Part 52: Turn 49: May 21, 1942

Ah a clear turn, only 3 more turns of this awful mud and then I'm free.



Our second tank army is coming along nicely, it's ready to go once I can scrounge up 46 admin points to turn the rest of these brigades into corps and fit them out with support units.



And another infantry army forms up, we've now got 6 of these things waiting for HQs. The plan is to have all of these combat ready and deployed by July which is just 5 turns away, so 250 admin points plus the 14 in my pool right now. I need to form 1 more HQ (25), fuse my tank brigades (40) and give them support units (6), fuse these rifles (180) and give them support units (54) for a total of 305 admin points needed. Add in another ~10-20 AP for support units on HQs and we're clearly not going to make it. Luckily we're getting a new front in a few turns which will give us a one time infusion of extra AP which should just allow us to finish all this up on time.




The Germans didn't do anything up here and neither do we. I launch no attacks and just shift some refitting divisions around.




Not much we can do here either, most of the German activity is further south and the forts are too big for me to shift.




We do finally clean up those 2 infantry divisions, only 16,000 men between the two divisions though.




This front is much more fluid, the Germans are attacking more and the forts aren't impenetrable monstrosities.



Near Orel we're able to push back a pair of divisions, not much but it's something.



The rest of the front pushes some Axis allies around, routing most of them.



Slightly further south we open up a huge gap in the line and I commit the 62nd army to keep it open



Down at the tail end of the front I commit my other reserve army for this area, the Coastal Army and ruin the German line while encircling a division. I had to commit tank brigades to finish the pocket so I really doubt it will hold but it's mud next turn so anything could happen.




Lots of Germans are showing up down here and most of them are well rested and refit. That said there just aren't enough to go around and I should be able to get some attacks in.



On the northern flank of this front there's only a few Germans so we're free to rout any Romanian counter we can lay hands on.



In the south it's more difficult, there's more Germans and more forts. I'm still able to make some progress but it has slowed down.



The 1st shock is nearly able to shift a pair of German divisions in a fort but they fail to force a retreat. At least the sappers took out the fort so it wasn't a complete waste.



In the center of the front is the largest concentration of German armor I've seen in a long time. These guys are still very scary so I'm going to have to keep an eye on them once the mud stops fucking with everyone. A quick count of just the counters I can see says there's 9 panzer divisions and 8 motorized divisions concentrated into 70 miles of the front. There's also 2 Hungarian tank divisions I wouldn't normally count but they seem to be pretty well equipped. The problem they'll have, as you can see in this screenshot, is that their flanks are already over stressed and they haven't even begun advancing yet.




The mud returns so there's only 1 attack from Axis forces, seen here near Orel.



The mud also seems to be preventing the Germans from reinforcing this area properly so
we'll be able to continue our march west here. Unfortunately we've got back to back mud turns on turn 50 and 51 so we're not going to make a whole lot of ground.



I'm so sick of mud.