DLC '44 #12: Return to Kishinev

[VPaulus]

Please post here your comments about this scenario.

[monkspider]

-Edit wrong scenario

[Kerensky]

This is one of the final scenarios of the campaign, I think you are looking for Jassy Kishinev.

[monkspider]

Return to Kishinev
Prestige after upgrades 1600
Ending prestige 650
Losses: 1 5 Star Wehrmacht Infantry, 1 5 star field artillery, 1 hummel, 1 green Wehrmacht infantry, 2 recon cars.
Marginal victory turn 22/22

After a fairly strong performance in Warsaw, my second battle in the Kishinev region proved to be one of my all time worst debacles.

The battle started off reasonably auspiciously, I had more prestige after upgrades than I had for a long time. I actually had a lot of momentum going into this one, and I thought I would be able to pull out another decisive victory. My strategy was to have my main force in the center, another force just east of the river, north of Kishinev, and then one further south that would concentrate on taking the Romanian cities.

Things quickly got hot for my troops in the east. It seems every turn was a crisis of some kind, I had to move units around, launch counterattacks, in short it seemed like I was in a lot of trouble. I diverted troops form the center, which was doing comparatively better and finally managed to stabilize things. Around turn 11, the enemy assault seemed to be dying down. I retook a couple objectives until the next wave of attackers showed up.

With this second wave, I completely lost control of the skies. I don't think my luftwaffe had ever taken such losses before. By the end of the battle, I only had one combat=ready fighter squadron still out there. The Soviet troops managed to overrun my already wounded defenses in the east. I lost a precious five star infantry and field artillery, along with other units. I nearly lost 2 five star Panzer IVs and a KV=1, but I managed to create a corridor through which they could escape.

By about turn 15, I realized there was no hope for decisive victory, the goal now was to simply survive for a few more turns and hold on for a marginal victory and to ensure the survival of my core.

A truly brutal battle, and one that conveys the feeling of futility that has been the theme of this campaign.

[billmv44]

General, Imported core. Starting Prestige 15370, ending 20557. This was a challenging scenario. It requires a division of forces in the face of the powerful Soviet offensive in the north while dealing with the Romanians in the south. I opted to use 3 battle groups of 2 Panthers, one infantry and 1 artillery unit to deal with the Romanians. Meanwhile all remaining forces, including all Tiger IIs faced the Russians. It was hard to keep enemy forces from leaking through my lines. I had to shuffle and re-position constantly. I was ultimately able to hold them off, while I crushed the Romanian forces. I held off on taking the final victory hex, to build prestige and experience. DV on 20/21 after taking everything on the map and wiping out the Russians. The Red Air Forces are increasingly difficult. I was able to handle them, but it was close. They were almost able to take out on of my Ju87-Gs. They had more attackers than I had defenders for the unit.

Another well done job. I wouldn't change anything here. On to Budapest.

[karlto]

OK, I have to disagree with some of the other posters here about the difficulty of this scenario. Unlike some of the others, my imported core has been struggling a bit since Stalingrad, but I've had some decent success in getting through '44 in reasonably OK shape until I came here. Actually, before Warsaw I was feeling pretty smug, took a beating there, but not too bad (6 units down from max). I have 3 maxed out Panthers, a couple of half-decent Tiger IIs, a good Tiger I, two good Elephants, a decent Jägdpanther and a couple of Panzer IVs, but the mongolian hordes in this scenario just roll over them quicker than I can beat back the Bulgarians. I have now tried 4 times, but my entire core has been wiped out every time. I don't seem to be doing that much differently than the other guys here, so what gives? Is this scenario just impossible unless you have a full core? Am I just stupid? I've gotten all the way here, so I can't be totally horrible, can I?

