Thursday, February 9, 2023

Barbarossa - Axis Turn Nine

With supply lines stretched and Soviet resistance increasing the turns are taking a tad longer than expected.  So it goes.

Richard did a VP audit and the situation at the start of this turn is:

  • AGN 13
  • AGC 19
  • AGS 18
For me victory in this game is the sheer experience of being able to play it along with the physical and mental energy required to play it.  It's a monster!

Army Group North make another attempt to take Riga.
Further east they are up against a new Soviet defensive line

Army Group Centre is pushing ahead,
but terrain and supply is complicating things.
Annoyingly both sides have to use the same out of supply markers.
The bulk of those units marked as Emergency Supply are Axis. 

Army Group South launch attacks which are critical if they are to make progress.
The importance of Lvov is obvious, but equally so the next city along the central road network,
which also links up with the one from the south.
More interesting is the attack to breakthrough the fortified line to the north:
success here will break the Soviet line.

Mopping up and catching up in Bessarabia.
How far to Odessa?
Will the Romanians carry the fight into the Ukraine?
(They start to roll for force commitment external to Bessarabia around Turn 18!) 

AGN success at Riga, 
less so south of the lake.
Note Estonian partisans have appeared!

AGC has been mostly successful.
The Soviets (that's me in this sector) failed to block a hole in the lines.
I was using the World in Flames empty hex defence, 
but forget that in this game the German factor 7 movement units have an infiltration capability.
Doh!

Lvov has fallen.
Battle for Ternopol is on.
But there is a major breakthrough to the north east of that city which
is going to cause a problem for the Soviet player (which is Richard in this sector).
In this image Kiev is visible on the top right hand side.
While this image and the preceding AGC one don't line up, 
you can follow the line that the edge of the perspex covering the map makes. 

Odessa comes into view




4 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Yes, but rewarding and a game your can spend a lot of time enjoying when not playing by just looking at the map or studying the photos of the situation at end of a day's session.

      Delete
  2. "forget that in this game the German factor 7 movement units have an infiltration capability."
    That is like in the real war when the French thought that mech moving through the Ardennes cost 4MPs per hex while the Germans knew it only cost 2MPs. 😁

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Later the French found that the Germans had violated the stacking limit in the Ardennes hex and had to forfeit the game.

      Delete