"Enjoy the War."
 

So as someone who was a tremendous fan of RERomine's DAR reports, I thought I'd put together some general thoughts and a few anecdotal reports. Nothing as thoroughly detailed as what he did, though they were absolutely tremendous and very professional. But I figure after so many years of playing and so many versions of WINSPWW2 I might have a few thoughts worth sharing.

Generally I've spent most of my time playing US Army, German, Russian or Japanese forces. I tend to favor the Germans or Russians simply for the sheer variety of equipment. I find I enjoy longer campaigns where I can grow my forces from pitiful pre-war tankettes and poorly equipped infantry and "earn" the better stuff. That's half the fun for me, at least! The other half is trying to represent a historical unit, though due to the limitations of the game I do make some adjustments for playability A good example of that would be my current campaign with 5. SS-Wiking; historically this unit did not have a tank battalion until spring of 1942, and a StuG battalion was only attached in August of 1941, a month after they'd gone into action in Russia. Since I started it off as SS-Germania Regiment I did attach a tank battalion and in France a StuG battalion to the regiment, but with a twist: I have been issuing myself more out of date and foreign equipment.

Skoda 35(t)'s in France is definitely a bit of a challenge, to say the least.

Its only with Barbarossa that I allowed myself to upgrade to Panzer III's and IV's and replaced my few remaining Panzer I's with II's. Even then I was not overly generous; I kept about a platoon of the 3.7cm gunned III E's and the thinner armored Panzer IV C's and D's each. So my force is still a bit squishy, though very well rated in terms of experience thus far. Not too historical maybe, but not some kind of Teutonic death machine.

Some general thoughts and musings follow:

StuG's are some of my favorite pieces of equipment in this game, and its pretty historical to have a battalion of them to reinforce your infantry for almost any unit you can imagine. But boy, those shorter barrels early on really suck for accuracy. More than that, the limited number of shots means I find this unit more useful as a "fire brigade." As my SS-Pioniers tend to be my most experienced and deadliest troops, I like to pair them with the StuG's as a kind of rapid reaction force on the defense and in meeting engagements. Really, if there's something the StuG's and Pio's cannot handle, then nothing could. They'll really be a hard bitten bunch by the time of Stalingrad (which Wiking did not historically participate in).

I tend to enjoy the larger battles on the larger maps, the smallest I tend to play being 100x100 for earlier in the war and I expand that for Russia. I feel having more territory than you can realistically control at a given time is very true to the experiences of the German soldiers in the east, and it means that the A.I. often can infiltrate or flank you unexpectedly. Indeed, just like in real life I often anchor a flank with marshes or some impassable draw that I assume the Soviets cannot possibly penetrate; just to have them show up in my backfield much later on! You'd think I'd have caught on by now.

The humble (sw) Infanterie squad is probably one of my greatest assets. I don't much care for the 5cm mortar in and of itself, but combined with a sniper rifle and an AT rifle it can be used to "fill a hole" in the line anywhere its needed. Their large size also means they're much less likely to get killed off, like my normal AT rifle squads tend to be. Snipers in general are far more useful than I ever thought. It was during one of my Russian playthroughs that I started to really appreciate them (and I think everyone has a memory of a lone Polish or Greek sniper killing a tank with a hand grenade!). In my current SS playthrough they tend to have more kills than anyone and act as excellent scouts. You definitely get what you pay for, just don't expect them to be supermen.

While I generally agree with the common wisdom that 15cm and up is overkill for many battles and just makes your advance harder by breaking up the ground, I do have to say that of the infantry guns I much prefer the 15cm sIG over the 7.5cm IG. It carries a hefty number of rounds, has a decent rate of fire and pummels the crap out of whatever you hit with it. It also, surprisingly, does very well in bombardment. Not common practice as I understand it, but I find it more useful than trying to drag the thing right in front of the enemy and lobbing shells. Eventually I'll upgrade these to Sturmpanzers, wanting to experiment with using them more directly that way when they can take a few hits. I had good results using my ISU-152's and ISU-122's in this fashion.

