Stalingrad City Hexes

[EL GRAN CAPITAN]

[Ricky B]

Hi Ignacio,

Firing infantry in the city is probably a waste of time - you might pick up a few kills, but the increase in low ammo, fatigue and loss of a chance to pick up replacements makes it generally not worthwhile. Their hard attack factors are just too low.

However, in a team game, commanding the 6th Army, I have managed to take the northern 3 hexes from the Soviets over the course of the first 4 days, and have almost but not quite managed to take the north and south hexes of the main Soviet bridgehead during that time frame - I might have done more but have pulled most of the panzers out of the city and sent them west.

I did it by:

Firing artillery, even though the losses are not heavy, any losses will build fatigue which is critical. Nebelwerfers are best though and should be concentrated.

I did fire full strength infantry, especially the panzergrenadiers, against my targets, but I rested ones with losses/fatigue. This rarely caused losses but see above.

Move up all available 88s adjacent to the target hexes. They will get consistent kills - I used my other ground units to draw off some defensive fire when doing this, but I still lost a few guns in moving adjacent to the Soviets.

The German tanks with higher HA are good also, although vulnerable to Soviet fire in return.

Once I started causing some damage to the defenders of a hex, I would launch assaults to finish wearing them down, even though not all defenders were disrupted - otherwise, they seemed to recover from disruption quicker than I could get the last unit or two disrupted by fire.

PATIENCE is required. I took the first hex sometime on the second day, the second around the end of the second and third maybe early on the 4th? It requires time to wear them down through losses and fatigue, and luck to disrupt the defenders.

There are also a couple of hexes that are towns rather than cities, they are more vulnerable to fire, and Soviet HQs have a slightly lower defense value and so are easier to disrupt and then make the recovery from disruption of the other units assigned to its command less likely.

Finally, the Soviets sent reinforcements into my target hexes, but they land in travel mode. Set your infantry to destroy them if possible - they can kill huge numbers and greatly weaken these new units - you don't want them stronger and recovering from disruption, making it that much harder to clear the hex. I managed to kill 90% of the manpower in the few units that landed, give or take.

Good luck with it.

Regards
Rick

[EL GRAN CAPITAN]

[von Waldenburg]

Heavy AT and artillery fire+Heavy assaults (heavy= big stacks), I've taken 2 hexes on day 1 and another on the morning of day 2. The rubbled city still allows quick enough movement of units in travel mode due to the low movement cost of city hexes basically. This allows to get your 88's into the frontline forts. Another thing you can do in the southern part of the big russian bridgehead is use 2 infantry divisions in conjunction (but not assault with them together if posible to avoid the penalty) so as to combine their artillery

One thing that stroke me when I got the game is how many Axis units are wasted in the Stalingrad oven. One can conceivably reinforce the rumanians with some of these units, specially panzers (although mine are still fighting in the city for some time). I dont know if you are playing the campaign or the city scn, in which this would have no importance whatsoever.

cheers

[D-Day_Dodger]

I'm really enjoying this thread as there is some dynamite tactical info that will certainly come in handy when I find myself faced with that situation, whether its Stalingrad '42 or other PzC games. What I do regret however, is that these pearls of wisdom from members, garnered from hundreds of hours of play of this and other PzC games, will slowly be lost to the general membership as this thread is bumped by newer ones.
As this is getting off topic I will start a new thread exploring the possibility of establishing an archive of useful tactical hints that members can share with other members.

[Ricky B]

As this is getting off topic I will start a new thread exploring the possibility of establishing an archive of useful tactical hints that members can share with other members.

Someone can write up a strategy article for here and/or Glenn's site, as you say. I wrote one on assaulting fortified positions that I think was here at one time but is gone now, along with Glenn's site. It is still available at Glenn's site along with some other items at: Glenn's Articles Page.

Some of the tips would help with the city fighting in Stalingrad, but maybe I should revise it with additional tips and readd it to the Blitz articles section, if it was there before, and for Glenn to update.

Rick