Part 57: Turn 54: June 25, 1942

Not much going on pre-turn this turn, just me being ecstatic the mud is gone




This front has been and continues to be basically static. I'm not going to be screenshotting this front again until something happens.




My line is pretty weak in a few places, needs to be shored up.



Pulling back a little to maintain a strong line, I'm not worried about giving a little land where I can't accomplish anything offensively.



Fixing up the line near the panzers, there's still a ton of them here so I need to be careful.



Near Orel a cavalry army opens up and blows through a weakened part of the line. It should be pretty easy to contain me but anything that lengthens the line or puts pressure on the Germans is a good thing.




There's a nasty looking panzer force right between the Bryansk and Southwestern fronts that I need to keep an eye on as I start moving west. The last thing I want is for a panzer to punch through my lines and cut me off.



I found this amusing, I clicked on these tank corps to move them up to the southwestern front in preparation for the next turn and the whole map light up like this. This is their normal movement range, not on trains. Well rested tank corps are nuts.



Shoring up this line so the panzers can't cut straight through it, I'm curious if they'll try driving straight south or what.



And the first turn of our summer offensive nets us 20 miles across the front and a bunch of successful battles. The Voronezh front was railed in this turn and will take over the brunt of the offensive action in 1-2 turns as the southwestern front becomes exhausted so that I can keep the pace up. If the Germans don't immediately rail in basically an entire army I should be at Kiev by the end of July-August. It's possible that they're going to cede this bulge to me and just entrench on the riverbanks but I don't think the Germans have enough counters free to fortify such a large area without weakening on another front.




With more and more German counters showing up down here every turn it's becoming rather difficult to launch a ton of attacks like I used to.



Just a few attacks up here, too many Germans to accomplish much.



By Odessa I take back the hex I lost but lack the MP to follow up. With German forts getting stronger and stronger down here this may be the extent of my advance until I can get some rifle corps and/or more artillery down here.




A trio of brutal German attacks push back my cavalry forces near Orel, seems the Germans weren't too keen about me blowing a 20 mile wide hole in their line.



A bunch of Germans show up on the southwestern front, I'm betting there's a bunch more back on that rail that I can't see just yet.



The push for Kiev is going well, we should make another 20+ miles next turn, the Germans haven't mustered enough to stop me.

German tank numbers have basically stopped rising and 1,500 tanks is nowhere near enough to mount a real offensive this summer. I have a feeling I'm not going to see a real German offensive this year. I should also note this was the one year anniversary of the start of the war, the Germans invaded on June 22 of last year.