Winter War: Viipuri

[Zig the Caver]

Just finished this scenario and won...but barely. But held the VKT line at the end.

Is this scenario supposed to hollow out your core forces? Took about six units of casualites and with the low point pool in the following scenario I can barely reinforce the units I have nevermind rebuild the ones that were lost. Plus it looks like another Soviet onslaught is on the way.

In the preceding two scenarios the Soviets jump ahead in fighter aircraft capability but the Fins do not seem to keep parity even with their additional options. The Finnish airforce seems like a big prestige point sink that does not end up paying off. I need them to fend off the massive number of Soviet aircraft but they themselves take massive losses and never take full control of the skies. By the time I got to Viipuri my airforce is beaten down with no real option to build them up as it seems points are more urgently needed to upgrade ground units to have any chance of standing up to the all of a sudden overwhelming Soviet army.

I may try replaying Viipuri again. Has anyone completed this with minimal casualties? I imagine it is impossible to hold the initial VT line for much more than 10 turns. Is it worth investing in fighter defence at expense of better troops and armour?

[ikbenrichard]

You dont need to hold that line for more then 10 turns. Just place 4 of your fastest units there, and at turn 11 retreat them to your main force. You need 1 fighter or antiair as a minimum. Those planes are very useful later on aswell.

It is doable with 3 or less casualties.

Edit: wrong battle in mind, sorry. Disregard my comment.

[Zig the Caver]

Alright, went through it again with only the loss of a Buffalo fighter and a 45mm pak gun.

This time I focused on a planned withdrawal once the number of soviets got too large although it meant the loss of the initial hold the line objective for 10 turns. I was also able to maintain some control of the air with the use of 109G6 and Buffalo along with upgrading the light AA guns and one of my 37mm paks to the Landsverk (sp?)--definitely a useful unit.

[ikbenrichard]

Wow that is a low loss. I did hold the line just now but lost about 35% of my army.
I retry perhaps with the loss of the line. You do get 3 amazing aircrafts though (not permanent ?)

[Zig the Caver]

On the first try I got the hold the line objective and you do indeed get three very good German air units--2 x FW190 and 1 x Ju87. And you're correct they are not permanent

Unfortunately, in the first try I also took full losses to my remaining airunits and lost all my artillery. Normally, I would just go on with the campaign but the prestige and veterancy loss with the artillery was just too great. As I mentioned, in the next scenario, the pointage is so low that there was no way I could replace the completely destroyed units and keep the surviving ones at fighting strength.

[Xam Huad]

Weird, I never had any problem dealing with the Soviet air forces, using just 2 Fokker fighters for the first missions and one of those Smyrzy(?) as a 3rd after it became available. Upgraded the Fokkers to Messerschmits later on.

» Tips & Tricks
Keeping the air superiority is absolutely vital or otherwise those Soviets will hack your artillery pieces to smithereens. Suppress the enemy and try to kill off those low-strength enemies where possible, so that they won't reinforce to full strength later. Try to hold the enemy down using bottlenecks, mine the place up if you need to (to keep armor at bay). Use pincer counter-attacks to cut off whole batches of enemies (don't get cut off by the same tactic). Use those non-core forces to slurp up damage for you.

[Zig the Caver]

My Fokker fighters took some proper beatings against figthers and bombers early on. Once the Soviets get the Mig 3 it was too punishing to engage figther to fighter and keeping the air units at strength with veterans was a big point sink with me.

But, ya, the 109 can swing the advantage back to the Finns. With a 2-3 star veterancy unit and one of the Finn air commanders it can outfight any Soviet aircraft.

[DiceWrangler]

Necroing this old thread because I am re-playing Winter War.

I recommend ignoring the ships (off of the west coast) and retreat north as soon as you can assure that the westernmost VKT position will be held long enough for the 10 turn secondary objective; those german aircraft are very helpful, even if they are only temporary. The first time I played this scenario I wasted several turns -- and took considerable damage -- bombing them.


The AI seems to prefer attacking Anti-Tank units over everything else -- even if they have no tanks -- so sacrificing some cheap ones just to draw fire can be worth it to save more valuable but vulnerable units. Those combo AT/AA Landsverk (?) units are great so try to keep them alive; actually, I upgraded all of my AT and AA units into these during deployment and my initial deployment included 5 of them(!)

You *will* lose core units in this scenario so have some reserves standing by and ready to deploy. You can revive "dead" units, of course, but this will cost resource points. Deploying a unit in reserve is free.

