Part 24: Turn 21: November 6, 1941

The last turn of mud. It was a necessary break to fix our army but goddamn am I glad to be done with these turns. Also since it's a new month a whole bunch of stuff just happened in the background.



More guards artillery attached to the 23rd in Leningrad, they're racking up quite the butcher's bill.



A new type of army! Shock armies are identical to normal armies except the leader gets +1 to all his admin rolls. They used to be a lot cooler and gave +5 morale to all (non-specialized, non-elite) units attached to them but they're still useful.




The Transcaucasus and Caucasus Military Districts get upgraded to fronts, giving us an enormous boost to our Admin points to reorganize with. This is really handy timing because of something that quietly happened in the background this turn.



Unlike the Germans the Soviets are allowed to build new on-map units. We haven't done this yet because from the start of the game until now all the prices for these units were quadrupled. Now that we're in November the prices drop to near-normal levels and we can start using our admin points to buy unit shells. We won't drop to the lowest price until May of '42.

The reason this is happening now is that starting in November destroyed Soviet units are no longer rebuilt for free. Up until now every unit that was destroyed or captured would come back as an empty shell in a few weeks, from now on we're on our own and we've got to rebuild our armies with admin points.



And finally our partisan attacks pick up a little bit. They must be accomplishing something because it seems like 2/3rds of the German line is in poor supply.



The last few brigades I have a home for go out to the frontlines so all we gotta do is keep organizing armies and shipping them out



I change my mind and make the 34th army an infantry army after taking most of their guards then rail them up north. They're a reserve for this rail line if things look dicey up here. Otherwise they're going to be the northern flank of the offensive to take back all this territory and fix my lines.



South of the Tula bulge I give the 1st Shock army most of my Guards and a ton of cavalry. Again the hope is to keep them off the line until December but if I can't then that's alright.



At Rostov I take advantage of the reduced build cost on units and form a new army, the 41st, from scratch. It'll be a few turns before they're capable of fighting so they might miss the start of the blizzard but they'll definitely contribute. We now have 9 armies in reserve and another 1-2 forming up at Moscow.




Snow! The ground has frozen up and so now all the rested German troop's CVs are through the roof. The Ice level goes from 0-10 and certain things happen at certain levels. Levels 1-2 of ice are 'loose ice' which imposes light penalties for crossing rivers or lakes, 3-4 are 'thin ice' which imposes very large penalties for rivers and lakes and 5+ is 'frozen solid. Once rivers are frozen solid they no longer impede movement at all and don't offer any defensive bonuses whatsoever. Major rivers don't freeze solid until ice 8 as of a recent patch. The ice level rises for every turn we spend in snow or blizzard and falls for mud and clear turns.



The Germans are attacking! They launch a series of attacks all across the line gaining 10 miles in most places. I don't screenshot it but the Germans throw away another 2,000 lives in Leningrad without winning a fight or reducing a fort.



More of the same near Moscow. A few attacks are launched west of the city but the majority of the attacks originate with the panzer army in the Tula bulge.



The Bryansk front suffers the worst of this renewed offensive, falling back 20 miles in some places. The line is close to breaking here but luckily we have ground to give up.



Attacks all along the southwestern front, especially around Kharkov. There's Romanians mixed in with Germans here to help them hold a cohesive line.



Only a handful of attacks in the south and the Germans don't manage to cross the Dnepr anywhere.



The Germans were as bored as I was apparently because they launched 61 attacks this week and won 51 of them. I don't think we'll have to commit reserves anywhere but we are going to have to give some hexes. Leningrad is holding, for now.

Losses spike for the first time in what feels like months but our OOB continues to grow.