A passing thought...anyone else feel like the LMG's don't get most of the kills? I suspect its due to the weapon multiplier on the first slot for rifles. Its not really a deal breaker, but I'd say the lowly Mauser K98 has caused many more losses to the enemy than most of my machineguns have. Not a complaint so much as an observation. I do find having a pair of LMG's per squad when I get Panzergrenadiers later is very tasty, and evens the odds considerably.

Most will probably think I'm a loon but I tend to buy the maximum core size possible, and here's how it currently breaks down as of June 1941:

Kommandeur der SS
Infanterie Kp SS+
Infanterie Kp SS+
Infanterie Kp SS+
Pionier Kp SS
IG Kp SS
Artillerie abt. (custom formation, for letting me field towed guns in a kp rather than in detached platoons)
off-map 15cm abt for counter-batttery fire primarily.
Panzer Kp (Panzer IV's and II's)
Panzer Kp (Panzer III's and II's)
Panzer Kp (Panzer III's and II's)
StuG abt (consisting of 3 batteries of StuG's with 4 vehicles per battery)
3x Panzerjaeger zug (a mixture of AT guns, self-propelled PaK 38's mounted on Sdkfz 10's and the odd Panzerjaeger I that survived France)
and a quartet of 8.8cm FlaK's that I keep in reserve for defensive battles.
I also have three AA FLaK batteries, building experience for later in the war when I'll really need them.

I tend to buy the trucks separately out of my support points, as I treat the kampfgruppe as a self-contained fighting force for the most part. I also built an SPW kp for later in the war so I can buy half-tracks in a large formation to move forward one or two companies when the division reaches Panzergrenadier/Panzer division status.

Overall I have found this is a combat-heavy battlegroup that can handle most things. It relies on the infantry to do most of the scouting and recce, making first contact so that the Panzers can strike from a favorable angle and gain the advantage. I will at times buy armored cars or motorcycle troops from support points if I have a particularly rough advance or assault mission and don't want to lose too many experienced troops on the approach.

More to come later.

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

Some quick thoughts on the long campaigns:

I tend not to replace destroyed units until an appointed period of "Refit" is reached. As an example, any unit that was destroyed during the Polish campaign I would not "Fix" or "Change" until I reached May 1940. This meant that over time, especially heavy combat or in-cautious decisions could leave a tank or infantry company well under-strength. It meant I also had to make careful decisions about which companies to commit to the main line and which to hold in reserve.

As an addendum, I make a point of repairing infantry squads up as long as they're not totally destroyed. For a long time I tried leaving them un-repaired until they hit 50% manpower but I found that artillery would disperse them far too quickly and easily and my core forces quickly bled out experience. It also meant I had to spend more rallies than I really could afford to.

Sometimes with replacements, especially if its in the middle of an ongoing campaign (like Russia) I'll issue out foreign equipment for a bit of a change of pace. So say I lose an MG37(t) or MG34 MMG, I may replace it with a Polish Maxim gun or a captured Russian one. Same with artillery. I don't do it with tanks very often as I found that the wild speed differences don't make it worthwhile, and their combat worth is extremely marginal many times. If I do it, I will at most replace a platoon.

I used to use captured T-34's all the time, but now I try to limit that to instances where I can clearly say that my forces occupied an abandoned enemy vehicle, so it usually means no more than one or two of those operating in my core by late 1941.

Later in the war (1944 onwards) I am toying with the idea of allowing parts of companies to be completely destroyed or only replacing when down to a bare handful of men to signifiy an increasingly dangerous situation. I feel like this all helps with the spirit of the campaign, and also to increase the challenge as my experience grows in my core.


As another addendum to my OOB, I do intend to break with historicity again in early 1943 by deleting the Panzerjaeger platoons and buying a Tiger I company. This may sound remarkable to most of you but I haven't got much experience using Tigers! I mostly have played early and some mid-war, so rarely do I get a chance to try them out. I have certainly used Russian heavies a lot, but I feel like their utility is quite different. Tigers are definitely more long range than the short range brawlers of the KV series.

