Barbarossa - Vassal - Madness - Turn 10

I am now thinking I need to play AGS to catch up and decide whether to send Guderian south.  I also finished reading a document about the Vassal grand campaign that Richard found and it raises some interesting ideas about Mandated Attacks, rail road conversion rates, supply unit allocation that got me thinking "why am I playing?"

Simply put I find it entertaining on a number of levels.  But to address the ideas that have given me pause for reflection

Mandated Attacks - this is to force the Soviet player to attack or give the Axis player bonus VPs.  In both the face to face game and on Vassal the opportunities for the Soviets to make an attack unless the Axis player really disperses and closes with the enemy are extremely rare.  Worse, they would just result in lost units and give the Axis an even easier time.  So I am playing without considering the NKVD (or Gestapo) officer in the HQ.  This invokes is it a game or a simulation paradigm.  It's a bit of both.

That leads to the rail road conversion rates.  I have assumed these are reasonably accurate like movement rates etc.  They will be key in the later stages of the game so it is too early for me to assess the impact of the rates as they currently exist (will be four hexes per turn in good weather/terrain.  That is 16km per day and is conversion so the railbed etc is all there).  I understand a bigger issue was the availability of rolling stock.

Allocating supply units based on need between AGN and AGC has merits.  This hasn't become an issue (unlike the Luftwaffe), but I think it is reasonable (as would be swapping units between AGs, which happened).  

So on with the game as I'm having fun!

Weather: mud in the north and mud and storms in the centre.  Well, I was having fun...  The hardest thing about the weather is remembering the special effects, such as the impact on the zocs of motorised units.

Even though supply has caught up to the Axis forces in front of Pskov,

they are not yet in position to make attacks 

(they could have, but they would be at 2:1 and risk incurring heavy losses on the panzers)

Daugavpils is where AGN is really held up.

Maybe this attack will clear the city?

The panzers that have raced ahead are suffering fuel shortages.

Similarly AGC needs to clear Minsk if it is to continue its drive east.

The southern flank of AGC

with three panzer divisions assaulting Bobruysk.

The AGN attack fizzled while all the AGC attacks resulted in the elimination of the Soviet defenders. It might be time to reconsider the priorities and directions of attack in the north as the delay will only make the Pskov front harder to assault and get around its southern flank.

AGN stuck in the mud, but the next few days will be Dry

(It is a game rule you can only have two consecutive turns of mud in the dry season).

AGC next stop Smolensk, weather permitting.