Into the Red Mass

[deadtorius]

So far I am merrily invading the land of the Communist hordes. Smolensk... all of a sudden out of nowhere there appears a huge array of Russian Katyusha's tanks and infantry with a few cav, and I look at the counter and I have 7 turns to make it to smolensk. thankfully the Russians didn't send out any flak guns so the Luftwaffe had a field day on that mass, and the German tanks have proven fairly good versus their Red counterparts so far. I managed to make a DV with 2 turns to spare. Once I got into Russia I got my first Iron Crosses and heroes fairly regularly. so far no captured units on any maps for me, and some of those maps I captured every objective hex. For smolensk I decided to leave the Russians on the other side of the big river alone, and kept some units guarding the southern bridge just to keep them on their side of the river. Turns out to be a good idea as the AI sent some tanks and cav onto the bridge just so I could blow them up.
So far I have had more than enough XP, I have even been using elite replacements on some of my tanks and starting with them overstrength. Unfortunately since Russia I end up losing at least one unit each campaign, sometimes more. Last game I lost one 8 strength infantry to one shot from a T-34. It happens. Makes up for the British Cruiser that got one shotted by my 12 strength Ju88, that was a happy day for all the poor sea sick lads stuck in their transports trying to get to Crete.

Just completed the first battle of Kiev Russian tanks just kept popping out from out of sight, and the Red Airforce is out in strength now too. You really want to keep your units in a kind of line formation as single units will get surrounded and cut off. One odd thing though is on the top right part of the map where there is a bridge over the impassible river, I left a recon and infantry unit with the Stug arty to keep the bridge covered, and starting on the 3rd last turn, the AI sent infantry units across the bridge into an ambush, got them destroyed and then next turn does the exact same thing again. I guess it thought I wouldn't still be there?? It does seem to have gotten over its lets send the arty in adjacent to your units to hold up the German invaders though.

Russia has been quite the battle so far, huge maps and lots and lots of tanks. My Luftwaffe is still holding its own, had to get another fighter to combat the Red air menace and the AA guns are beating up my Stukas pretty bad, but still no air losses. To date I have gotten 2 SE tanks, and they are still alive, the extra help comes in handy.
Excellent work keep up the great job guys and thanks for letting me beta test again

[deadtorius]

Well not Red Mass but I did read someone wanted a report on Crete Naval

Crete Naval, I had bought a Ju88 back in Greece, expecting some kind of RN (as per old PG scenario) but they never did appear. I upgraded the He 111 to Ju88 and had on para in my core army. I used the DD's to move out and try to screen off to the right of the map, and sent my Ju's out that way too. I stumbled onto a Brit destroyer which the second Ju88 attacked and damaged and uncovered 3 more DD's. Seems I sent the screen in the right direction.
Transports will take 2 turns to hit the beach and then they will be at least 2 deep due to being deployed so far out. Fortunately the Italian bait worked and most of the RN DD's and Cruisers concentrated on the Italians and ignored the transports. Which is just as well since the ground units moved up to the beach and started pounding my transports from shore, about 3 Brit units did this. The Ju88's got one lucky shot and one shotted a Cruiser for 10 points so that was nice, but a few transports were still hit by both Cruisers and DD's, although the enemy was severely damaged and so it was only 1 or 2 step losses on the transports. My fighters made short work of the RAF fighter and damaged the bomber which popped back up later on only to get shot down. The 88 spent most of its time in ground mode which made short work of any Brit tanks it ran into.
The airfield you hold at the beginning of the game allows you to move up and kill or at least force a retreat on the 25 lbr, which opens up beach hexes to allow you to land near the city, and my core para dropped onto the airfield to help keep it out of Aussie hands. I managed to keep the airfield German. Once the troops are off the transports and on the ground it is fairly easy to set up your attacks and take out the defenders, I still make the AA guns my primary targets as that allows my Stuka's free reign on ground targets. Your army is pretty much split into 2 forces one on the left and one on the right, and both forces will have to operate independently of each other as with no RR tracks it is impossible to move troops from one end of the island to the other in time. The far right objective city is in a narrow part of the map so it is harder to get your forces in to make attacks, but at the same time the enemy can not retreat so surrenders seem to happen more often, just don't leave empty hexes or the Brits will start to spawn new arty and AA guns in your path.
Ended with a DV and 4 turns to spare.
The scenario starts off intense as you have to hold that airfield and your troop are sitting ducks to enemy naval forces, but if you get lucky making the Italians occupy the RN ships you can make it to the beaches and then it gets much easier.
Haven't tried the air assault yet but I do have it saved so I can always jump back and try it out too

[deadtorius]

