfect.
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RE: 1st Panzer Army AAR

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Nebelwerfer and katyusha always destroy after one combat round, like a missile.

Ah, OK, thanks for clearing that up.

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Great win. I was noodling something like this but hadn't started trying it yet, just looked at a couple of setups without doing a turn. This is perfect.

Thanks for the compliments. I tried to avoid as much combat as possible, which is why after turn 1 I only attacked a handful of understrength regiments and a Tank brigade next to Metchetinskaya. The forces in the east were not attacked at all, and neither were about half the forces in the Bagalevskaya pocket.

The opening in the east probably wouldn't work like this against a human because he could try to attack one of the regiments spread out on the road, but I guess you could move an infantry division there to beef them up. The 370th Infantry Division in particular spent most of the game marching to "catch up" with the front.

One thing you have to be careful about, it seems as in many wargames: if you want a quick win, you do need to try to keep losses low. Winning on turn 4 also means you miss out on a large number of replacements. You can use cards, I think, to get more, but you don't get them automatically.
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RE: 1st Panzer Army AAR

Post by Vic »

@ComradeP,

Impressive drive. Lets see how you'll do in the next scenarios :)

Furthermore thanks for spotting the big glitch with the save file. I am working on correcting this behaviour for the 1st patch.

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RE: 1st Panzer Army AAR

Post by Erik Rutins »

Very impressive first turn - I've never manaaged to break through that cleanly in just one turn. How many restarts did that take? You should be setup very well as far as prestige for the rest of the campaign. Getting the Wiking division is a big help later on. [8D]

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RE: 1st Panzer Army AAR

Post by krupp_88mm »

The one thing that i think the ai could use improvement on is holding cities and objectives.. it just seems to prioritize surviving its units at the expense of loosing the game or having your units tied down for a few more turns delaying making it too easy to force the ai to just walk out of the way. Might be nice if you could make the ai leave a unit or two behind in difficult terrain especially cities.
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RE: 1st Panzer Army AAR

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Very impressive first turn - I've never manaaged to break through that cleanly in just one turn. How many restarts did that take? You should be setup very well as far as prestige for the rest of the campaign. Getting the Wiking division is a big help later on.

At first I tried a more spread out crossing like in the AAR for this scenario over at The Wargamer, but as soon as I decided to try this the only restart was balancing the disposition of my forces to make it work. There are no defenders on the roads beyond the first line, so after you've removed the initial defenders you're good to go and no restarts for tricky battles are required.

As to Wiking: yes, it's a very good unit based on what I'm seeing in the second scenario. I'm not sure when, on average, we're supposed to request new units. The second scenario looks like it could be very tricky with just the initial forces. 6 divisions for such a large map is quite a small amount.

I'm still considering how to play the second scenario, but for the moment I think I'll request Wiking and the Slovak Fast Division.

The Soviets have plenty of divisions, but they're lacking in mobility. The Germans have plenty of mobility, but relatively few divisions.
The one thing that i think the ai could use improvement on is holding cities and objectives..

I didn't need to attack any of the objectives in the first scenario. The AI trying to get out of dodge after the opening turn is something I understand, but it also didn't really try to defend the objectives further south. The Soviets also don't really have the forces to do so, admittedly. There seemed to be just about 2 divisions south of the "moving pockets" after turn 2.

The scenario doesn't favour the Soviets if you come as close to creating a pocket on turn 1. It's a bit like Barbarossa where the Germans were almost in Minsk before Western Front had much of an idea what was happening. In this case, the bulk of the enemy units were also sort of "behind" my spearhead before the Soviets could respond.

The second scenario seems more promising from that perspective: a truly lethal blow on turn 1 is not going realistic due to the number of formations the Soviets have and the size of the map (although I have no idea what their reserves are like).
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RE: 1st Panzer Army AAR

Post by AZKGungHo »

I won the first scenario in this link series, but had to fight for the main city. Happily there was only one Soviet unit there, and after two or three tires I took him out and won the game a few turns early. It was fun and the AI was impressive too. Looking forward to continuing the series.
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RE: 1st Panzer Army AAR

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I'm not sure how replacement cards are supposed to work in short campaigns, but I don't seem to be getting replacements from them. Aside from the value being rather high considering the small number of divisions I have (6000-8000+ men, or 2-3 regiments for an infantry replacement card when I tried, so I could bring all my formations up to strength and still have men to spare with just 1 card), I must be missing some special rules about them. The only replacements I get are the per turn replacements.

I installed the on-release patch after installing the regular game and have been playing with it since the start.

I also sometimes get replacements for unit types that I don't have or will presumably never have under my control, such as Romanian staff for Romanian HQ's.

Also: I think the 2nd Romanian Infantry Division should be the 2nd Romanian Mountain Division, as the regular infantry division ended up south of Stalingrad whilst the mountain division was with 1st Panzer Army.
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RE: 1st Panzer Army AAR

Post by krupp_88mm »

I noticed the same thing. I just chalked it up to me having no idea how the supply system works.. But for the life of me i cant seem to get any replacements to go to my units that i use cards for. Not sure if im doing something wrong. Sometimes it seems like its working other times it just doesn't. I keep getting divebombers but my divebomber unit is still empty. And i have level bombers attached to Headquarters unit i dont know how to get rid of.

But this was before patch, not sure if it changed or not.
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