Part 58: Turn 9 - September/October 42. Lost Victories 2.
Turn 8 - July/August 1942
The Soviets move the Ostatky out of the reserves and place them to cover a possible attempt at breaking the front line.
With that we conclude Turn 8.
Front line change
Blue is last turn, red is current.
Welcome again to Lost Victories. Today we're going to look at Turn 7 again - this time the Soviet Combat Phase. Remember this?
It's the situation at the end of Turn 7 Soviet Movement Phase. The Soviets are set to exploit a weakness in the German line near Kharkov, while also dealing with a Counterblow near Leningrad. What happened next in the LP timeline is that the Germans discarded one of their two cards to place another CB on 11th Army in order to better protect themselves from a Soviet assault. As a result, they got pushed back, but the Soviets lost their tanks and with only a single unit they could not exploit the gap without losing supply.
So let's see how we can change it up. The Soviets have decided to place no Targets, so...
What, you thought we were going to talk about the Red Army this time? No such luck. Today we're going to learn the value of offensive counterblows. The Axis have two cards in hand and a whole line of Red Army infantry units next to their line. For a savvy player, such a situation is always a chance to exploit something. Let's see what we can do here.
Option 1: The Gamble
We place CBs on 1st Panzer and 17th Army. This way the Soviets have to attack us twice with their weak units (notice that if we put a CB on 2nd Panzer, then they could hit it with 1st Baltic and not risk getting counterattacked at where Northwest is). This is a bit risky, though: it keeps the 4:1 attack down south, which can cut off our supply at Dnepropetrovsk. There's also the off chance of a 6 in the CB against 1st Panzer, which would push us off of Kharkov and really make a mess. It also heavily depends on the Soviet combat resolution order: if we go north to south, everything is great, but the other way around means we have to roll a 5 and we'll only get the infantry army up where we want them. But the potential pay-off is tremendous: if we can get a Panzer army (either the 1st now or the 2nd in our Movement Phase) next to Bryansk Front and the Soviets don't immediately detrain their units into Moscow or Tula, then we can hit Bryansk and advance all the way to the city.
Option 2: Breaking the bank
We place CBs on 11th Army (to make Dnepro safer) and on the 9th Army/3rd Panzer stack. If we can get a CA here and force the Soviets to withdraw, then not only have we secured a really crucial position, but also - again - forced them to put their reserves in Moscow or lose it (added bonus: even though we'll have to pull back at least one of the units in the stack, then 2nd Panzer can still ride up all the way to the hex next to Tula - then the Soviets HAVE to place units in both cities or lose at least one, and if they do, we can still encircle Voronezh on the back of Bryansk). This is nice and probably the best option after all (I initially favoured Option 1, but then I ran the numbers). Also a DR here doesn't hurt as all that much - the reds could take Smolensk, but it would be easy to retake with the same stack (and would also probably expose it to encirclement).
Option 3: Minimalist
Place CB on 4th Army and hope you can get Stalingrad Front away from Smolensk. An EX could be nice - it's yet another lockpick for the door to Moscow, although fixing the unit would cost 2 cards.
It is now Turn 9. The weather is Clear and variable. The Axis receive two Blitz! markers for this turn. The turn event is - again - Germans +1 card. Since it is a Sudden Death turn, let's see the Victory Point Track!
Yeah, umm, that's not really a near miss.
The Germans have one card left in hand, so they don't have to discard. They draw 5.
Out of supply markers placed on 1st and 2nd Panzer. It's getting tense.
Since there's been some confusion: this means their movement is capped at 3 MPs, they cannot advance more than one hex after combat and cannot use their Armour bonus. If attacked, they defend at two shifts in favour of the attacker. If eliminated, or if they do not receive supply until the Removals Phase (which comes before the Detraining Phase!), they surrender and go to the Surrendered Units Box. If one of them is removed to overstacking, it goes to the Destroyed Units Box instead. Finally, they cannot use the events of some cards.
The Axis may now improve their units back to their full strength side at a cost of 2 card discards per unit. The units eligible are the 6th Army, 9th Army, 11th Army, 16th Army and 18th Army.
They receive no new units this turn and do not have any units they can bring back onto the board from the Shattered, Destroyed or Surrendered unit boxes.
I need the decision on discards from Logicone. The deadline for it is Friday, February 21st, 7 PM GMT.
Very well then, no discards, no nothing, so I have no need to make a new update, really.
Herpicle, Davin Valkri and GenericRX should now post their movement orders. The deadline for them is Sunday, February 23rd, 7 PM GMT.