In all seriousness, it does sound like it is very difficult to balance play both for the Super-Mansteins and the mere mortals. The way I have played the DLC, I have never had the hoards of prestige point it sounds like some people have. Could some kind of balancing scheme (enemy prestige scaling with size and quality of units in core as well as with prestige reserve?) I understand that such a scheme could be very difficult to tune and test, but maybe the only way to keep scenarios reasonably challenging for everyone without wiping out people like me? (Now, I guess the result here isn't far from historical reality, but it would be nice to reach '45, at least).

Best regards,
Colonel Karl

[Casaubon]

A little background info about my playing style: Having played through all DLCs so far on General (I stopped playing Field Marshall in last play through after Stalingrad and restarted in General by the way, my core ran out of prestige absolutely in the first try with the russian bagration offensive) with DV on almost all battles until 43, then having played DLC43 with about half of the battles on DV. Then I had a hard time in DLC44 but managed to bring my kind of historical core (one Tiger 2, some Tiger 1s, 1 Elephant, other non - uberunits like Pz3 and Pz4, lots of support units to Kishinev with some painfull losses around warsaw with my airforce of about 10 hero fighters reduced piece by piece in each battle to 2 fighters and some useless level bombers.

And now this: Return to Kishinev. Even if I can slow or even stop the russian assault on one end, on the other the front brakes apart, enemy encircling anything and I have to retreat survivers behind some river bottlenecks giving up all of the victory positions. My prestige went down from 12k to 4k in midgame of this map as I am buying infantry /ATs to counter and kill heavy tanks in forest and other difficult terrain cause my panthers/pz4 tanks are overrun hopelessly and the few tigers can´t hold that much territory or run out of ammo all the time, facing T43-85, IS-2 or SU-152 in vast numbers. I still think I´m doing quite good and might want to try a full retreat next time. While plaqying this map I have the feeling the scenario designer attempted to crush any player´s core that is not consisting by other stuff then Tiger2 and other nonsense uber-units and give the player the feel of a late lost war desperation. As I was trying to hold position and to overcome the losses by buying 4-7 infantry or antitank units per turn right where enemy was about to brake into the fortified towns, losing most of them within the same or next turn.
This is really tough, does anyone know if a loss on this map allows to go on in the campaign? I´d rather give this one up and keep some of my experienced units for later. I don´t mind losing 10 - 15 units per map, but losing 40 is a bit much I think I have to retry for a fourth time moving everything behind bridges and try to abuse the stupidity of the AI crossing them at all costs.

[hmshood]

IF one can survive the initial wave of Russian forces you have a chance. BUT good grief...that onslaught...if was massive and unrelenting. I used two battle-groups of Panthers & artys with INF support to take care of the Rumanians. Everything else was up front except one small "firefighting" (1 Panther, 1 PK IV and 2 Tigers w/extra movement factors). I used this mobile force to plug up the holes the Russkie's made. Now if I had another 2 mobile forces it might have made things a tad easier. This was by far the most difficult scenario.

Just as others mentioned...there is a SECOND wave....WHY??..the FIRST wave dam near finished me off....hurmph...

All reserve forces now gone...Core strength greatly depleted...prestige 2657... ego shattered....

I have one full strength Tiger II (SE)...maybe an Inf or two close to full strength...

NOW I have been handed another note from that idiot in Berlin...it seems the boys will miss another Oktoberfest cause we gotta somewhere else...

may the flea's of a thousand camels infest the armpits of those dolts at OKW

Hood

[Elkarlo]

Wow that was hard. The Romanians are all over the west and the Soviets are coming south fast in the west. All I coukd do in the west was withdraw towaesd the river and size the Romanian airfield and large city there. I sent a taskforce south and couldn't take all the Romanian positions in time.as the Soviet attack in the center and east didn't allow me enough forces to do anything else. MV

[muftugil]

I am a little late to the party - posting this in late 2022. This is the first time I am playing this map. I had chosen the other path in my previous campaigns. I was able to resist until about turn 16 when I started to lose units. I will try again but this time, I will fully withdraw in the west and take care of the Romanians in the south, trading territory for attrition and separating AA from artilleries. If I can start countering by turn 10, I may be able to push back to reclaim lost territory.