Part 28: Turn 25: December 4, 1941
Goddamn that is a lot of new units.
Among the new units we get a new Shock army. No guards got promoted this turn but this is even better.
The Moscow Defense Zone shows up. This is a military district sized command that will help relieve some of the overloaded fronts around Moscow. It is also hot pink.
A new ToE for our Rifle Divisions, more rifle squads, more submachine guns, more mortars. The only thing we lose is are
And the huge change for December, we're now allowed to spend 5 admin points to fuse 3 cavalry divisions into a single cavalry corps token. This is literally just 3 cavalry divisions glued together, their toe doesn't change at all. Since we're limited to 3 counters per hex this gives the ability to concentrate more firepower in a single hex than we previously could.
This is extremely important because Corps size counters are the only unit in the Soviet army capable of having support units directly attached to them. Normally support units are attached to the HQ and then the leader has to pass a check to send out the support units to any combat involving forces under his command. Not so for Corps, they are allowed to directly attach 3 support units that will always be committed every time to corps goes into combat.
The ice level is high enough up here that non-major rivers have frozen solid and give 0 defensive benefits.
It's a little difficult to see but there's 2 major rivers here. One running through Leningrad itself and one just to the east preventing us from relieving the city, we won't be able to break the siege until these rivers freeze over next turn.
Unable to move to assist Leningrad I settle for attacking all across the line. I'll take 1:1 losses with the Germans all day if they'll let me.
The Germans are giving land quickly here and we're going to have to chase them.
First things first in the north the 10th army expends all its MP advanding a single hex across the frozen river to link up with the rest of the Volkhov front. These forces are going to continue advancing and remove this hideous bulge in my lines up here.
The first offensive by our newly formed Cavalry Corps. All they could manage after moving up to the front was a hasty attack, moving in this weather is awful.
We begin pushing them out away from Moscow, there simply isn't enough line for the number of troops we have here to get attacks in and with the weather the way it is advancing to catch retreating Germans and hitting them again is very difficult.
Tula is retaken without a fight, the Germans have abandoned the city entirely. Our only enemy here is how slowly we move through enemy controlled hexes in this weather.
We also see the appearance of a new unit type here, the railroad repair units. These units are attached to HQs and automatically move out and convert damaged rail lines back to the thicker Russian gauge as we take them. At the moment we don't have any on-map railroad units that I can control, so we have to rely on these AI controlled ones to follow behind our advance and keep us in supply.
Axis allies in poor supply, be still my beating heart.
The Axis armored and motorized units are sitting behind the lines in reserve mode everywhere here. Every so often I launch an attack that should work and one of them comes screaming in an butchers me. Not much I can do, just keep moving up and launching attacks.
Most of the front just moves up to try to find some Germans, until we get down to here. The 1st Shock army opens up and rips the German line apart, driving them back 20 miles.
Theres no way we'll be able to cross the rivers down here, we're going to have to clear the western bank from our bridgeheads and then cross.
Near Kharkov the 61st and the 5th blast the Italians and Romanians holding the line out of the way and advance through the break in the line. I wonder if the Germans have anything in reserve down here to plug this up.
At Dnepropetrovsk we held 3 hexes on the west bank at the start of the turn, now we own all but 2. There aren't enough Germans down here to stop us doing whatever we want, the only thing holding us back was this river.
The southern front doesn't have enough MP to even attempt crossing this river, let alone start clearing the west bank. They're going to have to wait for the Caucasus front to push far enough in to clear this or for the river to freeze over.
We finish evacuating Stalino this turn. I'm not sure what I'm going to go after next, probably some more armament factories down here in the south.
The Germans continue to dig in all across the line but do not pull back, with luck we'll be able to launch a lot more attacks next turn.
They do launch a handful of attacks, a few even succeed. These are mostly against single divisions that moved out slightly beyond the main line to take control of hexes.
This turn the Red Army launched 75 attacks, 53 succeeded. No axis units routed or shattered.
Casualties from combats we initiated this turn, not a bad haul. The Germans are also suffering much worse than we are from the cold, as you can see in their OOB. They've got nearly 300,000 casualties off the line right now.
