Part 94: Turn 94-98: April 1 - April 29, 1943

A new month and a world covered in mud.




The new unit for the month, on map mortars. I am going to be making quite a few of these, especially up north.



And a rule change for the new month, the command cap of Fronts rises from 72 to 90 meaning every front can now have 5 (18 CP) armies instead of 4 while remaining under cap. Right now most armies have some armored brigades, what I want to do is remove that armor and replace it with on-map artillery formations and then form a new, armored army from the now homeless brigades. Unfortunately all this costs AP so there's no way I can do this along the entire front at once.





In the north it looks like all the troops made it off Osel except for the 2 I have pinned on the coast. I highly doubt I'm going to be able to budge them from that spot until the mud ends so they get to hang out there for a month.






In Poland I force all the pocketed formations to surrender and bag a nice 100+ tanks and 30,000+ men.




In Romania only one of the pockets surrenders, the rest are in awful terrain and will have to wait for the weather to improve.




More support units directly attached to corps getting promoted, what a surprise.



Apparently the Germans did make it off the islands since all the hexes convert to my control. Now it's just a matter of getting the 2 trapped divisions to surrender.



The Germans have definitely abandoned the Baltic states, now it's just a matter of converting all the hexes.




One of the divisions trapped in Hungary surrenders, the other will follow shortly.




Beep boop more mud.



Soviet troops cross the northern border into Poland mostly un-contested, the German line is further back near Koenigsberg unless they've moved it again.



50 miles to Warsaw.



And 20 to Krakow.



The only real German activity this turn. I've only got a single army in southern Hungary now, the 3rd shock, and a German force has shown up to harass them. My goal here was to bottle up the 30 mile gap between lake Balaton and the Yugoslavian border but now I might need to rail in another army to contain this. Luckily the 3rd shock is also in Hungary and has mostly disengaged from the line and could be sent over here to deal with this.




Almost through with the first month of mud, the spring mud is awful.



The Volkhov front makes it to the coast, they're going to start compacting as the Leningrad and Northwest fronts make it this far south.



I find the absolute edge of my supply lines in the south but I still don't see any Germans. There's 3 million of them and if they don't defend the Vistula they might as well be in Paris for all the good they're going to do.



And down in the south the Germans are abandoning Hungary and appear to be pulling back to the Austrian border. This is prudent I suppose, most of the Austrian border is in a different weather zone than western Hungary is so there will be mud for longer.




The last turn of April but not the last mud turn



Literally the only interesting thing to happen this turn is those Germans that were trying to annoy me get cut off. I can't even force them to surrender because they'll just retreat into Yugoslavia and then sit there.




With April behind us the worst of the spring mud is over. The European zone (central Germany and western Hungary) are clear until the autumn mud turns and the rest of the front is going to alternate between mud and clear for the next month and a half. With mud locking down the whole front every other turn going on the offensive will be difficult so I will instead concentrate on continuing to compress my armies, fixing my rail lines and getting ready for July.



Germans!



More Germans! It's like someone told them that they should probably start actually defending since they need to protect Berlin for another 112 turns if they want a draw.



This picture illustrates 2 things. One, there's even more Germans down south and they appear to want to actually conduct some warfare. Two, look at the difference between counters north and south of the Danube. South of the Danube is a clear weather zone that extends to Vienna and north of the river is mud.



The German OoB has recovered dramatically over the mud turns and is now stronger than its been at any point during the war. Unfortunately for them so is the Soviet one.