Turn 21: Early April 1919
The Siberians have struck hard..
.. but not hard enough! Penza holds! Trotsky and Berezin's boys arrived literally the day the battle begun, so I've just barely averted a breach in the Siberian front here. A day later, and the entire line would have been unstrung. I would have had to withdraw from Kazan and Simbirsk just to maintain a coherent front.
So, whew. We both bled, but as Michael says, I can afford it more. Or can I? I'm taking casualties at quite a rate lately. See this?
That's the result of my ballyhooed counterattack at Tzaritsyn - a brutal repulse. Chapaev will have to pull back to Saratov and try to hold the city - Denikin's 30,000 will require at least twice that number of Reds to defeat decisively if they stay concentrated like this. Blucher will hold the railroad to the northwest, at Tambov. If he can.
So. Repulse and defeat in the south, barely hanging on in the east. No real action in the far north. Anything I'm missing? Ah, yes, Ukraine:
It's chaos, and worse than that: FRAGILE chaos. Whites advancing from the south, yours truly from the north, and Ukrainian nationalists trying to hold what is in between. This is a difficult front. Kharkov is mine, but weakly held. Kiev may soon be mine - I'm hitting them with Budyenny's cavalry and about 10,000 infantry. If I can hold it, it'll provide a much-needed boost to my morale. Other towns in the northwest have fallen, and I'm now fanning partisans out south of the Dniepr. Still, my positions are all very weak. I've been advancing into a vacuum, more or less, and even now I need to call forces away from the northwest to deal with the Greens.
Ah, yes. GREENS ARE EVERYWHERE!
For those of you who don't know, Greens represent peasant uprisings, general banditry, and more organized forces not allied with either the Whites or the Reds. And right now, a huge series of uprisings has hit central Russia, paralyzing my railroad networks around Moscow. The newly built force I had earmarked to reinforce Ukraine is going to have to run around suppressing these forces and repairing railroads for a few months.
This damn game gets harder every turn.. Fingers so very, very crossed...