Part 85: Turn 85: January 28, 1943

I could really use some more guards mortar formations, they're much rarer because not every army has mortar support and even the ones that do only have a handful.




The Germans remain determined to fight for every inch of land up here and I'm more than happy to oblige them.





I'm finally able to force those 3 divisions to surrender but they don't go down without a fight. The rest of the front blows some holes in the German line and continues to push west.



Further south it's not as great. In some places I can advance a single hex but not launch attacks and in others I can launch an attack but not occupy the hex. Overall a much more effective defense than just abandoning miles and miles of territory for free. Conversion of these fronts to rifle corps continues, cavalry forces will arrive in a week or two to try to speed up the rate of advance.




Should catch up to most of the German line this week, next week at the latest unless they retreat again.



The German line is apparently very weak here and is manned mostly by regiments and understrength divisions. Unfortunately I'm unable to take advantage of this because my supply situation here is still absolute garbage.



The Bryansk front is running into frontage problems, too many counters in too little space. Next turn I think I'm going to make a few rifle corps here to try to clean this up a little bit.




With the new German retreat my supply lines are going to rapidly become garbage down here again.



In the swamps the Don front encircles an Infantry division in their slog west. It looks like I'm going to run into real resistance in a turn or two which will more than likely bring this front to a complete halt for a few weeks.




Further south I re-encircle that mountain division and launch an attack on that infantry triple stack. The Germans could probably free the trapped division again net turn but if they do they're going to risk losing those 6 divisions, not a good trade.




The German line continues to look feeble down here but it looks like there's a lot of counters being railed in. Fine by me, if the Germans commit enough forces to bottle me up down here the line will be hopefully be weakened somewhere else where I'll be able to attack once my rails improve.



Nearly out of the Carpathians, just a few more weeks and this nightmare will be over and the Transcaucasus front will be free.



Speaking of the Transcaucasus front, they and the 4th shock army manage to encircle a Hungarian security and German infantry division that were caught out in rough terrain.



The northern half of the bulge. I'm concentrating most of my forces on driving west and lengthening this line to dilute the effect German reinforcements will have. I leave behind a cavalry army to hold the north line for now, next turn or the turn after I'll have another army here to free them up.



And the western half of the bulge. The majority of my forces are deployed here and the German line is incredibly flimsy. If the Germans do not immediately abandon their fortifications and pull back I will absolutely shred this entire force.




The Germans break the pocket in the swamps but the trapped formations fail to escape, they will be re-encircled again next week.



The pocket on the North Caucausus front's pocket is broken and the mountain division attempts to escape. Without many mobile units in this region I might not be able to punish the Germans for this but I'm going to try.



In Hungary my pocket is broken by a series of German attacks that scatter the tank brigades I was using to hold it. The Germans apparently are not going to put up with my light pockets anymore.



Supply is improving, truck numbers are improving, rails are catching up, Germans are running out of space to give up. Everything is going great.