Serbia shall live! Serbia '14 4th Invasion AAR - Central Powers conceded turn 150

[ComradeP]

The campaign scenarios in Serbia '14 are, thus far, all enjoyable to play.

Though I was initially sceptical as to how interesting a game covering the Serbian campaign(s) would be, the game just "feels" right. I've heard the same remark from my opponents.

I'm enjoying this more than the two other FWWC titles. That's not because those are bad or worse, but because of the campaign covered: it feels as if both sides have a chance to change history, either through improving upon the historical outcome or through winning instead of losing the battle.

France '14 can quickly turn into a massive slaughter featuring trench warfare more suitable for late war periods, and the initial invasion in EP '14 can be quite tricky for the Russians. In Serbia '14, though you can see why historical events occurred, you have the means to change them that's often missing in wargames (as wargames tend to cover conflicts with a clear winner).

I'll update this first post with an overview of the armies involved and their capabilities.

[ComradeP]

I'll show the initial situation with the jump map on so you have an idea where the area shown is located on the map.

The map is huge, those interested in viewing it in its entirety can download the planning map from JTS (or check the scenario in the game, of course).

The contrast on the unit names that I placed on the map is not great, so I'll name the units in the post for clarity's sake.

First, the OOB.



The vast majority of the Serbian forces start on-map, the exceptions being The New Cavalry Brigade that teleports into the map and some New Territories border guard forces.

I cut the border guard forces from the OOB as they're companies and only the total strength in men is shown. Each Serbian army controls a number of border guard companies. They withdraw on the 10th day of action in their sector. That means your eyes and ears can disappear from one turn to the next, so you have to plan ahead to avoid becoming operationally blind.

The bulk of the Montenegrin forces arrive as reinforcements, only the 10th Independent Kolashinka Brigade and the 6th Pec Division start on-map.

All Entente forces aside from those in Beograd arrive as reinforcements, mostly (entirely?) by rail. Entente forces may or may not have 100% arrival chances and trickle into the map. I'll be able to count on solid French assistance but the arrival of the British is a bit iffy. The Grand Campaign variant includes strategy options for making them arrive in a more orderly manner, whilst also increasing Bulgarian forces.

Update 14th of May:

The weather offers nearly every possible variety of conditions possible in this part part of Europe.

Day/month/year followed by normal/soft/mud/snow/frozen conditions chance, followed by min/max visibility in hexes and the storm chance.

Visibility can change to any value between the values shown during the day. The ground conditions and storm conditions (if any) don't change during the day.

After the opening Normal/Soft conditions, there's a Storm with Mud conditions followed by mostly Mud until late October with a chance of Soft conditions.

November starts with excellent campaigning weather, which is why I expect both sides to make big moves then, followed by the weather slowly becoming colder and the weather becoming rather unpredictable.

[ComradeP]

The initial positions on the map, clockwise of sorts.



1st Army:

The majority of defenders start in BUNKER/bunker hexes.

The Danube II Division starts staring at some Austro-Hungarian Landsturm units and will pull back immediately as its presence here is rather pointless due to the Austro-Hungarian forces not posing a threat worth keeping a division in the area for. It will reinforce the Beograd sector.



The Drina II Division faces limited Austro-Hungarian crossing attempts. Parts of it are helping out at Beograd. The division will move east to Beograd, with positions being taken over by the Danube II Division.

The division in the lower left is the Morava II Division. It won't be released until the 14th of October.

Beograd is held by the Beograd Detachment, containing a wide variety of units including some small Entente artillery and infantry units. The surviving Entente units withdraw on October 26th.

3rd Army:

The Timok II Division will move south to Macedonia by rail in bits and pieces (rail capacity is 6 initially, decreasing to 1 later on) after its release on October 8th.

The Danube I and Drina I Divisions face a poorly planned German crossing. The German units won't have a pontoon bridge at their disposal until October 17th.

Unfortunately, Serbian fortification placement is also poor in the north-east and the Branicevo Detachment has to withdraw slowly in the face of two German corps.

[ComradeP]

All forces released on the 13th of October unless noted otherwise.



Timok Army:

The Iron Gates. There are 4 minefields directly in front of it and Russian torpedo boats in the Danube.

The Krajina Detachment will pull back when released on the 13th of October. It has nothing to do here.



Zajechar Fortress.

The Negotin Detachment will pull back when released, the Combined Division will move forwards to support the border guard screen.