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

Almost wrapped up the June fighting in the USSR. Some more thoughts follow:

I find myself being of two minds about artillery. On one hand, I know my men really appreciate it when I can do anything possible to reduce incoming mail, as the A.I. loves to hammer a location where it thinks you are. Sometimes it thinks rightly! And its not always possible to shift forces when you're bogged down in a fight and don't want to draw additional op-fire just to re-position away from artillery.

On the other hand, especially now that I'm on Der Ostfront, I find that the repeated infantry waves are best handled by pinning with machine-gun fire and then broken up with massed artillery. This takes time and shells that cannot be used against enemy artillery. So on a case by case basis, I have to decide what is the greater threat at a given time.

I must mention and re-mention how much I hate the Soviet 76mm "Rat's Tail." I loved using a platoon of these in my Soviet scenarios, but being on the receiving end is just too much! My one saving grace is that the computer usually puts them in the worst places for line of sight, and my mortars have racked up a lot of kills in neutralizing them.

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

Finally into July now. The fighting around Smolensk has been quite tough, mostly due to some AFV losses suffered during the fighting in Eastern Poland. None of the Panzer companies are heavily depleted but October and Operation Typhoon are a long way off. Smolensk and Kiev will greatly wear down my forces even if I do well, so I'll have to carefully husband my elites and veterans.

So far only a single KV-2 has been encountered, of the dreaded KV and T-34 families. It was mostly ineffective and withdrew after fierce fighting around Bialystok. Frankly I don't consider them a very grave threat, as they tend to fire on the move and this is horribly inaccurate. Either I plot artillery or close assault with infantry and move on.

Artillery has time and again been the key to breaking the Russian, and while we have not made use of rolling bombardments like the British, we do believe in maximum concentration of fire. The artillery regiment has been supplemented for the Smolensk campaign with some of the new Nebelwerfers. They've proven quite effective against enemy gun crews, and I think that's the utility I finally needed for them. Infantry or dug in units tend to need repeated hits, even in the open. But exposed gun crews that are strewn around an area are quite susceptible to a sudden and devastating rocket bombardment. Previously I'd been rather disappointed with the vaunted screaming mimi's so this is a welcome discovery.

So I found a new way to bleed points for the enemy: trucks! I employ a Kfz 70 Horch motorised battalion and each one costs about 12 points. Through careless maneuvering I let a T-26 shoot up several of them and when I realized the cost I suddenly felt a bit silly for letting a support unit die when it didn't need to! I never used to care much when trucks died but now I think I may have to care a little more, since some of these battles can get pretty close in points...

The Panzer II has found a new lease on life with me also. Previously whenever I used them they'd just die incessantly. Well, they still die more than I'd like, but I find that hanging just behind the infantry lets them shoot up enemy infantry and careless BT-7's that don't respect the fast-firing 2cm Kwk. I do intend to replace each light panzer platoon in the battalion with a full medium panzer platoon by July 1943, probably even before that.

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

Interesting to read how other people play this game. Keep posting!

And based on the size of your force, you are a loon ;^)

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

Thanks! Haha, I've been accused of much worse, so I'll take it. Its a running complaint in my mind that I can't add a Recce and AT company as well as everything else into the core. I don't think its technically possible without a whole lot of headaches, as 200 units was the hardcoded core limit for SP2. I doubt Andy has any interest in trying to circumvent that just for one player, so I'd never bother requesting something preposterous like that.

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

How long does it take you to play a turn/game with such a large force? I usually play with Germans as a reinforced company, with the Russians as a battalion. And it will take me a couple of evenings to finish a battle...less time with SPMBT, as I feel that game flows quicker (or at least kills stuff faster ;^)

The only time I tried using forces as big as your are using was the Red Storm Rising campaign in SPMBT. I never finished it, as it took forever just to move all the units, and I never really managed to get more than a battalion into actual combat. I always wanted to redo that campaign with maybe a battalion instead of a whole regiment.

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

Truthfully I usually modify the turn count to be no more than thirty. Both for time reasons and also because I feel that anything past that with such a large force is going to just allow the A.I. to reenforce failure. Frankly most of the time you will have the upper hand by turn ten to fifteen (especally in meeting engagements) and its just a matter of time. It helps to keep the kills from getting into ridiculous proportions. On average I run about 15-20 turns on a 100x100 map and this translates to I'd say about 3 days per battle, give or take. I don't play straight through, usually a few hours at a time and I'm watching stuff while I play.

