Minsk '44 Team Game Opening

[Saper2]

I like Alt Assault Res and Alt Indirect Firer.
15000 point for draw - not easy for Soviet. Last v.1.03?

[Dog Soldier]

Do you think the scenario at VMs site that gives the Germans some reinforcements is balanced?

I have not played the VM _alt version. It changes things, mostly making armor harder for infantry to deal with. There is a lot of Soviet armor, so, it is hard to tell if the better values for the German armor in the game will help stem the tide.
There are two variants of the Minsk CG posted in the Mods forum here at the blitz.
One of them was the subject of an AAR.
SS Totenkopf - "Fire Brigade" (M44 Campaign)
A good read.

I like Alt Assault Res and Alt Indirect Firer.
15000 point for draw - not easy for Soviet. Last v.1.03?

Alt Assault Res OR will make it more difficult for infantry to assault tanks. It will not prevent the wear on the Landsers from Russian assaults.

Alt Indirect Fire OR will prevent large stacks from being deployed. This may hurt the Germans more than the Russians as the Germans need to stack up in the various 'choke points' on the map to force the Russians to take the longer way around such positions to flank them. With this OR, the Russian players will just have their troops stand down to eat lunch while the artillery and air strikes pound the German defensive stack into mush. If the Germans never build strong defensive positions and stacks in key terrain, then the Russians will just move up and create a couple of big stacks of 'B' quality troops to assault the smaller spread out German units into the stone age. This OR tends to create a 'Fabian Defense'.

Checking the map there are a lot of VP locations close to the front lines. Most can be reached in the first three days of the offensive by Soviet players.
Add to that, a lot of German losses in casualty victory points. It seems like the Russians have a long way to go to win. There are 129 turns.

Yes, v1.03 is the most recent one.

The Germans can cause some serious setbacks to the Russian offensive. Russian units will become exhausted (high fatigue). they take time to recover. Losses for both sides can be quite heavy. Just think in terms of what the German defense need to play for time. They cannot stop the Red Tide. They might be able to slow it down enough though to do well in game terms.

The M44 CG is a good game for a team game experience.

Dog Soldier

Those IP positions are not too good, but better than nothing. Even trenches are not good enough protection.
1st Baltic Front after the initial open artillery barrage.


This says it all. Dig those holes deep Landsers!

[MARDER1986]

Hello everyone, I was not able to participate in the discussion, I can not yet offer the rules. Because among us there are brand new, I think you should disable "Virtual supply trucks" in the campaign, and so a large number of troops, and if it is also a "supply truck" command, the move can be time consuming. For the rest of the rules are no questions.

[burroughs]

I think that MARDER1986 means that "explicit supply" rules should be turned off and "virtual supply trucks" on to limit the number of counters on the map - personally I like explicit supply rule and I am all for turning that on, but don't insist that much, perhaps it is a solution and a reasonable idea indeed.

Anyway, Mark wuwu25 has been officially recruited by me and is willing to join us in this great endeavour so I am assuming we have just gathered two three man teams:

HirooOnoda

MARDER1986

Maseda

Saper2

wuwu25

burroughs (me)

Are we in?

[MARDER1986]

Excellent, the team gathered, it remains to determine the principal at each side, I personally can do that either, only on weekends.

[Liebchen]

the 1st Belorussian Front solely is hell of a monster to manage.

I'm handling the First Byelorussian Front in a team game now. A typical move (including watching opp moves, using high speed in sectors other than my own) takes a few hours.

It is huge, but not unmanageable for one person. A lot of what happens in that sector is traffic management, at least in the beginning of the campaign.

[HirooOnoda]

While it appears we are in, we should discuss which version of the game we should play.

I've heard from enough people that the stock scenario isn't balanced well (very pro-Soviet) and there is Valcano Man's version or Michael Smith's 3 version of the scenario.

Does anyone have any feed-back on either of these two choices?

Hiroo

[Maseda]

Hi,

I thought the stage was chosen, get now to rethink the scenario is a bit quirky, thought that would fight a battle historic, hearken attentively proposal.

Maseda.

[HirooOnoda]

Hi,

I thought the stage was chosen, get now to rethink the scenario is a bit quirky, thought that would fight a battle historic, hearken attentively proposal.

Maseda.

Since I posted the original note, we have received information about other alternatives.

I'm just asking for input on those alternatives or we can just proceed with the original scenario.

Maseda, is this a deal-breaker for you?

[burroughs]

Indeed, let's not get firmly fixed on purely doctrinal thinking - a campaign team game being a complex endeavor including many factors indeed requires a careful thinking prior to launching it. From what I have seen at the site, I'd probably give my vote for "The Battle for Belorussia" by Cavalry Corps, Smith's version being tilted way into the German favor as the reports there show. His approach is truly inspiring with lots of issues taken into consideration as the readme file description points out, but perhaps the need to balance everything defies the historic truth about the situation there before "Bagration" got launched - I understand the necessity to make the gameplay attractive for both sides without putting the German into a position of crash test dummy and prevent people dropping off, but perhaps without allowing that to overshadow everything else.