War in the East - Barbarossa - Off I Go East

I decided to give it a go - the whole 244-turn Grand Campaign in Gary Grigsby's War in the East.

I spent today tidying up a bit and getting Turn 2 rolling. Here is where I started turn 2:




It took three screenshots to show you most of it. The Romanians in the south haven't moved yet (they start turn 2) and the Finns in the north, either (turn 4) so I didn't include them. Or it would have been 5 screenshots.


I did okay with Army Group North, punching a hole in the front and seizing Riga (pro tip - spend the movement points to go around it and come at it from the east to avoid a contested river crossing.) I cut off some Soviet units and I've gotten a big chunk of my infantry moved up.

Army Group Center did great - I broke the defenses of Brest-Litovsk (historically, it held out for a week, which is 1 turn . . . in-game that's taking it on turn 2.) With that hole in the front I rushed through everything I had, and pushed two Panzer armies up and just about took Minsk, which the Soviets have abandoned. I could have consolidated my armor around Minsk better, but I didn't want to leave my supply lines open to a suicidal stab west by the Soviets. I have a full load of fuel, which probably won't last after this turn. So I expect turn 3 to be sitting in place building up supplies. My goal is to smash into the so-called Smolensk land bridge, between two major rivers, the Dvina and the Dnepr. It's barely doable but I have to try.

I put a lot of Soviets into one big and two small cauldrons (kessel) here. I'll destroy those units in the next week or two as reinforcing units come up. I'm not in a hurry to smash them unless they're in my way operationally.

You can see the big split of the Pripet Marshes, inspiration for the Cold Fens in DF Felltower.

Army Group South was also a good go - I made a run for the Romanian border and reached it, cutting off some Soviet troops to the west. They'll get ignored until the Hungarians and Romanians can mop them up. They'll fall eventually and I don't want to spend time and casualties dealing with them. Meanwhile, it's panzers east from here.




I followed up on the advice of an experienced player and chopped most of my German division down to a maximum of 80% of their TOE (table of equipment.) That'll mean the ones out of combat will send some of their troops to the replacement pool; the ones in won't get as many reinforcements. But the idea is to have a larger pool of infantry, especially, for dealing with the grinding assaults of the Soviets during the winter. I hope it helps . . . this is a campaign easily lost. Hopefully I won't do that.