I'm actually amused by the stats obsession as we enter the Hearts of Iron era, its a very McNamarian approach to war and its metrics.
I've managed to so far trounce Oddman twice since arriving in overall command of the front, (Not One Step Backwards!) and frustrated Fivoin; presuming Fivoin stares at the map as hard as I do it must have been extremely enticing to try to encircle the Moldavian African forces and thereby opening up the path to the Caucasus; especially since my Commanders accidentally left some gaps, an oversight to be sure.
One I was quick to correct, retreated in good order and fought a series of delaying actions that prevented Germany from closing the trap, and to my surprise successfully kept half of Moldavia in our hands; the planned for withdrawal to the Dniepre never came to be and there was much rejoicing as we ate Sir Robin's minstrel.
Initial counter offensive, in which we efforted to encircle the over extended Spanish tanks that Oddman had sought to swing north to drive for my newly minted Victory point in Novgorod,
keikaku doori as they say,
just as planned, as I expected he would take the bait and he did, and I snipped off 6 divisions.
A look at the southern front and our rough actions. I moved up troops Golle had retreated to Cherkessy to Vinnitsia to hold open the "gap" so that our troops could escape, it was still a close call as I think some troops got moved around when they weren't supposed to.
Basic idea was to move in an orderly fashion so that nothing got encircled and none did; it was very obvious fivoin would drive down there to the Black Sea to try to bag 60 divisions, the prize was too great to pass up so much of my planned had gone into making sure my commanders (Gollevainen and Jodokus) could handle it and pull back in good order.
They were pretty good and have been Awarded Hero-Generals of the Russian Federation, as we still hold parts of Moldavia.
Here we see we successfully encircled 6 Spanish divisions, I believe 3 were tanks and 3 were infantry; then we pushed into the Baltic Sea.
I scouted forward and found Spanish reinforcements which I had anticipated would have arrived by now since Oddman would make sure to finish me off before I had a chance to get my bearings, and so I quickly worked to deploy my troops in forward defencive positions while awaiting the arrival of tanks from the South.
Tanks arrived and Oddman was busy scrambling to find better defensive positions and had withdrawn from Bobruisk and Orsha; clearly fearing encirclement. With me in command who wouldn't?
I began the counter offensive and Oddman quickly abandoned the Baltic states north of the river as the deathtrap it likely was, leaving us largely in our current positions.
I probed Pinsk and Vilejka, German reinforcements made any attack of opportunity impractical at that time, otherwise Oddman's 6 divisions would have crumpled.
Current positions. We have 700 divisions to their 330.
Death and Glory!