I kept 3 points worth of land unit points in reserve in case the enemy broke through an area that I did not defend or reinforce properly -- and it paid-off.

I finished the first secondary objective (VKT line) and am about to fallback to the second line. I am thinking this is a great opportunity to mine some bridges or chokepoints -- if I can afford it.

[DiceWrangler]

Quick update: I finally completed this scenario (after several attempts) and only lost one core unit (Infantry). Enemy artillery is major threat -- especially the 203mm(!) -- so try to stay outside of their range.

The next scenario is another *massive* Russian assault so select units that are better at defense (LOTS of infantry plus a few anti-tank units will be helpful). The only tank I brought was the KV-1 because that thing is a heavily armored beast -- as long as it does not get flanked. I also brought 5x Landsverks and they were very effective; mostly in the AT role, I gained air superiority fairly quickly and the Russians did not bring any AA units with them this time!

Plan to fall back *before* your line breaks so always keep an evacuation route open and try to have full-strength units nearby to intercept pursuers. You will frequently need to move battered units to safety so they can recover strength and fatigue.

Do not try to hold all of the initial frontline positions, some are very difficult to defend for long and you will waste too many units and resource points before they are eventually overwhelmed. This means you will need to sacrifice some non-core units and just consider them "speed bumps."

In summary: Stay on the defensive, falling back when necessary, until the aggressor's thrust has been exhausted then COUNTERATTACK! I finished this scenario with only one casualty (infantry, again) but only one Russian unit survived.

[Russkly]

Originally posted by DiceWrangler:

Quick update: I finally completed this scenario (after several attempts) and only lost one core unit (Infantry). Enemy artillery is major threat -- especially the 203mm(!) -- so try to stay outside of their range.

The next scenario is another *massive* Russian assault so select units that are better at defense (LOTS of infantry plus a few anti-tank units will be helpful). The only tank I brought was the KV-1 because that thing is a heavily armored beast -- as long as it does not get flanked. I also brought 5x Landsverks and they were very effective; mostly in the AT role, I gained air superiority fairly quickly and the Russians did not bring any AA units with them this time!

Plan to fall back *before* your line breaks so always keep an evacuation route open and try to have full-strength units nearby to intercept pursuers. You will frequently need to move battered units to safety so they can recover strength and fatigue.

Do not try to hold all of the initial frontline positions, some are very difficult to defend for long and you will waste too many units and resource points before they are eventually overwhelmed. This means you will need to sacrifice some non-core units and just consider them "speed bumps."

In summary: Stay on the defensive, falling back when necessary, until the aggressor's thrust has been exhausted then COUNTERATTACK! I finished this scenario with only one casualty (infantry, again) but only one Russian unit survived.

Well, that's impressive.

I've started this scenario about 5 times, and haven't even come close to holding either the VKT line or Viipuri itself, and I have >750 hours on OoB.

Whilst you start with a heap of requisition points you need all of these and more just to bring your early-war units up to date. By the time I upgraded my heavy infantry, engineers and ski troops to 43/44 I had precious little left to do anything with the limited armour, AA, AT, and air assets I had.

So, I ended up with a KV-1, a BT-7, a bunch of decent, experienced 1943/44 infantry/engineers, 2 x 105mm arty, 3 x Landswerk II, a couple of Fokker tactical bombers and 3 x Morane-Saulnier fighters.


So all early war air assets.

I couldn't afford to upgrade the AT or the AFVs to the STUG or the IVJ, and I couldn't afford to upgrade the MS fighters to 109 G-6s.

No chance of buying anything new. Forget that even though you know you need more AFVs, arty and AT, because the map is big and you know the Russkies will have lots of tanks.

Men vs boys.

The Russians bring shed loads of everything inc. T34-85s, KV-2s, Katyushas, Yaks, Migs & IL-2s.

They also have 3 ships to pummel the westernmost VT line position, and if you ignore them the unit there will not resist until Turn 10 to trigger the German air assets.

Moreover they always know where all my carefully-placed minefields are and never trip any of them. They just bring up engineers to clear them, so the only point of having them is a slight delay to the onslaught.

I'm losing the will to continue trying this scn, esp. since I read here that the next scn is another Russian assault, in which you get even fewer points.

Anyone have a decent Finnish core army then can share with me, so that I have at least some chance?

[Russkly]

Can anyone help, please?!!!