Matrix Games

quote:

ORIGINAL: hfarrish


How many games do you have going right now? 10? It's pretty impressive to say the least.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Pelton
...with mech/tank/cav screen then a infantry line or checker board.

quote:

South: I will try and hold river until turn 7 then retreat east slowly, 3 hexes a turn with mech/tank/cav screen then a infantry line or checker board.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Seminole

quote:

South: I will try and hold river until turn 7 then retreat east slowly, 3 hexes a turn with mech/tank/cav screen then a infantry line or checker board.

My advice would be to not use the cavalry in this manner. No sense having them take constant dings to their morale. You want them as happy as can be come December. You also don't want to get them herded into mini-pockets.

I've made several mistakes in my current game (we're in Jan '42 now, but the AAR is behind), but the biggest was losing any cavalry after the first two weeks. Cavalry units pay one less MP for entering enemy hexes, and during first winter Soviets pay one less MP for entering enemy territory. Let your cavalry dig in the rear area, but be available to surge forward and cut off any overly adventurous panzers before retreating again during the summer and fall.

I'm trying out my new theories on blizzard offensive now, and its it going pretty well. Let the infantry make the initial hole in the line, then move up the cav corps to hasty any units that retreated that turn. If you can pair the corps you can be almost certain of victory against a recently displaced unit in the open (at least in December), but you can also usually get an additional rifle division into the stack to contribute. Leapfrog the next cav corps pair and repeat the hasty attacks against the fleeing Germans. This will let you quickly amass victories for Guards status as well. Don't try to get by with too little in the attack! A failed attack, especially with the cavalry, means losses you just don't want sapping your momentum. Sometimes I do launch 'spoiling attacks' that I don't expect to win before a major attack that I do expect to be sufficient, but never with the cav corps. Once the cav corps have made a decent push and cleared the hexes in front of them I pour in the tank brigades to establish contact with the enemy (attrition, fatigue, and extra cost to disengage) and screen my cav corps so they can rest and hopefully get more replacements than they would on the frontline. If the Germans want to try and attack the brigades they can, that means they're not running away as fast and they take a morale penalty for fighting during the First Winter. Brigade losses are usually light (seems on the whole a better proposition than attrition costs born by rifle divisions filling the entire front line).

I built ski battalions this time for my cavalry corps, but they don't seem to have made much impact. I'll be curious to see how many reach guards status and provide a better punch in the winter of '42 (when the soviets don't have First Winter modifiers to CV)

I rarely bull straight toward my objectives in winter, preferring to hit the Germans where they are weakest (so I can get victories!) and after 3 or 4 weeks compelling a general withdrawal as the strategic precariousness of the objective crystallizes. If they're too slow in making the general withdrawal from the objective, so much the better - Siberia is always in need of tourists!

quote:

Very good stuff. You try doing HQB with cav Corp?