CB: Bonners (axis) vs Isokron (Soviet)

[olivier34]

Thanks Bonners for this AAR.
About your losses, are you over stacking sometimes when you attack ? It seems to me that overstacking increase a lot the losses of the attacker and that overstacking in air attacks and artillery shelling is a waste of ammo.
Another thing, have you check the morale and readiness of your attacking troops. If they are low, it is better to cancel the attack and wait a turn or two...
I am very cautious regarding overstacking in attack and even in defense but maybe to cautious. Liquidsky takes Voronezh with a second attack and the stacking reach 200 on 100...I would have not press the button but his attack was successful!

[Bonners]

ORIGINAL: olivier34

Thanks Bonners for this AAR.
About your losses, are you over stacking sometimes when you attack ? It seems to me that overstacking increase a lot the losses of the attacker and that overstacking in air attacks and artillery shelling is a waste of ammo.
Another thing, have you check the morale and readiness of your attacking troops. If they are low, it is better to cancel the attack and wait a turn or two...
I am very cautious regarding overstacking in attack and even in defense but maybe to cautious. Liquidsky takes Voronezh with a second attack and the stacking reach 200 on 100...I would have not press the button but his attack was successful!

That was a mistake I made. I would overstack but only by a couple of point, e.g. rather than a 100 I would attack with 105 to get the best units in place. Where I suffered heavy losses (particularly around Voronezh) was deliberately overstacking on defence. Basically when I won a hex I tried to add a couple of units that hadnt attacked (i.e. with decent readiness) to the stack to defend against the counterattack. If it works, great, if it doesnt your losses can be horrific...lesson learnt for next game.

As for readiness, that comes down to the problems I had with panicking attacks, I kept thinking his line was going to break so ended up attacking with units with low readiness, again this kind of panicked attack leads to high losses. All those tactics are worth doing and taking the high losses, but only if you know the Soviets cannot counterattack, i.e. take the losses but get a positive outcome. Where I was going wrong was taking the gambles at the wrong time and suffering horrendous losses as a result.

I am still making these mistakes to a lesser extent (we are carrying on the game), but that is becuase I'm a little desperate, although I have withdrawn on certain parts of the front. After I've played my turn tonight I'll put an update on.

[Bonners]

5th August

We're definitely onto the last turns now. Thought I'd just concentrate on the one part of the front where things are moving. Firstly though, around Rostov and Voronezh I continue to pull back and try and save forces for the coming offensive, despite wasting all my prestige points I'm afraid I've ran out of more time cards, so if we were playing dismissal next turn I would be on a one way trip to theFuher Bunker[:(]

Luckily I have a far more thoughtful superior though[:D] So I have the dubious pleasure of fighting on for a while longer.

Isokron continues to attack along the line and causes significant damage again to my forces north of Rostov, I am vaguely hopeful that the line will still hold though, but reserves are non existent.

...and on my last chance of gaining some points. I took a huge risk with my panzers and left them exposed; Isokron took the bait and attacked them, cue more losses for me. The only reason for the gamble was to try and make sure I still had a four sided attack on Millerowo. Well I did manage it, infantry in place, high degree of readiness, my first offensive that looked like it was planned enough to work. I think about eight Soviet units were in town and unfortunately one out of the eight didnt get a retreat or panic result...another failure. But hey, look on the bright side, I must be improving as it was only just a failure!

Not a lot to show on the map, but here is the front around Millerowo at the end of my turn:

[Bonners]

This will be the last post on this thread, as you may have noticed Isokron and I have started a new campaign playing it the other way around. Unfortunately I have been called away from the front by the UberFuhrer to partake in domestic duties....strangely enough I dont ever recall in any of my histories of WWII of Zhukov being told to stop playing with his armies by the wife!

Domestic chores complete I shall start my Soviet campaign on Thursday and will start a new AAR. Isokron has more experience of playing as Axis so I'm expecting another tough learning experience!