Like Cornered Wolves: Mini AAR governato vs fluidwill

[governato]

This is a mini AAR of my "Like Cornered Wolves" game with fluidwill. I played the Red Army. The AAR will focus on the high level operational choices rather than the details of game play, to highlight the choices presented to the field commanders and discuss the outcome
Expect these posts to be biased in favor of the Red Army's heroic deeds against the evil invader. Fluidwill is welcome to contribute and set things right .

Background: Following the crossing of the Don by 4th Panzer Army the Axis forces in this scenario are tasked to approach Stalingrad from the South. The city is off map to the NNE. East is..pretty much empty space all the way to Baku.
Axis: 2 Panzer/motorized divisions are supported by a Romanian Infantry Corps while more infantry is on the way. Their logistics are strained, but have good air superiority.
Red Army: just about 100 hundred tanks available, but plenty of logistics. Almost no air support.
Note that the reserves (off map to the North) will not activate unless the Axis makes significant progress. (the units were mere shells when the scenario starts and received about 200 tanks in the time frame of this encounter).
Historical outcome: The Panzers were stopped by strong resistance and had to regroup while waiting for infantry support.

Red Army Goals: avoid breakthroughs and encirclements by the Panzers and counterattack where possible. Trade space for time as necessary
Axis goals: Same thing they try to do every day Ivan... tryin' to take over the world! But specifically that could imply

a) an attempt to encircle 64th army against the Don or
b) breakthrough directly towards Stalingrad (this was the historical dilemma, 4th Panzer Army did not have sufficient forces to do both).

Will see what fuidwill will choose. As the Red Army player I decide to wait and see where the Fascist hammer is going to fall first, absorb the blow with infantry and AT guns and then I will commit my tanks for a counterattack. Yeah super easy!
This is a relatively short scenario (2 days of fighting) so I expect fluidwill to show his hand soon...

Here is the forces at start and their position on the map.

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[blond_knight_new]

Plan well Comrade, do make me call the Boss!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI-P4IL ... nel=mrx168

[governato]

Well, hopefully Nikita Khrushchev will not pay me a visit tonite .. but tx for the heads up, I locked the door just in case.
The commanders of both 62nd and 64th armies survived Stalingrad to become Hero of the Soviet Union and Marshal of the SU respectively, and fought all the way to Berlin. So there is some hope for me .

"Stalingrad" makes some cool videos so I decided to try a new kind of AAR to show how the game works and attach them to this post. Be gentle as I just learned some video editing skills Red Army style...meaning on the fly.


Here is the link to the videos. Note that these videos are WITHOUT FOG OF WAR

https://www.dropbox.com/s/95catno5ya3x ... 1.mp4?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/aoai5xg3cy20 ... 2.mp4?dl=0

The arrows point to the main lines of advance. There is significant gap in front of 29th Motorized division that was not exploited by the Axis, due to (I think) fog of war. You can see 14th Panzer division slamming on the 126th RD fortified positions instead.
At that point I realized how lucky I was that the the two Panzer/Moto divisions had split, rather than working together.

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Later the same day Soviet recce and AT units exploited some gaps in the German lines to disrupt their supply lines before being slapped around the following day. Still the Axis divisions had been stopped.

The battle with the Romanians just East of the Don was more confused, but the Soviet Rifle divisions ran out of steam pretty quickly without achieving much and withdrew to fight another day..right before a German Infantry Division showed up.

I will wrap this up in the next post and maybe my opponent will report on his side of things.

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[governato]

Here is the final turn of the engagement. A minor victory for the Red Army, pretty close to the historical outcome.


We both had a lot of fun and really appreciated the way a WEGO game deals with this campaign. Planned moves never really happened as intended. It was a battle of attrition and both sides learned a thing of two about warfare in this theatre! It was great playing with fluidiwill and I hope he adds comments to this AAR
Overall I 'd definitely recommend playing "Cornered Wolves" especially as a preparation for longer more complex scenarios with even more mobility.


- At the end the German mobile visions broke the rather weak screening ring around them and re-established supply lines, but too late for a major restart of their offensive. They did not achieve their objectives, but defeated my tank forces and inflicted
severe losses.

- As the Red Army coordination between infantry and tanks is poor. I overestimated my tank brigades on the offensive. Instead I was never really able to hit the panzers head on as they usually get the first move and moved out of the way.
Caught off balance my tanks got counterattacked and suffered large losses and exposed HQs and artillery to the Germans. The Red Army infantry advance South of the Aksay was fun and put some stress on the Romanian,
but it only managed to achieve minor objectives. I could have directed one Rifle division against the Panzers instead. Btw Glantz' s Stalingrad series mentions how those Rifle divisions were low on ammo in RL.

- My view of the German performance: attacking well entrenched infantry was very costly and not very effective. With hindsight I would have used the the two mobile divisions TOGETHER,
as a pincer movement around the objectives held by the 126th Rifle division at Abganerovo OR as a decisive pivot left behind my defense line at the Aksay. That would have been scary.

Either way I recommend to give to each German mobile division a narrow front (2-3 hexes top) and pile up air, artillery and logistics cards/assets for maximum support.


Now a look in detail to the final losses and loss ratios, keeping in mind that these numbers represent, dead+wounded+prisoners and destroyed+fallen out tanks that will be repaired shortly.


Infantry: 10k to 5k (or a 2:1 ratio in favor of the Axis) is about OK for 1942 in the absence of major encirclements. 10% losses on each side in just 2 days of combat seems a bit high (but see above as likely not all losses were permanent)

Tanks: 55 tanks per side with a loss ratio of 1:1. that is historically pretty bad for the Germans. Not sure if that is just a consequence of them attacking entrenched infantry or something else.

Air: the Luftwaffe lost three times as many planes as the VVS, even with a 3:1 numerical edge and better quality. This seems too high. The Axis:VVS loss ratio was 1:6 at Kursk.

- I got the impression that Command & Control for the Red Army was (too?) good and supply was very generous. I was able to send my AT and recce units very deep into the Germen rear and have them what I wanted...
I also had almost unlimited fuel as many of my tanks were 'fixed'. As a result I could set almost all Rifle divisions to Move+ making them faster than the equivalent Romanian and German ones as most of the German fuel was assigned to the Panzers.
Curious about fuel supply felt from the other side.


- suggestions: cut Red Army fuel by 20-30%,
consider increasing the quality of Luftwaffe units

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