Blitzkrieg AAR

[barca20c]

ENTRY 1: INTRODUCTION AND 11 POINTS
As a newbie, I recently "won" the Blitzkrieg campaign on normal difficulty. (I say "won" because I did not take Moscow.) "Winning" the Blitzkrieg campaign was great fun and comparable to other great experiences I've had with solitaire gaming, such as winning Gettysburg as the CSA in Civil War General, becoming Marshal of the Rhodoks in Mount & Blade Warband, or winning my first solitaire game of Magic Realm (Avalon Hill) playing the Amazon. After winning "Boot Camp" easily (on easy level), I believed that I knew the game and that the game would be easy, neither of which were true.
I had to learn a number of basic principles the hard way:
1. Play close attention to the Mission Briefings. If the Mission Briefing tells you to take Narvik airfield fast, you had better do it, and fast. If the Mission Briefing tells you to attack Sedan, you had better attack Sedan, and not some other objective. But how you take Sedan is up to you.
2. Use all Command Points and deploy the maximum possible number of units. Choose quantity over quality. As Napoleon said, "God is on the side of the biggest battalions."
3. Organize COMBINED ARMED battle groups. If infantry, armor, artillery, AT, AA, recon, and air units all fight together, you win. If they don't, you lose. Each formation should have a clear objective; the force should be the right size to achieve its objective; the force should have the right composition to achieve its objective. This is easy to say and hard to do. It is the key to winning hard "destroy X enemy units" scenarios like Greece or Kiev. You need the right allocation of forces in the right sectors to achieve your kill counts. Opening setup is the most critical thing.
4. Move and fight formations (battle groups), not individual units. Isolated or overextended units will be destroyed.
5. Keep infantry in cover if at all possible.
6. Flank, flank, flank.
7. The AI uses a "defense in depth" strategy. It scatters little fortresses across the map: bunkers, foxholes, fortified towns, fortified woods, minefields. It defends every important river crossing and bottleneck. It also creates small battle groups as mobile reserves for counterattacking. It will counterattack any units that are overextended, isolated, or weak. Therefore, two tactics beat the AI. First, keep your units in formation. Attack each little fortress with overwhelming force. Because the AI disperses its forces, you must concentrate yours. Second, don't give the AI anything good to attack. Keep your units in formation. Make sure you have no overextended or isolated units. The AI will have to attack strong units in strong positions with strong support. Guess what will happen to those attackers.
The last thing I learned was how to fight the war in the air:
8. Build fighters over bombers. It is tempting to load up with Stukas, but first you need to achieve air superiority and drive off enemy bombers to keep your own ground units from getting pounded. Me 110s are fantastic units in 1939-1941 because they can hold their own as fighters (especially with commanders) and also perform ground attack missions.
9. Plan the air campaign around air bases. Fight close to your air bases so that you can stay in the air. Attack and destroy enemy bases. Kill enemy air units when they are on the ground. The AI has a habit of using forward airfields that are within range of your ground units. This is a grave error. Take advantage of it. Don't wait until the Minsk scenario to learn this.
10. Rotate air units so that you always have some in the air. Otherwise you will miss opportunities.
11. You actually win the air war on the ground. Batter and capture enemy airfields. Locate enemy flak with your recon units (armored cars) so that your planes can avoid enemy flak. Use weak ground units as "bait" to lure enemy bombers to attack -- AI bombers like to go after weak ground units, especially AT. After they attack, counterattack with fighters and flak and destroy them (your AT losses are cheap to rebuild). Above all, aim your ground offensive at weak enemy sectors and flank enemy strongholds (like cities). Do the decisive fighting in sectors where the enemy is weak, where the enemy has no flak, and where the AI does not expect you. Then your ME 110s, Stukas, and heavy bombers will punish the enemy and incur minimal losses. Good ground strategy and COMBINED ARMS wins the air war.
All this is obvious once you figure it out.This game is brilliant because it forces you to concentrate on basic strategy and rewards you when you do.

[Zekedia222]

Quantity over quality is true... to an extent. You can’t only shove terrible units, such as the T38, at the enemy and expect to win. Better units are often worth it, and Often prove indispensable.