Slitherine

I agree this was 1 heck of a battle and the going very slow! It is by far now my favorite scenario! Really had to think about this 1 and did finally get a dv on colonel difficulty on turn 24 and lost 3 core along the way! I enjoyed it very much!

Pretty much what I expected...slow, tedious advance with surprise counterattacks and large losses to units of all kinds. It took a lonnnnng time to play as I considered every move and made sure to keep armour out of urban hexes while not over extending infantry units. The Russian attack against the airfields was particularly perturbing as I diverted armour, aircraft and a bit of artillery to regain lost objective hexes. I thought I had found the Russians hiding in the weeds...er forest but missed the other group.

Managed a DV but didn't really have an opportunity to capture the minor objective hexes. Despite my best efforts, I found my attack had become unbalanced with most of my infantry (at least experienced infantry) on the southern part of the map leaving a mad dash to rebalance in order to take the final objective in the north. This was caused by loss of the experienced corps in the north and then repeated loss of green infantry as I tried to move forward. As mentioned before, my lack of a strong infantry arm in my corps really showed in the this scenario.


Losses were quite heavy especially in infantry as the green replacements had a very short life. Lost my recon unit repeatedly too.

All in all, I had a sense of what Sixth Army faced in those early days of the battle; some lightning advances but overall, a meat grinder that ate up the best of units. Although the battle was won, 'victory' was not really achieved. Great stuff!

Wow! What a slugfest.

A small nitpick: 1077th AA regiment that shows up early has such a long description that it overflows the summary view in the sidebar. When you look at the detailed view, it's fine.

I'm finding that as I play the 1941 DLC, I'm making decisions on my force mix based upon how it will affect the Stalingrad scenario. More infantry and Wurfrahmen instead of my usual of tanks and more tanks. A much more balanced force is needed for this battle.

In anticipation of this one I started taking extra infantry in my core to hopefully some extra experienced infantry. I ended up with 3 SE Heavy Weapons and 8 infantry in the end, heavy on the Pioneers, who by the way don't stand up worth shite vs those Ruski SMG dudes. I think the Heavy Weapons would have been a better option. Even with 4 towed arty and 3 Stugs I feel short of artillery (one of my towed boys has a hero who makes them move 2 hexes even which is really nice). After slugging across half the map and half the turns had gone by with my poor core horribly mauled (3 of those Pioneers had died by now) and losing a PZ3N, I decided to just quit while I was behind and try again. Might restart the campaign trying to acquire and get some experience on more aritllery and infantry HW this time out.

Congratulations its the first DLC scenario that has forced a restart on me. guess I just was not prepared for this one.

Were Pioneers really that bad compared to Russian close combat infantry in real life? As it stands I've had 4 star pio's taken down from 14 str to 8 in a single attack by a Russian SMG, followed by a second attack that wiped it. That seems wrong somehow...

Those SMGs are tough. I try to back up my infantry with artillery to break up their attacks. It makes for slow going, but it does keep your troops alive.

perhaps those SMG's need some tweeking, they have been killing my Pioneers too. Pioneers seem to be getting less useful as time goes by (couldn't even scratch the big forts in Sevastopol with them)

deadtorius wrote:perhaps those SMG's need some tweeking, they have been killing my Pioneers too. Pioneers seem to be getting less useful as time goes by (couldn't even scratch the big forts in Sevastopol with them)

Same here, the only thing I can hurt the forts with is siege artillery.

Wow what a battle. the best Yet it really gives you a taste of what the 6th army went through.
A slow tourtues advance taking losses left right and center with fanatical counter attacks coming from all directions, although the briefing hints at "Partisan activity" in the West the size of the russian force which came out of the forests and attacked the airfields came as a nasty surprise. which ment sending some Panzers and artillary and the italian infantry back to deal with them and retake the airfields, bringing a slow advance to a grinding halt.
I lost 3 SE panzer units and 2 infantry units to a counter attack on the last turn on the northen objective trying to get a DV which was a expensive gamble which didnt come off as the counter attack recaptured the objective hex
I could have done with a reece vehical to snatch empty flag hexes once the had been vacated by counter attaking russian units but I didnt have one in my core as I didnt think they would last very long in the hell of that battle.
When I replay this campain I will buy more infantry and get them experianced in preperation for stalingrad.

Well done to all the design team for a fantastic game overall and this dlc in particular. Cant wait for the next installment of 43

I would agree that this is a tough game. I wish I had more infantry with experience. Too bad you cannot rotate units but perhaps you need more than the Italiens to help. Maybe you could add parts of the 6th Army at the end. They could be in a "follow and support" mission which would allow me to pass them through once my panzers cleared some of the earlier obstacles. Then I could refit the panzers and use them to mop up. Will Chuikov make an appearance? I agree with this earlier post: "The ONLY thing I would recommend is to change some of the names of the objective hexes to some of the city's key historical locations like the Grain Elevator, the Red October Tractor Factory."

Storming Stalingrad. Loss.
Start prestige: 385. End prestige: 201.
New units purchased: Two recons, pioniere (all at deployment).
Units lost: Core – Recon, Stug, T-34, pioniere; auxiliary – several Italian units.
Medals: 2. Heroes: 5.