Its quite relaxing actually, the big time killer is all the op-fire the A.I. does on both sides. I've gotten to the point where moving such a large force is not too tedious, and I start at the top of the map and work my way down the line. Often times you don't have full contact with the enemy until about turn 5-6 so the first few go very fast. I will make myself take a break if a favorite commander dies or if I feel like its turning into a slog. You also have to consider I've been playing since 1996 so I think if you do it enough it just doesn't seem much like a chore anymore! I do miss the faster pace of Close Combat sometimes though, believe me.

I do not recommend this setup unless you enjoy playing motorised or mechanized infantry, because its too little time for foot-sloggers to make it anywhere useful, even on a 100x100. At some point I may attempt to do the more sensible builds I saw RERomine do (which was about an infantry battalion plus one tank company + support elements at most).

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

So I thought I'd recount the war journal for "SS-Germania" up till the Russian campaign.

We fought three battles in Poland, one at the Polish border, one outside Krakow and one inside the ancient city. Nothing especially noteworthy as I've done Poland countless times, but the city-fight in Krakow was the most interesting. I used one of the Warsaw maps prebuilt in the game, and it worked well for that task. We had fierce street fighting but as the Poles lacked time to entrench their defenses they could only delay us. One utility I discovered of the otherwise questionable level bombers was to use them as a kind of crude recce. At the start of the battle even if their bombs landed nowhere near the enemy, they often got a glimpse of enemy artillery and tank positions, which allowed us to more accurately suppress the enemy.

France was a series of six battles, consisting of Laon, the Seine River, a battle in Zeeland, one in Western France and curving back to Amiens and ending at Dunkirk. The French were intractable as usual, with my Skoda 38 and 35's being worse than useless against the majority. I had to engage with either 8.8 cm guns or close infantry assault which on most early war SS infantry are sorely lacking. The SS-Pioniers were the real saviors here, eliminating multiple heavy tanks with heavy losses. Most are now elite status because of France alone! The British were rough enough though, as their plethora of AT rifles (something the Poles also had much of) made life dangerous for my depleted Panzer battalion. But the true danger was in their artillery, which is always very heavy, frequent, and dangerously accurate. I loathe British artillery even more than Russian for those reasons. Zeeland was my sole battle against the Dutch and they surprised me with their tenacity despite lacking even medium machineguns in any appreciable number or any significant artillery. Their Anti-tank guns and marines made for tough foes as I attacked across flooded dikes and muddy fields, leaving me with a few embarrassing losses and nearly costing me the battle!

I will be very frank, the Balkan campaigns are pretty much a pushover, so much so that I edited most missions to be not more than 10-15 turns at most to keep the flow going. The Yugoslavs are probably the most pitiful army you'll fight in any Long Campaign, as they simply do not have the experience, morale or technology or even numbers to keep you from doing as you please. The Greeks put up a hard fight but until they receive British equipment in April they are not a serious threat either. Even then they fight hard but can do little to stop you. I found them dangerous mostly in their stubbornness, not out of any technical proficiency. The fights against the ANZAC and British forces were fairly easy for the most part, as they used the same equipment as in France. This time however, I had up-armored Skoda 38(t)'s to show for my efforts, and it made things easier.

Finally, we came to the end of that interminable campaign and launched into Russia with fresh reinforcements, new tanks and new leaders.

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

Thank you very much for your reporting.

Concerning the difference between tayloring a battlegroup from historical available force if you want tp play the role of a "real" unit" and the force you would like to have, I prefer the historical approach. To deal with the limitations is for me much more fun than having always the best equipment.

Nevertheless, you can explain additions by building up a battle group with some units drawn from army or corps (in SS case), if needed. So, the army your battle group is attached to, will have units needed by you ;-) and beef you up!

And I love it to have a story combining the battles.