Knajezevac fortress.

The Sumadija II Division will widen its front, but will withdraw as soon as the Bulgarian bulldozer puts pressure on the fortress.

The Bulgarians can literally walk straight to Knjazevac/Nis as unlike Zajechar there are only isolated border guard positions in front of them.



2nd Army/Timok Army.

The Sumadija I Division is released on the 8th of October, it will march to Vranje.

The Cavalry Division will ride, by rail or horse, to the Skoplje sector. The New Cavalry Brigade will be moved there by rail after arrival on-map on the 8th of October.

The bulk of the Morava I Division will move to Nis by road, the rest will move towards the Tumba Detachment.

The Tumba Detachment will only be doing some digging until the Bulgarians get there.

The flanks of the Timok I Division are hung out to dry, the division will withdraw towards Nis immediately after release.



The Vlasina Detachment will attempt to keep the Skoplje-Nis road open.

[ComradeP]

New Territories:



Many of the formations in the area, Serbian and Bulgarian, are "holding" enormous frontages. Even 100 miles/160 kilometres in the Bulgarian case.

The Krivopalanska Detachment will slowly withdraw south-west.



It will take days to form up the Bregalnica division. Its units are spread out across Macedonia. The division will eventually converge on the objectives across the Bulgarian border.

The Entente forces will arrive by rail from Thessaloniki using the rail line along the Vardar river to move north. There are 70-80 point supply sources on the border with Greece.



Skoplje, which will ideally never fall into enemy hands.



The Albanian border.

The Prizren Detachment will for all intents and purposes be Fixed for the duration unless the Central Powers get this far. The 6th Pec Division will be released in late October.



Visegrad. Montenegrin forces will stare at the Landsturm opposing them for weeks probably. Considerable Montenegrin reinforcements will arrive later on from the south-west.

The Uzice Detachment will move north-east and take up defensive positions near the Drina.



The Sokol Brigade will form a screen in front of Valjevo.



Kragujevac is the main Serbian arsenal. There are two 60 point supply sources there.

The Last Defence Detachment, which has a name along the lines of the Forlorn Hope, will prepare additional defensive positions. There are bunkers on the northern and eastern approaches to the Arsenal.

[ComradeP]

I'll show the active areas of the front at the start of each day. Mostly the end of my 06:00, some at the start (screenshots taken at a later time).

Most objectives are timed ("limited"), they'll disappear after a certain turn. The owner at the end of that turn gets the points (or rather, if I hold them the Central Powers don't get points).

Day 2, 06:00 October 8th 1915. Normal conditions. Turn 8.

Screenshots were taken at the start of my turn.



The main Drina II Division front is quiet. There are 5 Landsturm Brigades crossing the Sava. 3 regular, 2 mountain.

On Ada Ciganlija / Zigeuner Insel (the 100 point objective with the pontoon bridge north of it in the central part of the map), the units of the Drina II Division that started there have pulled back as they were sitting ducks for the German MG's and field guns on the other bank. I need to hold the objective until the end of turn 13.

German 43. Reserve Division and 44. Reserve Divisions have moved to the island but can't capture the VH due to Serbian ZOCs. It's a bit cheap, but effective. The 26. Infanterie Division is moving up to the front from the rear.

The Drina II Division bridge engineers are packing up their bridge to the island, I was hoping I could preserve the bridge. It worked in the end, but the engineers took stiff losses.

It's worth noting that the 44. Reserve Division might be supposed to secure a beachhead across the Sava against a Disrupted unit in a bunker. In our case, the assaulting unit became Disrupted and I moved a border guard unit into the hex in two turns.

In Beograd, units of Austro-Hungarian 59. Infanterie Division are moving in from the north. Beograd has been reduced to rubble in its entirety. The 150 point VH is Kalemegdan fortress. Two naval gun units are positioned there at the start of the scenario, but the hex is very difficult to hold.  A-H 57. Infanterie Division is moving into Beograd from the north-west.

Most of the units in the Beograd area have yellow/red Fatigue from the bombardment the previous days. The Central Powers have some serious firepower in the area.

The new rule that gives siege guns improved performance against bunkers can really be felt.

Historically, the Serbians seems to have held it until turn 21, October 9th/10th. That's nearly impossible in the game. The 250 point objective in central Beograd is Konak Palace, which also has to be held until turn 21. That is unlikely as well.



