With the briefing telling me to expect less Soviet planes I will leave 2 of the FWs at home, no 8.8cm as well.
The Yak-9D is a nasty bugger, in the end only the Il-2 got away with 7HP left.
The Su-122 seems too weak for the units the Soviets are fielding now - nearly lost it - time to upgrade them later.
While trying to follow the retreating Il-2 I stumbled upon another group of planes, looks like the Il-2 will get away for now. While trying to guess where the Il-2 I ran right into a Hurricane, for a map where the briefing indicates 2 large groups of planes I would have expected them to be put closer together. And saw Lt. Spikolov in his 19STR T34-/43 with 4 stars, this one might be interesting. The Kv-85 and the IS-1 look interesting, too, finally something close to a match for my Tigers.
The IS-1 and the KV-85 were destroyed at turn 3 without any problems, even though the IS-1 needed a Ju 87G attack followed by a Tiger - likely the curse of having a too well equiped core. The easternmost bridge across the Seym was reached as well.
Crossed the river into Polevaya on turn 4 and got stopped cold by the units sitting there, but with the AAA taken out the situation does not look too bad. Sadly the Lt. did not have any chance, Ju 87G + Tiger did the trick again. The fortifications in front of Kursk are reached.
Got my first KV-85 and if I didnt field tons of Tigers I think I would like that one, it even starts with 100XP. Got a Captain next - sadly he tried to stop me by moving onto a bridge - lets see if a Major will follow
Trying to get into Kursk proved to be fairly difficult, but since there is still a fairly long way to go and I expect some serious opposition around Kursk I can not afford to wait for more artillery, but the repair bill will be quite high again. Took the 3 Kursk hexes south of the river by turn 6 and destroyed 1 AAA.
Nope, no Major, another Lt. in a T34/43 (Owolan), sadly he likes to move onto bridges, too.
Took the Besedino airfield at turn 8, most of the Luftwaffe was really short on ammo here. Reached Starovo - the city and its airfield are undefended. The 2nd and 3rd armory are taken.
The last armory is taken at turn 10 and with the exception of 1 Kursk flag the front runs roughly to the south of Iskra - Vinnikovo, depending how many units/prestige the AI still has as reserves having 6 more turns might be a close call.
At turn 13 I statred to attack the 3 last remaining flags (2 for DV), so the resistance was not that hard on the way there, but the units themself are very well dug in, but with no respawn possible at the moment I am not worried about getting a DV.
By turn 14 all enemy units are destroyed and I farm kills for 2 more turns.
DV at 16/16 with 25.2k prestige, but a lot will be spend on repairs again.
Good scenario again, but I didnt really like the way the Red Airforce behaved, as I mentioned before I would have expected 2 large groups of enemies, but it felt like more smaller groups + some extra single fighter respawn. Due to my MEs I didnt not really struggle with them, but it is misleading. Soviets armor slowly starts to catch up to the Tigers, so I assume that the losses will get even higher. And since a fairly Tiger heavy core is not that unlikely at this point in the campaign I think that more prestige does sound like a good idea now (unless there is a large scenario award). The number of enemies seemed about right, but either change the briefing a bit or there should be fewer planes than what I saw.
After repairs prestige is down to 21.8k from 23.4k - a loss of 1.6k while gaining 2 KV-85s (likely still a loss even after selling those 2).