I myself recently started a campaign in June 1941 with a German infantry bataillon and an AAR (in German). If things go well I will try to augment the force with StuGs oder Panzerjäger. At the moment I have only an AT company whith czech Guns. But that is for me the real fun ... try to survive and be able to change to 76,2mm-"prey-guns ... or have to deal with T34 in the winter with other items (what most of the German infantry had to do in 41 and 42).

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

Thats very much how I look at it. Its also partially a problem of how to represent a division that was effectively destroyed by early 1944 without just throwing a fight. Same problem how you play as Soviets from 1941 onwards as a coherent force, considering the grotesque losses.

Honestly, the real area where I'm being ahistorical is in the quantity and concentration of tank forces I'm fielding. While it was very normal to allocate a tank company to a schutzen / Panzergrenadier company, I'm still throwing quite a lot at the Soviets and often have local superiority if not numerical supremecy.

I try to at least acknowledge when I am deviating from history rather than just humming and pretending ignorance. If it makes you feel any better, I'm being a bit more historical with my new Japanese campaign, with foot infantry, only a company of slow, unreliable tanks, and low caliber dispersed artillery. Its definitely a different sort of war!

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

You could manipulate the generated scenario and increase the units for the Russians.

I do that very often to get a force that makes sense in my story telling, change the ranks of my soliers - even in 1941 captains were on a regular basis bataillon commanders etc in the Wehrmacht - and to make it more difficult for me. Especially in a German-Russian campaign it makes sense to do that.

You may know what is coming but you can do that after using your support points ...

Once I tried to simulate a "Bagration"-battle by having a 8:1 point ratio and having the AI making a rivercrossing. My force was destoyed but it was really extremly competitive and gaves you the feeling facing a behemoth. At least, the result was very historic ;)

I you like, I could also try to set up your enemy ....:cool:

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

I may take you up on that offer at some point! As it stands, I find that I can win most battles but the real challenge to me is preserving my forces from battle to battle, rather than winning decisively every time. Sometimes I shorten turns or use the turn time limits to "encourage" me to push more aggressively and risk more.

Honestly by the end of July my armored forces were a shambles due to attrition (remember, I'm not repairing fully destroyed vehicles!). I allowed myself a rebuild in August but I fully expect that by December or even October I will need another rebuild and my overall force experience will be diluted.

Right now we're slugging it out around Kiev, lots of advances and meeting engagements over very open sight terrain. Means those scary Rat Tail's get free shots at me if I don't litter the area with smoke :eek:

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

I see.

I do not like the time pressure and, therefore, increase instead the number of enemies. To limit the replacements to a historical amount is also a good way to make it more challenging. At the moment I have fully replaced all losses which were marginal.

In my current "infantry"-campaign I had up to now to meeting engagements in which I was saved by a StuG-batteryI bought with my support points. In both battles the AI had 40 (light)tanks.In the first battle, I had the luck that the AI moved through woods and was ambushed by the infantry, in the second one the StuGs and my Pak did the work.

Up to now I have not augmented the enemy force and will remain cautious with this because the number of tanks was a nasty surprise. I write an AAR in German about it on http://www.si-games.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27979. I assume that you will not understand the text but there are some screenshots of the 2 battles.

The third one will be an advance-mission with sight of 2 hexes, i. e. a night attack.

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

I can at least catch the gist of it, though my German is pretty poor to non-existent ;) Its a really cool AAR though, thank you for sharing it!

I do like big fights but the problem with them is that then the game can devolve into a bit of a slog. The enemy is everywhere so maneuver is impossible or pointless, and you're as well off going straight up the middle as anywhere else. That and its pretty exhausting to annihilate hundreds of Soviet tanks with just AT guns and close assault, so I prefer to integrate my tanks into my core early on.

It may not be a strictly "tanker" game, but it IS a combined arms game. So I forgive myself the toys I take sometimes. Overall I like having a strong infantry component that is supported by a powerful armored component, that works in close conjunction with the artillery. I do think that if you're playing strictly as Grenadiers/Infanterie you can be forgiven for being a full batterie of StuG's in 1941 onward. It was very common for them to be available (indeed, often the only armor that infantry ever saw was a self-propelled gun).

