Part 32: Turn 29: January 1, 1942

Happy new year! Time to start the new year off right and kill some Germans. Also the stream of brigades has finally stopped.



A bunch of new guards this turn, the Mountain division is attached to the 5th army in the Southwestern front, the rifles are attached to the 23rd in the Leningrad pocket and the Cavalry is part of the 1st Shock Army. The artillery is attached to the 30th near Moscow and the 12th near Kharkov.



A new year and a new ToE for our tank brigades. They're dramatically downsized again, down to less than 1,000 men in a brigade. This is the smallest they're going to get and they're going to slowly start going back up in size over the next 2 years or so.




The 2nd Shock army is finally in position, time to start pushing for Leningrad.



10 miles from opening up the city, maybe next turn.



This whole front is a goddamn mess, the terrain is awful and we're paying dearly for any ground we gain. On the plus side I encircle an infantry division and cut off the supply from 2 more.




Unlike in the North the Germans are slowly pulling back here, forcing us to advance up to their line before we attack.



Up by Kalinin we advance as far as we can, there's a ton of Germans here but we've got 2 Cavalry armies to push them back with.



On the southern end of the front we assault the 2 infantry divisions that got caught behind our lines last turn, capturing them. Overall our forces on this front are in much better shape then they are further north, allowing us to continually push the Germans back and never give them a chance to entrench like they are up north.




The Germans are pulling back and I'm bunched up to the point of being useless. Atleast the 1st Shock is in position to do some damage.



First up the 44th and 41st Cavalry armies snap shut around 2 panzer divisions and a motorized division. These are the forces we nearly encircled last turn which meant they were in poor supply this turn, preventing them from escaping.



Down by Kursk we're redeploying the 18th and 48th armies a bit south, there's too many troops up north for these armies to be useful up there. The rail lines down here are kind of a mess so it will take a turn or so for them to get into position on foot.




The Romanians are running but there's nowhere to run to down here, it's all open terrain back to the German border.



The magic of getting taken off the line for a week. Last week these guys were useless, barely fit to hold a place on the line. They got taken off and stuck on the rail in refit and now they're at 90% ToE and have plenty of men. The only thing wrong with them now is they're a little fatigued, but not any worse than than most of the Red Army.



West of Dnepropetrovsk we push forward only to be stopped dead by an elite panzer formation. They won't hold us back for long but it's enough to stop us from pushing forward here this turn.



The southern front expends most of its MP just trying to catch up with the fleeing Romanians. There appear to be a few smaller, elite German formations down here but they shouldn't slow us down too much.



I take this opportunity to deploy the 46th army to the southern tail of the front, this will allow us to condense the line a little further down here and pull a few tired divisions off the line.

We've still got 3 armies in reserve, the 42nd rifles and the 3rd and 4th Shock armies. I'm planning on deploying the 4th Shock up north next turn to put their cavalry corps to use but I don't have a home for the other two yet. I'm going to keep an eye out for an army or two that's particularly tired and swap them out when I get a chance.



The Germans wake up with the new year and launch more attacks than they have since the start of the Blizzard.



At Leningrad they throw a panzer army at me and bottle the city back up. Getting out of the city is going to be more difficult that I hoped.



At Kalinin they launch a series of attacks to push back an overextended cavalry army, the 57th. I'm probably going to take this army off the line next turn, they're exausted and the Germans are taking advantage of it.



And in the far south they launch a series of attacks that fail to do anything but get a bunch of Germans killed.



The Red Army launched 80 attacks this turn with 55 succeeding, probably our worst success rate yet. There were an unusually large number of reserve activations for the Germans this turn, possibly because I was launching more close odds combats in an attempt to take more ground. I think I'll switch back to using overwhelming force next turn.



We've nearly got losses down to a 2:1 ratio, we'll probably get it before the blizzard ends.