If there is one thing I can say about this scenario, it’s that this mission lives up to the hype we’ve been giving Stalingrad since the 1939 DLC was first announced. This scenario was an absolute beast, and by far is the most destructive scenario since the streets of Moscow scenario at the end of the ’41 campaign. My core was absolutely devastated (I had to restart this mission no less than four times) before deciding on a final strategy that preserved as much of my forces as possible.

In my first three attempts, I attacked into the city with the intention of at least gaining a minor victory. However, each time I was thwarted by a combination of solid AI defensive tactics and highly effective local counterattacks. My Italian forces always took a beating early on; I was able to keep a good number of their units alive, but it wasn’t easy. From the beginning this scenario is a stiff challenge; by turn 5 I was entering the westernmost Stalingrad hexes, and the fighting was intense. In all three games I was able to at least get enough victory hexes for a minor victory. Yet in every case, my forces (already depleted by fighting their way into the city) were decimated by Russian counterattacks from the city’s central district.

Frustrated at my losses, I decided on my fourth try to go for a loss. That’s right; even under the best circumstances I believe my forces might “win” by achieving their goals, but my losses were always so high that I had only a shell to carry forward into the next scenario. So I kept my goals modest: clear out the area west of Stalingrad, take the city flag hexes on the extreme western suburbs, and then dig in. For the most part, this strategy worked. I lost fewer forces and was able to maintain a decent prestige level by taking the flag hexes. I cleared out the Gumrak hexes by turn 5, and was able to slowly push into city over the next several turns. I managed to defeat the surprise Russian attack on my airfields in the west (although, on my first play-through of this map, I was caught woefully unprepared for this) with the Italians, which allowed me to send the bulk of my core into Stalingrad itself. In the end, the only other objective hex I took (besides Gumrak) was 33,14 in the north of the map. However, by not advancing too far in any part of the city, I was able to avoid any serious counterattacks by the Russians.

A few things did stand out in this scenario. First, I learned that the captured Shermans were excellent for close-quarter fighting in the city hexes, and they racked up some impressive kills as the scenario went on. Makes me glad I didn’t trade these units in! Also, it was good to see another “boss” unit (Col. Raiynn), I really like how these units pop up in scenarios. One issue with this scenario: on numerous occasions the AI moved units out of city flag hexes to attack adjacent or nearby units. While this was effective once or twice (especially when the target unit was low on strength), this also left a lot of prestige-granting hexes open for the taking, with the formerly defending units getting destroyed. Not sure how much the AI can be tweaked on this point; in general I think it does a fine job with defending, but perhaps the aggressiveness of the units can be dialed back a bit?

Overall, I’m torn by this mission. On the one hand, this is Stalingrad, graveyard of the German eastern army. We’ve known all along that this would be a tough fight, and this mission does not disappoint. Throw in a very competent AI, and a well-timed series of counterattacks, and this mission is appropriately difficult. However, on the other hand, I wonder if this scenario is impossible to win with the ’42 core (which I am using). I don’t know how other testers who are using imported cores fared (I don’t read other AARs until after I am done each scenario), but I imagine this scenario might be more “winnable” if the player is using more seasoned units. My fear is that, if someone is playing this as their first DLC with no imported core, this could be a very frustrating scenario. (Lord knows it gave me plenty of fits!) Now I realize that’s probably going to be a very small number of players, as most are going to start with the ’39 DLC and work their way here with a more experienced core. Perhaps as a compromise the number of objectives could be reduced to five instead of six, this would allow a cautious player (like me) or someone without an experienced core a somewhat better chance at gaining a minor victory.

In summary, it felt strange trying to just “survive” this mission and not actually shoot for a win. That is one thing I am very happy with regarding the DLCs – namely, that winning isn’t everything and the game continues even if you don’t meet the commander’s requirements at the end of the mission. I imagine that, as the war slowly turns against the Germans’ favor, this might become a more common experience. In spite of its difficulty, kudos to the designers for crafting a mission that is a true test of a player’s skill (and my hat is off to anyone who does gain a victory on this map).

Quite the challenge, and without an imported core it is tough. Basically, just trying to keep units alive and moving at a crawl pace. Still a few turns to go and not even sure if marginal victory will be had... Definite that after this scenario my troops will be quite shaken and beaten up!

As with the first time through on the initial build, difficult and challenging. I lost a couple of corps infantry units which hurt and suffered some pretty significant losses that drained prestige. Was pretty impressed by a couple of the AI's counterattacks with hordes of SMG infantry but I managed to pick them off in open terrain lessening the damage. Found I was pretty limited in going after minor objective hexes as I tried to keep my forces well concentrated this time through. Not sure it helped a whole lot but I still ended up with a DV on the last turn with only a few hundred prestige left.

Excellent scenario.

I achieved DV on 20/24, but lost a 4-star pioneer that's been with me since Poland.

I purchased about 6 flaming tanks for this battle, 4 were destroyed. In addition to the flam' tanks, I also deployed about 10 infantries and 10 artillery and 4 strat bombers and 4 stuka. The airplanes were not as useful due to weather.

Turn 12 and not even half way there...seems like it's going to be a close one. Summer time is good for an offensive where there is lots of ground to cover. Thankfully I have this stylish spring uniform to keep me cool and plenty of prestige for supplies. What could possibly go wrong?

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