Slitherine

Turn 13 at Berlin.

The first Soviet wave has been destroyed except for a couple of units. I now have a couple of turns to ammo up, purchase some replacements and move units around as needed.

You can also see in this screenshot some of the aux units that I have rescued and upgraded.

Second Soviet wave always seems to hit around Turn 16.

There's a lot more heavy armour, but much fewer units than in the first wave, so it's all very manageable.

Berlin Turn 26.

Garbage time.

The two IS-2s you see are the last Soviet units. And the AI was kind enough to leave them in city hexes where they will be easy meat for my two 14-strength Pioniere units.

The end at Berlin.

This is not a fun scenario. There is a huge time commitment, and I always seem to find myself agonizing over every unit move for the first 10 turns or so, because one mistake and you will lose a valuable core unit or (worse) leave a gaping hole for the Soviets to drive through.

I gained two new heroes: a +2 Attack for one of my Flak units, and a +1 Movement for one of my tactical bombers.

The Wilhelm Batz fighter hero unit finally got his third star, which should help keep him alive in the Redux.

On to the Redux with 60914 prestige points.

My core did not take a huge beating at Berlin, so I should have way more prestige than I can reasonably spend here.

I won this scenario in 10 turns at Colonel on my first attempt at the Grand Campaign, but lost a core AA unit on Turn 9. This time I have a slightly stronger core and a lot more prestige at my disposal. I should be able to do it in 9 turns or less.

I also have better infantry and more of it. Same with the artillery.

The air units are weaker, but I can compensate for that by upgrading to jets.

Turn 2 at Berlin Redux.

Here is the task force I sent to take out the Soviet commanders.

Rokossovski is to the South. The plan is to destroy him and not waste precious time taking the airfield and town. I brought bridge engineers so that I can get across the river without having to go all the way around.

I also found that you can destroy the first wave of Soviet air units on Turn 1 by deploying AA units in the Northwest, Southwest and Northeast, then using your fighters to take out the rest. There is another wave of 8 planes that arrives around Turn 5. The key here is that you can send your best strat bomber and tac bomber South with your task force and not worry about getting them shot down.

The end at the Redux.

I used my Pioniere unit to take out Chuikov and my JagdPanther and Uber Rudel tac bomber to take out Zhukov. The Soviet Flak unit got a free shot at my bombers and there were a couple of assaults on the JagdPanther but it was all over by then.

I could have done things better in the West though. I should have used the two captured Su-122s I had left, instead of towed artillery. The Soviets bring a lot of ISU-152s that pack a huge punch, are really hard to destroy in city hexes and go after your artillery with a vengeance. Also, I upgraded a couple of Panther units to Mausen and that was not such a great idea because you really need to be able to move them around within your perimeter.

Anyway, this is it for the land battles in the GC.

At the Epilogue with 39440 prestige points.

I am going to upgrade/downgrade three of my AA units to 8.8cm Flak, just for fun. I can switch them to AT when they need to capture flags.

I actually managed to get an extra +1 Defence hero for one of my Flak units.

Another one just got its 5th star.

Not that it really matters, as it's the end of the capmaign

Well, this is the end of a long campaign.

I won a DV at every scenario, and finished with 39432 prestige points.

In the end I had 137 heroes. 28 of my 72 units maxed out at 5 stars and three heroes.

On the downside I did not get a third hero for any of my artillery units, even though I had 9 of them with over 1000 kills, the highest being at 1329. For some reason the AI does not like to give out artillery heroes until you are very close to the limit for the next hero.

In terms of what I could have done better? I would say that I should have bought a third fighter in 1939, and that would have given me 3 purchased fighters plus Heinrich Bar and Gerhard Barkhorn as my core units in the end. And 5 is all you really need. You get an extra SE hero unit for the Berlin battles. The two defence-crippled hero units you get in 1941 and 1942 are worse than useless unless you get incredibly lucky and land a +3 Defence hero for one of them. Also, I could have been a bit more aggressive in deploying one of my strat bombers if only to get it up to 5 stars and at least one hero. Having a fourth tac bomber was only marginally useful and I could have deployed a strat bomber in its place.

Also, when playing Field Marshall: buy all the purchased units you will need for the GC, especially infantry and artillery, as early as possible in 1939. Even if it means spending all your prestige and struggling through with a lot of green units for the first 7 or 8 scenarios. If you can procure essentially all of your purchased units and get them up to two stars by the end of 1939, that is huge.