Got through all the Kiev scenarios including Kiev itself. Watch the left screen edge there are massive Soviet attacking forces waiting to pounce on you in these ones. For Kiev scenario I went in with about 3000 prestige, ended with only 600 something... I perhaps hit the elite reinforcement button a few too many times on that one. I took a fair pounding from the Red airforce, could be the strongest I have seen it yet.
Got my first captured unit in Kiev, a T34-40, complete with silent stealth engine. Not sure if the gun has a massive silencer too yet as I could not get it into combat before game ended. There is a strong force that tries to break out of Kiev and I almost did not have enough tanks to hold them back, thankfully the Luftwaffe was there to stop it. I am up to 3 stukas, 4 fighters, 1 Me110 and 2 Ju88. I have used the Ju88's to go around neutralizing cities which ties up the Russians with retaking them and also does not allow them to spawn out of those cities on me. The pak 50 has proven to be a useful anti-tank gun, even against the dreaded KV's which is nice to see. So far I have received 3 SE tanks (last one arrived for Moscow deployment) and 1 SE infantry along with a lot of heroes and quite a few units are on their second grade cross of Iron.
These battle make Poland and France seem easy with all the tanks rushing in from all sides, I am really enjoying the game keep up the good work.

[deadtorius]

After Kiev its off to the sunny vacation resort of Moscow.... or so we had hoped. At the beginning of the briefing your commander tells you to come out of the rain. Get used to it. I think out of 20 turns I only had about 6 turns of clear, 2 of which actually followed each other, and perhaps 2 turns of green grass. the rest of the time its raining and you get to face off against General Mudsukov. rain nerfs the Luftwaffe, so had them flying recon into hexes and cities I was thinking of moving to to see what kind of nasty surprises were in store for me. It did pay off as the center hexes of deployment were facing an AT gun (and artillery and tanks and infantry etc) that you could not see with the rain. even having a recon there did not help. suspecting the southern bridge would be covered I took my bridge engineer and placed him down south so I could sweep over the river and catch any defenders unaware from the south. Turns out there were none, yet. Up North I grabbed the victory city, it was empty, and moved onto the airfield. then out of the void came soviet tanks and infantry and cavalry. The Russians managed to retake the victory hex for 2 turns until I managed to finish them off finally.
The south turned into a major battle and so did the center of the map, thats where there is a huge force of Russians blocking the road to Moscow. I ended up losing a SE PzIV, it took about 4 Russians to kock it down to 1 step then an infantry unit appears out of the void and finishes them off I also lost a Gebirgsjager (they seem to die frequently for me) that was at 8 steps that got one shotted by a 12 step Cossack. Last unit to die was a Grenadier that I foolishly sent off to the city on the bottom right of the map, thinking it must be empty since everything that came from there had been killed, wrong! the city had a garrison that ambushed me to 4 steps then another infantry unit appears out of the void and kills them. My Stug and 88 sought suitable revenge killing both Russians and taking the city.

Meanwhile the mass battle in the center had continued with masses of Russian conscripts and tanks slowing my already slow approach to Moscow. Every time there was clear weather in comes the Red Airforce and my fighters were busy for a turn. By the time I had finally cleared the Russians from the road to Moscow (and there is only one road) I had 7 turns left. The mud made my long strung out line of tanks, all trying to use the road, a very slow strung out line of tanks and by the time I got near Moscow I was down to 3 turns and not set up to attack the capital. No point sending in lone units against a dug in artillery backed horde. Instead I diverted some troops to take the city just SW of Moscow, that I managed to capture. The rest of my Panzers pulled back into a defensive line in anticipation of sudden tanks screaming south or something, although they never did.
So I got within 3 hexes of Moscow, got a MV and this was probably the second most expensive scenario so far. I am glad you were not stingy with the Prestige in the DLC so far, Russia is proving to be an expensive venture so far.

Next up is a defensive scenario, and escorting supply planes in. I hope 4 fighters will be enough for that one. I bought some pak 50 ATG's, and a marder, along with a second 88. Hope they will do double duty of killing Russian planes as well as tanks. this one looks interesting, I will likely leave most of the bombers out of this one, and I have picked up more ground troops. All fighters and artillery and one 88 are overstrength to 13 steps. I am looking forward to seeing what the Devs have in store for this one.

[SAS]

ver nice read, thanks for posting it.

[deadtorius]

Finally finished the final scenario, the defend game.

Unlike the Bzerka River there are few obstacles to hinder or stop the Russians, but the lakes and thick forest do make definite lanes that the Russians will have to move down to attack your forces through. So keeping this in mind and expecting mass attacks from all sides I dropped the JU's and one Stuka, the rookie one, took the Me110, 2 Stuka's and 4 Me109. I had purchased 2 ATG and a Marder so my core army was over strength.

In the briefing it makes mention of supply JU52's that you have to escort to supply airfields. On turn one you will see one of them with an auxillary Me109 on the left side of the screen. It will take 2 to 3 turns to get it to your airfields, depending if you fly straight in or take a roundabout path further north over the large body of water up there. I had expected it was going to be a challenge to get those planes in but it was actually ridiculously easy.

