First scenario, egads!!!! Seems 43 is getting off to a bad start for the poor Germans. Bloody Russians keep pouring in from across the river of Death ( I am sure that is what Don translates into from Russian) I think it should be called the river Styx its such a hellish experience. I can see that Uncle Joe has been building more than just impossible to kill bunkers now as tanks and infantry and planes just seem to keep coming in a never ending cycle. Makes me glad I have some warm Tigers to snuggle up with. Started the scenario with around 5000 prestige, most of it was spent on trying to repair units. Anything other than a Tiger can really get shot up badly now. Especially the poor Luftwaffe, I think Adolf should tell the Luftwaffe to start targeting those factories that make the AA sights. I had one Stuka that lost 6 steps in one shot from Russian AA. At least you get a nice assortment of planes in the base core.
I found this scenario to be a brutal slugfest with Russians just constantly trying to cross the river. I think you should put the core 88 with the force closest to the Don as that seems to be where the AI starts sending its air power early on, I pretty much left it in the middle where it started and for almost half the game it just sat there doing nothing. I had no problems getting the prisoners to their designated areas, actually the first one down there had to move into the VH as suddenly from out of no where some Russians just popped up and almost took the city. 2 SE Panzers had to divert south to take care of that. I managed to finally get my objective for a MV but with almost no prestige left. I think there are too many AT units in the default core, they can dish it out ok but don't take much damage. Perhaps some more arty would have been more helpful.
If you don't have Tigers handy I doubt you will get too far in either of the first 2 games. Russian tanks are getting bigger and nastier.
The second game is similar to the first, the Russians will keep on trying to cross over the river into nicely placed ambushes where they will die on the bridges. Perhaps not as hairy as the first one since there is no snow or frozen rivers so the river crossings are a bit more difficult. Keep an eye out for sneaky bridge engineers or you will suddenly find a red horde appearing from your back side. Another nasty slug fest, didn't have enough prestige to even repair all my units so used the cheat code for a loan from the Reichs Bank
Once again Tigers save the day, or at the very least make it so you can keep on blitzing. I took the central airfield just south of the objective city, only to get it surrounded so my planes could not resupply for about 4 turns, eventually I cleared it, after I had taken the city and moved south.I have to wonder if these are the easy scenarios I hate to think what the more difficult ones will be like
So far 43 is not looking too good for the Germans, our planes are not quite as good, most of our AT is not so good, Russian AA is much more deadly.... no wonder we lost the war...