Part 50: Turn 47: May 7, 1942

I'd use the airforce if I understood it but there's so little feedback on any of it it's very difficult to motivate myself to mess with it. Let's burn through these mud turns.





A new guards corps, and since it's a new month new rules!





Well that's unusual, the HQ wasn't bombed or caught up in a combat so I have no idea how he bit it. A little strange.




Starting this turn we now have the ability to fuse 2-3 rifle brigades into divisions. If you only use 2 brigades then you end up with an understrength rifle division that needs to spend a turn or two refitting before it will be useful. I'm going to be fusing nearly all of the rifle brigades we've been hoarding into divisions this turn. With our incredible winter I simply don't think I'll need this many counters to stop a German offensive.



A few minutes later and we've got 39 new infantry divisions. Some of these are going to be thrown into armies immediately and some are going to continue hanging around here, waiting for next month.





2 new on-map units this turn, an Anti-Tank brigade and a Gun brigade. I will very likely never build either of these because I prefer the support unit versions of both of these units.




Not much German activity up here for this first clear turn, unfortunately we can't really do much either. Defense in depth is great for blunting an offense but it makes it very hard to get the line in shape to launch strong attacks.



This is turning into some WW1 level bullshit up here. It's completely impossible for me to budge the Germans out of their forts and they won't budge me unless they bring their tanks back up to these awful forests and marshes.



I'm going to start throwing a few units that I don't need to move into static mode on this front. Setting a unit to static gives me a one time AP bonus and removes all the trucks from the unit, preventing them from moving. Units in static mode get a bonus to fortifying and a nifty white border that doesn't show up anywhere else in the game.




Uh another front where the German forts are too big and our frontline too thin to do anything useful.



I start pulling out of this bulge, I could only hold it by reducing myself to a single division per hex which I'm not terribly thrilled about doing.



I re-encircle the 2 divisions that I surrounded during the mud turns. This won't hold but these divisions can't be having a good time.




Huh we might be able to actually launch some attacks on this front.



Yup, we beat back a Luftwaffe regiment and a SS Polizei division. A bit further south from this we beat up an Italian and a Romanian division, making steady progress.




Ah the southern front, if there's anywhere we can get a few attacks in it'll be here.



Yup that looks about right.



And in the far south the armies I'd been holding in reserve behind the line through all of April leap to the front and shred the Romanian defenders in this region. Unfortunately the mud is going to give the Germans a chance to regroup here but it will also give me a chance to prepare for the inevitable counterattack.



This turn has made up my mind and barring some dramatic changes in priority from the German AI this will be where I concentrate all my offensive power for the summer. There's no point in committing these forces yet because they'll just get locked in place by the mud, but once I get a breakthrough in clear weather I intend to blast it wide open.

I guess this is as good of a time to go over my summer preparations. Down here in the far south we've got 3 armies in reserve, 2 cavalry and one armored. These could be used defensively but the plan for them to be the spearhead of any summer operation.

Further north near Kursk and Orel we've got 3 more armies in reserve, 2 infantry and 1 cavalry. These are very much intended as defensive armies and I don't see myself breaking the German line enough that I would gain anything from committing them.

At Moscow we have 2 armies in reserve with 2 more being formed. Right now we have a cavalry and infantry army and in the next 3-4 turns they will be joined by another infantry army and a new armored army.

Finally up near Leningrad we have the two newly formed infantry armies in reserve. Tanks are mostly useless up here and the only cavalry I had has been sucked into the black hole that is Leningrad so they're useless. 12 armies total isn't a huge strategic reserve and I plan to expand that number by July. In an absolute emergency I've still got the 40 odd divisions without HQs south of Moscow and around 27 airborne brigades on vacation at Gorky.




Mud is back, Germans take the week off.



Go away Mud.

Our armaments pool dips for the first time in a few turns and our OoB soars by nearly 300,000 men. These are related, all those rifle divisions that just got formed are starting to fill out. This is one of the reasons having an armament pool above 0 is really nice, if I was still sucking up everything I produced every turn there's no way I could have refit so many divisions all at once.