Turn one the Red Airforce descended on the airfields where they were torn apart by a combination of quad 20's (aux troops that start on each airfield) my own flak88's and my 4 Me109's. Only their bomber made it away at 1 strength point as I decided to kill off a 2 step fighter unit instead of worrying about the bomber. After that it was quite a while till they reappeared and even then it was a repeat again of swarming the airfields and getting destroyed. One odd thing is that in a Russian city about mid map there is an AA gun, which I found by accidentally ending a JU52 move adjacent to the city. The AA gun did not bother to fire, I even got too close one other turn and it still did not fire, so getting the supply planes in was no problem at all.

The ground situation is another story altogether. Although I had deployed and expected to get hit from all sides, there are some Russian troops to your west that you can spot they never activated and I wasn't going to kick a hornets nest by moving my Western troops out of their positions to see what would happen. I also left the auxiliary units that are in the cities on the left side of the map where they were.

The other side of the map is a whole different story, starting from the North and the South East, massive waves of Soviet troops start to descend upon you. Good thing you get to set up in prepared positions as I am sure it gives you an edge with entrenchment at first. I chose to let the Red Wave hurl itself against my troops backed with artillery, and resisted any desire to follow any troops that retreated, probably a good idea as more tanks and troops suddenly appear in from the right map side. This is also the first time you get to see Russian Guard infantry, thankfully artillery can still kill them. Stuka's on the other hand are likely to lose a step by bombing them so I suggest sticking to the tanks.

I am also pleased to announce that I managed to get my 13 strength Stuka to one shot a 10 step T-26, 10 hits one attack The pak50's did very well, my Northern one getting plenty of kills in, just keep an artillery behind them. The Marder started on the western defensive perimeter and later I moved it East since there were no attacks coming from the West, and it managed a couple of tank kills.
After destroying the Soviet South East attack a large force of tanks and infantry suddenly appeared due south and my Southern line was in for its turn of killing. The Stuka's were very useful here and the close concentration of the airfields allows you to easily move North or South depending where the greatest tank concentration is. A real bonus for a change, usually the airfields are wayyyy out there somewhere far away.

After defeating about 3 or 4 waves of Russian troops, I suddenly saw a whole sh** load of Russian tanks and infantry moving up from due south and also at the same time moving in from the North East. I had to say things looked really grim as I looked at the counter and saw I still had 6 turns to go, my eyes got real wide when I saw what was coming my way next. As luck would have it though I had just landed the 4th JU52 that turn and when I hit the end turn button I was taken to the decisive victory screen. Guess I survived the Red Tsunami after all. I was actually expecting to have to hold out till turn 20, the sudden victory took me completely by surprise. I did not lose any troops in this game, I spent most of my prestige during deployment on new units and ended with only 300+ prestige. I was down below 100 at one point due to the need for reinforcing units so it is not a cake walk scenario when it comes to the ground defence.

I think the air part of the game needs some tweaking as the Russians seem to ignore the supply planes while in flight, and when they attack them on the airfields the flak guns will auto shoot as if you are attacking an adjacent ground unit. Oddly my adjacent fighters did nothing till I chose to finish off the enemy fighters. I found that on average the Russians took 7 step damage from the quad 20's when attacking a landed JU52

I have to say that I really enjoyed playing out this DLC campaign and I look forward to seeing 1942, great work, it is hard to believe you could have improved on a great game like PZC but you certainly have with the DLC campaigns. Thank you for your hard work and excellent product.


Kerensky EDIT: Spaced it out to make it easier to read.

[Kerensky]

Excellent feedback as always, thanks!

Couple quick comments:

Soviet AD units on Demyansk pocket have been switched to active, should make for at least a little more dangerous flight into the pocket.

Im fine with having the air escort objective be a simple one though. For starters, as you pointed out, the ground battle is NOT an easy one, even with choke points and fortifications for the player to deploy on.
Also, it was very historic that the airlift to Demyansk was a very successful venture for the Germans, and the Soviets failed pretty badly to intercept it.

The success of the Luftwaffe convinced Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and Hitler that they could conduct effective airlift operations on the Eastern front.[1] Göring later proposed a similar "solution" to supply the 6. Armee when it was surrounded in Stalingrad. In theory, the outcome could be equally advantageous; with the 6. Armee trapped, but still in fighting condition, the Soviet army would have to use up much of its strength to keep the pocket contained. This could allow other German forces to re-group and mount a counterattack. However, the scale of the forces trapped in the two operations differed greatly. While a single corps (about ⅓ of an army) with about six divisions was encircled in Demyansk, in Stalingrad, an entire and greatly reinforced army was trapped. Whereas the Demyansk and Kholm pockets together needed around 265 t (292 short tons) of supplies per day, the 6. Armee required an estimated daily minimum of 800 t (880 short tons), delivered over a much-longer distance and faced by a much better organised Red Air Force. The air transport force had already suffered heavy losses, and was much further away from good infrastructure. The Luftwaffe simply did not have the resources needed to supply Stalingrad.

[deadtorius]

now the whole easy fly in makes sense, but I better keep away from any cities next time out.
starting again on general level so i will post some more reports, see if it is any different now that I have an idea of what is in store. I also hope to find some more captured equipment next time out.