Part 23: Turn 20: October 30, 1941

More brigades show up to enjoy the mud.



The Germans are cracking down on my partisans and this is the only one that manages to get an attack off this turn. The pace will pick back up in a few turns once the other brigades get more equipment from supply drops.



New guards! 2 artillery brigades and a mountain infantry division are given Guards status. All of these units are attached to the 23rd army in Leningrad.



Guards mountain infantry are neat units because mountian infantry are already basically elite units, making guards mountain infantry real terrors. Mountain divisions are huge divisions with nearly 14,000 men, tons of artillery, over 100 machine guns, an armored car scouting squad and their own personal sapper squad. The best thing is STAVKA won't fuck with their OOB until '44 so they're going to be huge forever.




Aha! Another excellent mustache. Good choice Stalin.



We're doing the same thing we did for the last 2 turns, rail rifle and tank brigades out to the frontlines and take rifle and cavalry divisions off the lines to form new armies with. Almost every rifle brigade has a home now and I've got armies forming up all over the place.



North of Moscow we have the newly formed 57th and the re-organized 34th. These armies are very cavalry heavy with only 4 infantry divisions each.



Near Tula we've got the 44th, which is again mostly cavalry and the 18th which is a normal infantry army, just very well equipped.



And down by Stalino we've got the newly formed Coastal Army. Another cavalry heavy army that has a few mountain divisions mixed in for some extra punching power.



Back up by Moscow we've got about 30 spare infantry divisions and 9 Tank divisions/brigades attached directly to STAVKA waiting on army HQs. Next turn and the turn after these units will be organized into 4 additional new armies and railed out to staging areas to refit. By the time the blizzard starts I'm planning on having 9-10 armies off the frontline waiting to pounce. Some of these might get pulled into the front during the snow depending on what the Germans do but the goal is to keep them off the frontline until December.






The Leningrad meatgrinder continues unabated for another week, I'm curious to see if we can hold on after the mud ends.



1 more mud turn and then the snow will start and the ground will freeze. Luckily we're basically done reorganizing our armies, there's only a few holdouts in the far south that will finish up next turn. Now we just need to get some more army HQ counters to stick all these units in.