The other alternative if you've hit 1942 would be to represent the Marder II's and III's that were added to the infantry division's anti-tank battalion TOE, but I think those were only the most fortunate units. I know one of those was the Reichsgrenadier-Division Hoch-und Deutschmeister (44th ID). Like Wiking, it was destroyed at least once during its career but it had access to an unusual amount of heavy weapons and equipment which makes things a little more interesting to me than the basic line divisions.

Someone should do a campaign for them, both pre and post Stalingrad!

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

Got the point concering moving/maneuver. I think you right that the big numbers lowers the fun with tank. Since I am an infantry-man (served in the German army as "Jäger", moving and maneuver is not so important for me or there is still enough space for me.

And you are right that the ordinary German rifleman never so a German tank. In my AAR I play that my batallion is part of the 9th army. And, having had a look on the OOB, the entire army should not have had a single tank. So my StuG support is already ahistorical ... but the game should make fun so I accepted this "incorrectness".

I will try to set-up a company of "prey-tanks" :-)

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

You're absolutely right, its more important to have fun than to adhere blindly to historical convention. Also interesting to hear that you served, I notice an awful lot of vets seem to really enjoy Steel Panthers. I've always wished I could have done that, but it was not to be, sadly.

9th Armee? That means you'll be up for Operation Mars after 1941. Nasty business that, with von Model and all. I think you can definitely be excused a single StuG batterie quite frankly! It is often forgotten just how much the German landser had to do with very little. As for myself, I am under 1st Panzer-Armee, XIV-Korps under von Kleist. A bit more glamorous maybe, but we have our own hard share of fighting too.

Right now its the race to the Dnieper river! I don't have time for a full report, but I'll give you this much: So far its mostly not too bad, even the Panzer II's are able to help out with the lighter Soviet tanks. The heaviest we've seen is that single KV-2 back in June, so we're feeling confident. Our Panzerjaeger-kompanie was dispersed so was not able to accompany us any further. Replacement weapons and equipment have reached us steadily since our halt in late July, and we are approaching the suburbs of Kiev. Germania, Nordland and Westland are all mostly at full strength, and the Panzer-Abteilung has a number of the newly produced III Ausf J and IV Ausf F's to replace the III E's lost in the first two months.

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

maybe, "veterans" like me who had not to fight in a war, like wargames. I served in the early 80ies and fortunately the cold war remained cold. The border to the GDR was only some kilometres away.

Yes ... the big counterstroke will come, afterward the battles around Rschew in 1942 and, maybe, if the battlegroup performs well, it is thrown into operation "Wintergewitter", the attempt to relief 6. army. The Wehrmacht gathered everything on the whole front and even called 6. tank division from France. But we will see.

In 1943, 9th army attacked in the northern pincer of Kursk, was destroyed in 1944 during Bagration and, finally fought after some replacement on the Seelower height.

So ... many dramatic situations will occur

;)

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

Well, I'm glad your time in the service remained peaceful. It would not have been much fun for anyone if it had been otherwise. :) And yes, I've got Korsun pocket and Bagration to look forward to. And then the battles around Budapest and Warsaw. Hard times ahead.

A bit more detail: Right now I'm conducting a three pronged advance on Kiev. I've been experimenting with new artillery tactics than what I usually do. In the past I would only call artillery when I specfically spotted an enemy unit or pounding say, a roadway that I expected them to come down. This time I was more pro-active, and for my current Advance mission, I conducted a rolling bombardment right in front of a line of smoke missions. I do two "curtains" of smoke, with the artillery gradually shifting from West to East to suppress anything that my motor-infanterie will come across. So far its worked very well.

Stealing some ideas from the British works on occasion.

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

lol (concerning the Brits)

Funny, I have to perform a night assault (2 hexes sight) and was thinking about the same, i . e. trying to implement a fire curtain prior to contact ...

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

You know, with my Japanese campaign I'm suspecting I'll appreciate night assaults and advances much more than I do as the Germans. The way I play the game is almost totally different.