Semendria Island has been evacuated, again to avoid being blasted to bits. The Danube I Division bridge engineers are packing up their pontoon bridge. The Semendria Island objective has to be held until turn 21, which won't happen due to the evacuation. Semendria town, the 100 point VP south of the island, needs to be held until turn 37. The town is reduced to rubble due to the Central Powers bombardment pre-scenario start.

The German III Armeekorps on the other side of the Danube, consisting of  25. Reserve Division and 6. Infanterie Division, is Fixed (repeatedly) until the 9th.

The Drina I Division faces Bavarian 11. Infanterie Division and 105. Infanterie Division, which start on Temesziget island (the central area with the town on the left and the marsh/forest on the right) with a river between them and the Drina I Division.

107. Infanterie Division lands on the island in front of the green border guard units.

X Reservekorps crosses the Danube in the north-eastern corner with 101. Infanterie Division and 103. Infanterie Division. The Branicevo Detachment is moving into position.

In terms of casualties, the fighting in Beograd is bloody. The Entente naval guns in Kalemegdan fortress sank a river boat and damaged another before being knocked out.

[Mr Grumpy]

Fantastic AAR, it will be fascinating to see how your campaign plays out against ours that we have going as a five person teamgame.

We did pick the scenario with strategy options, I can't reveal which options we picked for the Serb side as my opponents may well read this post.

I might of missed noting which side you are playing or are you playing against the AI/Hotseat ?

As our file has be passed around I expect you will soon overtake us. 


Glad you enjoying S14 so much, I hope your AAR will encourage others to try the title out?


Is it OK to post comments or would you prefer there to be no chat between your posts?

[ComradeP]

Feel free to post comments!

My Japan '45 AAR sometimes felt like talking to myself.

My opponent is Elxaime as the Central Powers, I'm controlling the Serbian/Montenegrin/Entente side.

At the moment, we finish 3-4 turns a day. It's October 14th in-game as I write. The turn rate might lessen when the storm is over, we're mostly just banging away at each-other's forces in Beograd at the moment and moving units 1 hex at a time.

What I like about the opening days is that you can still decide to send some forces to other sectors, with the limited rail capacity the Serbians have.

The northern part of the map doesn't really offer interior line options due to the underdeveloped infrastructure, but the primary road from the fortresses to Skoplje does. There's another primary road suitable for interior lines in the central part of the map.

[ComradeP]

Day 3, 06:00 October 9th 1915. Soft conditions. Turn 16.



More A-H pontoon bridges were built across the Sava.

The Drina II Division is being shelled, and the Landsturm unit that acts as a spotter takes painful losses, sometimes 100 men in a turn. It's being rotated as far as I can tell.

In Beograd, the city proper is controlled by the Central Powers. Serbian and Entente forces pull back to the second BUNKER line.

As you can see, the Ada Ciganlija / Zigeuner Insel objective is gone due to being limited to turn 13.

The A-H forces in the city are taking a beating, but more cross the river each turn.

I've lost my first torpedo boat in Beograd. There are 4 Entente torpedo boats in a bunker hex in the water at Beograd.



The Drina I Division was kicked out of one of its BUNKER hexes close to the Danube after an unfortunate Disrupted result.

The Branicevo Detachment is struggling to hold their position and will soon be forced to retreat. Units from the Danube I Division are moving in to support them.

Central Powers losses are now higher than mine due to the vicious fighting in Beograd.

[ComradeP]

Day 4, 06:00 October 10th 1915. Normal conditions. Turn 24.



Visibility remains low for most of the day, 1 hex.

The German XXII Reservekorps has cleared the hexes next to Ada Ciganlija / Zigeuner Insel. That's a problem, as it will allow my opponent to outflank my positions on the ridge between the island and Beograd. I tempted fate by not moving the potentially exposed units back earlier, but losses were acceptable and I didn't lose any units aside from border guard companies.

On the last daylight turns, visibility increased and I could see a vast host in Beograd. This is the view at the end of the 16:00 turn.





The Branicevo Detachment is retreating. Two border guard companies will eventually be sacrificed.

III Armeekorps is assaulting the border guard positions across the Danube. I could've reinforced them earlier, but wanted to maintain a flexible deployment in case the Drina I Division would need help. As you can see, the bunker line is missing a link between Semendria and the border guard companies. That made it impossible to hold that position.