Part 22: Turn 19: October 23, 1941

Mud turns are pretty boring.



Partisans doing their thing, keep up the good work guys this is the absolute best time to blow up rails.



A new guards unit, and it's not in the 34th army! It's actually attached directly to STAVKA, because it was attached to the 34th army at the start of last turn and I pulled it off to get the army under its command cap.



With the Germans not attacking and half their army out of supply it's time to continue reorganizing the Red Army.



First off we form a new army, the 56th and rail it up north to help hold the rail line. I really don't want to lose this rail during the snow turns so we're going to start entrenching it now.



Now I spend a shitload of time swapping out frontline divisions for brigades, a task which is sadly best accomplished by making a spreadsheet. I've got a ton of rifle and tank brigades that are perfect for digging fortifications and holding a hex at the back of the line but lack the power of divisions for offensive operations, so I'm giving every army I can a few rifle/tank brigades in exchange for divisions. These divisions get railed to Moscow or other staging areas and get turned into new armies and the brigades take over their hexes at the back of the line.

I like having a few (2-3) tank brigades in my frontline armies because it adds some hardness to the lines and a punch to their attacks. The tanks stay on the rear of the line in reserve mode and zip into any offensive or defensive combats that occur with their extremely high MP. The rifle brigades on the other hand are just good at getting punched. In previous versions you could merge rifle brigades into divisions in '41 but that got patched out and now you have to keep all your brigades around until the spring of '42.

The upside to all this tedium is we've got about ~60-70 divisions in reserve now. The downside is I'm railing so many units I actually use up my entire rail cap moving units around and I can't evacuate any factories.



Highlighted in blue we have our second new army of the turn, the 55th. These guys are taking the 34th's place on the line but because of the mud this swapping operation will take more than 1 turn.






The meatgrinder in Leningrad continues. ~400 Germans a day have been dying in Leningrad for the last 3 weeks, how long can they keep this up?



A single successful attack is launched near Tula, which is now in supply again.



And another near Kharkov.



These are very short updates for very long turns.