Slitherine

The bottom line up front is I think this is the least enjoyable of the DLC so far, relatively uninspired and lacking in content.

The Good
Training Missions - I really like training missions no matter what but they did improve this one by letting you take aircraft which is really nice getting new fighters up and running.

Stefan - What can I say, I really like having him back, eye patch and all. Of course we all knew he wouldn't be dead but still.

Ahistorical Path - Extremely glad they put this in, though it will be interesting to see how they develop this in future DLC. Will they make two completely different paths or something a little less drastic? Either way it should be interesting and increase the replayability.

von Manstein - I won't spoil it but it was a cool rescue with neat "little" reward. Hoping to see more stuff like this in the future. Only downside is that the other branch should offer something similar. It would be extra cool if the choice in branches led to a significant choice in rewards, for instance one is infantry focused and the other reward would be tank focused.

The Bad
Prestige Resets - These have gotten a little ridiculous, did you really just ask me to spend 90,000+ prestige to get 15 Tiger(p) and some T-34-57? This really needs to be rethought. Personally I would rather see prestige options for much smaller percentages multiple times during the campaign.

Stalingrad Scenarios - I need to be honest, these were completely underwhelming and considering they are basically the capstone of this entire DLC I find it hard to believe they don't even rate as the top city fights. I mean really? Warsaw was a much longer and nasty slog than Stalingrad and so was Madrid 1939?!?!?! Hell, the Stalingrad mission in the original Campaign was more interesting and difficult than this. This one probably doesn't even fall in the top 5 Panzer Corps city maps so far.

The Ugly
Air Force Only Missions - There are potentially 14 missions you can play through in a single run, 1 of those is a training mission and 3 others are air force only missions. That is slightly more than 20% of the DLC in which you don't even get to field any ground units. Not sure why anyone thought three missions where I spend 2 minutes playing a turn and the next 5 minutes watching the terrible AI move units was a good idea, well it isn't. Once in a while an all air force mission is cool but to be honest it strikes me as super lazy to not include a full real scenario in place of a couple of these missions.

Unfortunately, this strikes me as the weakest of the DLC so far. I am really hoping this is not a sign of future trends. Sure AO1936 had some issues but it was really fun even with some of the frustration.

As much as I still liked the DLC, I agree with some of your points:

brettz123 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 12:52 am Air Force Only Missions - There are potentially 14 missions you can play through in a single run, 1 of those is a training mission and 3 others are air force only missions. That is slightly more than 20% of the DLC in which you don't even get to field any ground units. Not sure why anyone thought three missions where I spend 2 minutes playing a turn and the next 5 minutes watching the terrible AI move units was a good idea, well it isn't. Once in a while an all air force mission is cool but to be honest it strikes me as super lazy to not include a full real scenario in place of a couple of these missions.

These were definitely low points in the campaign to me. I don't know about most players, but I don't think my air force was sufficiently experienced at this point to deal with such a large map and with such a large map in the channel dash mission. Granted, that's on me, and I can have a better roster for it in future runs. The only thing I remember thinking was truly a bit annoying in this scenario was how frequently the British home fleet battleships seemed to be out of range of any of my bombers barring the HE111Z. Other than that I thought it was mostly fine, although I wish the training mission could have come before it.

The air support missions in Vorenezh and Stalingrad though... I wasn't really as much of a fan of. The AI is a little frustrating at times with when it chooses to attack/run away/leave very damaged Soviet units alone/lets airfields get taken when it would pretty easily be guarded. Maybe missions like this would be better if we had 1-2 ground deployment hexes so we can deploy something small and manage guarding our own airstrips? Or maybe have some ground auxiliaries for that purpose? I don't know how prone to abuse that'd be though. The AI turns especially on the Stalingrad one definitely had a bit of a wait to them, contributing to them feeling a bit boring compared to the rest of the campaign.

Stalingrad Scenarios - I need to be honest, these were completely underwhelming and considering they are basically the capstone of this entire DLC I find it hard to believe they don't even rate as the top city fights. I mean really? Warsaw was a much longer and nasty slog than Stalingrad and so was Madrid 1939?!?!?! Hell, the Stalingrad mission in the original Campaign was more interesting and difficult than this. This one probably doesn't even fall in the top 5 Panzer Corps city maps so far.

I do kind of agree that the "main" streets of Stalingrad scenario felt a little... empty? There seemed to be a large portion in the middle of the city that really didn't have many SU units in it, and compared to the base game mission I agree it felt like less of a struggle. I don't have the game up in front of me, but I think I remember the 3 Stalingrad missions in PC1's grand campaign being more involved in a "full" sense (lots of air action, open ground, and urban combat in all 3 missions) rather than the "air force only -> streets -> almost entirely open ground in the outskirts" pattern that we got. Don't get me wrong, I still liked the last 2 missions of Stalingrad (and the breakout/relief mission, since it's mostly the same map), but it did feel a bit small compared to what has come before.

Other "bad" notes:
I thought it was weird there wasn't an option for a reward in the southern route to mirror the Manstein reward. Maybe not bad, but weird.

Not necessarily an AO42 centric point, but I really don't like the new paratrooper mechanics. I need someone to mod the old ruleset back in.

We know that things like new terrain types were introduced (ie: industrial and city ruins) and were likely intended to be in the Streets mission, but weren't. There are also well-documented errors in some scripts, like charging an incorrect number of commendation points. I also noticed a small number of spelling/grammar errors in mission briefings. AO42 definitely feels like it was rushed a bit to meet that 10 year anniversary event, and potentially suffered for it. I'm sure it'll eventually get a patch to fix the above small things though.

I like to end criticism on good notes though, so here are mine:

Good

1) I think the Kharkov and to a lesser extent, Voronezh and Gorky battles were some of the best scenarios we've seen so far in the eastern front, if not in all of AO. I love me some open ground for tank warfare, especially when we're getting Tigers and Tiger(P)s. (I played with industry connections and got some Henschel tigers on the first mission ) More open ground tank battles please!
(I so can't wait for Kursk)

2a) Storytelling is still such a surprising thing to be anticipating in a strategy game like this. Good to have Wagner back, I do wonder if Gerhardt will survive somehow.

2?) Tigers.

2b) I'm still holding out hope that we can actually win the war in the alternate path, rather than the outcome in PC1 where the "good" ending is stopping the red army right outside Berlin. I understand that could be a lot of work for the content designer(s) if they make a separate set of scenarios for the alternate path, but I for one would definitely appreciate it.

3) Panthers.

4) I really like that we're given the option to play with prototype equipment that many people aren't really familiar with, like the Tiger(P) and the Panther(P) (<-- Although I think the one that's presented is a Daimler prototype, not a Porsche design, but that (P) could also mean "prototype" in context). The E-75 is already in the game, I wonder if we can get the E-100 or the Lowe potentially? More rare equipment options please!

5) TIGERS.

6) We got cool new powerful heroes in this campaign with Karl/Karla and Gero. Nothing was on the level of Rudel, but I do like getting the reward heroes. --->>> Still holding out hope that we will get a special PANZER commander hero to drive our cool new PANZERS like the nice new TIGERS in this PANZER corps. I would really like if we could pick traits for such a hero similar to how Rudel was handled, but if not it would still be cool. Otto Carius, Kurt Knispel, and Michael Wittmann are still unseen in the war....

Criticisms should always be looked at through a lens of improvement. Even though there were potential missteps and things that didn't likely meet even designer expectations, I still really enjoyed the DLC overall, and am very satisfied that I bought it. Looking forward to AO43 after Pacific and a nice long break for the team.