Minsk - No Panthers

[cavalry corps]

Minsk



I have been playing three games of Minsk , its an interesting campaign



There appear to be just enough points of interest in the oob to be interesting but for the Axis there seems to be no Panthers at all , or am I missing something . I also feel that there is a slight lack of chrome in the amount of detail . I realise the game is massive already but this is an op level game and I would expect more oob like the best one K44 .



I realise it takes a long time to play but this is supposed to be a Battalion/ co level game . I have some suggestions to spped up campaign games and theplay in general . I will post them later .



Regards

Michael

[Glenn Saunders]

...but for the Axis there seems to be no Panthers at all , or am I missing something .

I don't know - I am not looking at the game right now but I thought there was a few of them. Looks like I included the art for Panthers and I don't do that unless they are used in the game. This wasn't a sector where the Germans expected an attack so maybe they had there panthers elsewhere or not on the map at the start of the battle?

I certainly didn't exclude any units with panthers and if you know of any that should be in the game, please send me the info with the reference and I'll see if I can confirm them. I think his area is one where the Germans tried to use a lot of StuG-IIIs to provide the support.

I also feel that there is a slight lack of chrome in the amount of detail . I realise the game is massive already but this is an op level game and I would expect more oob like the best one K44 .

I thought it was the same level of detail as in Stalingrad, Moscow and the more recent East Front games. If anything I think the K44 OOB is more an anomoly when compared to Kursk, Kharkov or even Rzhev, so I am not sure why you would expect something different at Minsk. But then again I am not sure why you would think there would be a different level of detail here.

There are over 2000 German units in the OOB - more than in Korsun, so if we did use more detail then we could bury players in Too many units.

Glenn

[bdtj1815]

The spring/summer of 1944 was a strange time for the panzer divisions. Many had one battalion of their Pz Regt's in Germany re-equipping with Panthers, a process that had been going on for almost a year. Divisions on key fronts, oarticularly the West were given priority before D-Day, some new Panther equipped battalions were even sent to the West, and one to Italy, whilst their parent division was in the East! AG Centre was seen as low priority, even on the Eastern Front, as the German's were convinced that the next Soviet offensive was going to be against AG North Ukraine who had priority. That is why the Panzer Divisions that arrive as reinforcements from AG North Ukraine have a Panther battalion.

I could give a more detailed breakdown of this re-equipping process and which battalion got Panthers and when and where they went but that is possibly outside the scope of this thread. As it is the game has it basically right.

[Jazman]

[Hank]

Just curious. What's strange about the Korsun OOB?

I ask because this is most likely my next purchase from HPS. I think the story and battle of the Cherkassy Pocket (spelling?) is one of the most memorable of the war, yet one of the least documented.

[Jazman]

[Volcano Man]

[bdtj1815]

To be accurate the tiger battalion was an independent unit, schwere Panzer Abteilung 505, which was under command of 5th Panzer Division for much of the time covered by Minsk44. Its participation in the battle is described in "Tigers in Combat I" by Scheidner and in Gerd Niepold's "Battle for White Russia".

[Volcano Man]

Right, my mistake and it is correctly represented that way in the OOB too.

[Landser34]

In The Korsun game i think they made all those tiny German units to keep the Russians from just finding a gap somewhere on the map and isolating large portions of the German Army if they didnt have those units no way could they even cover their front lines