I have a lot more concern for the sectors of responsibility with my infantry battalion in the IJA campaign. For the fast moving Germans, those lines are more flexible. Since I can shift a StuG platoon North or South to assist as needed, and often times we end up dogpiling in the enemy's backfield by the end of the battle. With the Japanese, I have to make much more careful advances and carefully allocate resources because even my tanks and cavalry are not terribly fast. A night advance could work quite a bit better as it means I don't have to worry about dropping smoke as much with my long artillery call times.

Also means I can mitigate enemy automatic weapons and get right in and on top of them :D

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

Yeah .... with Japanes that might work BANZAI !!! :D

But I have some doubts that it works if my rather green German infantry moves right into a Maxim MG or a PPsh-Squad

:D

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

Yeah, the morale bonuses for the SS are about the only real reason to use them. They're not much better than regular Grenadiers besides that. Still, if your scouts can find the enemy first you can isolate and destroy them in detail. The big issue with fighting Soviets is always that overlapping fire they get, which is less of a problem at night. I'll have to check back into your AAR when you update it next :)

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

Oh, battle No. 3 was easy.

I dispersed a StuG battery among the infantry and that saved the day. The infantry resp. the scouts identified the russians and the StuG put them in retreat and rout-modus very easily.

In 1941 infantry alone cannot really defend against tanks at a distance of 2 or more hexes. I rumbled 2 times into russian tanks in the night and lost 2 StuGs but losses were very low.

Now I have a river crossing ...

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

Yeah, my own infantry have to "hide with pride" in the woods or rough terrain even when they have tellermines or grenade bundles. I use smoke grenades liberally to break line of sight and get on the reverse of a slope so that when the tanks chase them, I can assault them more easily.

Good luck with the river crossing! It's my least favorite mission in this game! :eek:

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

some readers of my AAR asked for it and it is a real challenge , therefore ....

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

I noticed in your thread you certainly seem to have an enthusiastic following (even if I cannot really tell what anyone is saying! I don't speak German sadly). I've toyed with buying a Fallschirmjäger company to airland on the other side of the river during a crossing but I suspect they'd just get massacred from landing right on top of enemy defences :) Maybe on a larger map at a lower point value I could get away with it though.

I've been away from the game for a few weeks now as school has been really intense. But I'm going to try and make some time for it tonight; I'm about halfway through the last battle in September 1941 around Kiev. I also found that list of Battle Location numbers in the game directory, which wlill be nice for customizing the maps. The random maps can be fun at times, but I like variety.

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

Finally pushed past Kiev and well into October now. Had an extremely nasty Delay night battle in the rain with no moon! (visibility 1!) That was an ugly one, T-34's popping up everywhere and no real way to stop them except desperation. I had kept all the Pioniers in reserve around each grouping of objectives, and counter-attacked hard as soon as any flags flipped. More losses than I wanted though.

We re-fit our lost StuG's with Ausf E's, which really are not much of a change except some AP shot and LMG mounts for our Mg34's. Cest la vie.

I'm pretty beat up, as you would expect. III. Panzerkompanie is reporting just a handful of operational tanks out of a total of 17. Every Schutzenkompanie has taken losses and eroded their "elite" status quite a bit. We're missing a lot of our anti-tank teams due to attrition, and snipers are in short supply. Artillery thankfully has been untouched, and unlike the historical Germans I am unlikely to lose much of it in the winter battles of 1941.

I have to admit, that I am tempted to delete some of those formations to make it "more fair" later on. At full strength artillery I can probably count on beating almost any attack without massive losses. So maybe in late 1942 we'll trim that down and see how it goes. :)

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

Sounds much more nasty or "challenging" than my battles.

Even the river crossing goes rather well despite the fact that Nebelwerfer killed some of my squads with friendly fire. The morale of the Russians is still very low and this seems to be the important fact at the moment.

I had a very similar night battle in a SP MBT campaign with a German second-line infantry ("Jäger") batallion. I got the impression that it is better to give up the battle than to fight and have the core units destroyed.

I think, other types of AAR have more enthusiats because for the reader a report about a battle between 2 humans is more exciting.

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

Absolutely, its much better to throw the fight than to wreck your core forces. Not that you shouldn't try for the objectives, but if it means sacrificing your core veterans its just going to make things needlessly hard in the future. Of course, sometimes you can't avoid it...and I am even toying with deleting the third tank platoon out of my companies to represent operational and strategic losses. Its all a long way off though, so for now I'll stick with my TOE.

You're right about human vs human matches being more popular. The A.I puts up a good fight but after so many years we both know how to beat it, even against all odds. But I've always liked going at my own pace and doing things my own way, so I tend to edit my OOB a lot with MOBHACK. Most opponents wouldn't be too keen on that, so I'll stick with singleplayer for now. :)

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

I've played quite a bit with IJA. I usually run an infantry battalion as my core force. Depending on the type of mission, I'll get to spend support points on Armor, Engineers and Recce if it's an Assault or AT guns if its a Defend.

It used to be far easier for the infantry to be successful in their close assaults on armor. And the standard IJA infantry has sufficient Morale to attempt close assaults.

The LC for Japan from 1937 will take you across at least 2 years of fighting Nat Chinese and Chinese Communists, before going against Soviets from '38 to '39. That's a pretty good time to fight against the Soviets, they do not have such heavy armor yet.

Then if you continue till '41, you'll have the opportunity to go into SouthEast Asia against British forces. By '42-'43, you'll be able to fight against USA, UK, Australia till end of the war. It's a very wide-ranging LC.

I've had my battalion rebuilt several times. Their equipment never did improve as the war got on, so it always got comparatively more challenging.

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

I've had to put my IJA campaign on hold for the time being since I'm trying out Monty's DAS REICH mod for Steel Panthers MBT. I actually started mine in 1931 in Manchuria and found it a very refreshing change of pace. It is very infantry focused as you said, and I think it might take some getting used to to not see periodic upgrades for my infantry :) I did enjoy exploring a new order of battle and approaching the game from a fresh perspective, and I fully intend to return to Imperial Japan at some point to get my fill of infantry combat in the jungles of the pacific and asia.

But you're absolutely right, it does get very challenging as things go on. Primarily I think because of the artillery situation and less because of the armor: the Japanese infantry can handle most tanks if they use the terrain correctly, but the Allied infantry can be rough to deal with since Japanese infantry battalions have less or lower quality artillery than a lot of their European counterparts. In the battles I played I felt like I was relying much more on my machineguns and my snipers to fix the enemy so that I could overwhelm them with fire. Tanks (I only bought one company and broke it up amongst the battalion of infantry) were also useful for this but so painfully slow and undergunned that you couldn't expect them to handle everything on their own.

Re: "Enjoy the War."
 

So I have a chronic habit of restarting this time I cooked up a new OOB that's probably a little bit less insane than what I had before.

1x Battalion HQ

2x SS Panzergreandiere Kompanie starting with Horch Kfz. 70 Trucks
*1x Kompanie HQ
*3x SS PzG Zug (4 Rifle squads with 1 AT rifle)
*1x SS MG Zug (4 MG08 HMG)
*1x SS Pioniere Zug (4 squads)
*1x SS GrW Batterie (4 8cm tubes)
*1x SS Spaher Zug (3 squads of 6 men with Kfz 15 trucks)

2x SS Panzerkompanie
*I Kompanie with 12 PzKw 38(t) Ausf. A and 5 PzKw II Ausf. B
*II Kompanie with 12 PzKw 35(t) Ausf. A and 5 PzKw II Ausf. B

1x SS Artillerie Abteilung
*1 SS Observer
*3x 4 gun 10.5cm gun batterie

1x SS Korp level artillery
*3x 15cm batterie
*1x 21cm Batterie

1x SS Panzerspaeh kompanie
*6x SdKfz 231 8 Rad
*13x SdKfz 222 4 Rad

So this gives me integral artillery, infantry, engineering assets, armor and tons of recon. I also have a Kradschutzen company tagging along that I'll drop for an under-strength Tiger company later in 1943. Overall this is more of a "Kampfgruppe" than an on paper infantry battalion. Its very flexible and probably heavy on the artillery, but considering how much arty I have to receive from the Allies and Soviets I stopped feeling bad about that really quick. Its often essential for breaking massed infantry attacks.