How to beat "Fateful Strike" as Wehrmacht?

[Zero]

Did anyone win the campaign with the Germans? For me, the first rounds where quite challenging and fun. However, later on, the swarms of T34 and KV1 steamroll everything, literally everything. 88s have crap ammo against kv1s over 1km and are literally blind in close combat, unlike hatched tanks with ultra-rapid traverse and thermal view.

stug 3's are useless and run out of ammo pretty fast. lefh are 1 shot anyways and have no other purpose other than dying. I literally won a battle only with off map arty, because I set it on a crossroad, which killed 2 dozens of tanks. leig has no heat *sight*

Troops arrived mechanics makes pulling back or moving troops impossible, makes my 88s and lefh spawn in forests or hole battalions of infantry next to 20 Russian tanks.

The Luftwaffe makes cool noises, legends tell that they did damage in that battle.
Your tank reinforcement consists of 2 companies of doorknockers and 1x F2 for each company with a blinking shot me first sign on it, cause even at midnight they are always the first being killed.

7 rounds through the campaign, Russians tank battalions with scratches on their armor, my tank companies wiped out and only 1 inf company as reinforcement in 5 round.

I would not call myself a beginner in this game, but oh boy....., what a challenge. Dunno how they managed that IRL.

[The WarSimmer]

It was definitely quite the challenge and I ran into the same issues as you. I did NOT win the operation, but here are some of my take aways if I could do it over, and ideas for people to keep in mind who haven't played it yet:

1) Concentrate your AT. I made a huge mistake in trying to spread my 88s apart to try and cover all the ground the red army would be chewing up. After realizing this meant that you would usually be going up against 30 tanks shooting against 1 88 at once, it was too late for me to fix. Next time I want to put my field arty and 88's along with my 5cm guns together in the town where they all have direct support of one another.

2) Be resourceful. I wish that I used my 10.5cm artillery more for direct AT support. Especially on the right flank (west side of map). Flamethrower infantry should be set up to ambush.

3) Make sure to concentrate your two panzer platoons as well, and try to set them up in ambush or in a way they can cause cross fire or enfilade fire. Don't let them go in one battlegroup at a time. Set up BEHIND treelines in the night turns so you are within 200 meters of soviet armour.

5) DON'T give up ground. I made this mistake thinking I could "counter-attack" later. HA.

6) Get lucky with airstrikes:)

7) You know all about this but for those who don't, avoid making the mistake of "marching" valuable armour into assaults where you can't place them. I did this like an idiot.

All in all a great campaign, even if I couldn't eek out the win. Curious to hear others tips as well.

[Zephyr]

I am in Turn 11 and no I will not win with VP. I am not sure if it is possible in this operation and personally I do not give all that much for the VPs since in some operations the enemy has an unreasonable VP headstart in my opinion. In reality I would consider my result a strategic win however, even if every poor guy from the troops would hate me. Both forces are effectively destroyed and since 2 turns only marginal gains are happening in one direction or the other. VP wise it will be a draw at most in the end.

And yes, it was a really good challenge and most problems you mention I encountered as well, but everything in the arsenal had its mostly very short moment of glory, even the 3.7 mm PAKs managed to kill T-34s. And the air force safed the day on two occasions.

The "arrived" mechanic fits the scenario perfectly I think. It was very hard to move 88s and other heavy guns at all and I find it very nice that you can now have severe drawbacks if you move them in what is effectively a tank assault.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1754574593

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1754574705

[andrey12345 v2.0]

The only way to wait until Marshal Tymoshenko will send order for 21TC to turn around and move to meet the 1 German Tank Army.

[The WarSimmer]

Originally posted by Zephyr:

I am in Turn 11 and no I will not win with VP. I am not sure if it is possible in this operation and personally I do not give all that much for the VPs since in some operations the enemy has an unreasonable VP headstart in my opinion. In reality I would consider my result a strategic win however, even if every poor guy from the troops would hate me. Both forces are effectively destroyed and since 2 turns only marginal gains are happening in one direction or the other. VP wise it will be a draw at most in the end.

And yes, it was a really good challenge and most problems you mention I encountered as well, but everything in the arsenal had its mostly very short moment of glory, even the 3.7 mm PAKs managed to kill T-34s. And the air force safed the day on two occasions.

The "arrived" mechanic fits the scenario perfectly I think. It was very hard to move 88s and other heavy guns at all and I find it very nice that you can now have severe drawbacks if you move them in what is effectively a tank assault.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1754574593

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1754574705

Nice kill count on those tanks!

[Zephyr]

Yeah, but to do this you have to be very mean to your forces. No retreat, ignore the losses to your infantry and guns, pull every ambush trick you know and still hope for the best. I kind of wasted my tanks, for a 1:1 ratio setup they are just not good enough, even in the best case one tank is lost for one enemy. Not really great especially in this campaign.

So now in turn eleven I have no tanks at all, no AT guns except some 88s and a few small ones somewhere and almost depleted infantry. The enemy has finally run out of functional tanks it seems, but still has at least up to ten damaged ones that are used to defend VP points. So the campaign is not going anywhere anymore it seems. The rest is probably just atritional fighting to the end with nothing major.

[ThunderChief]

I empathise with the OP. The first time I played a couple of turns to get familiar with the terrain and new units/ammo I lost a lot of men quickly.

When I concentrated, planned and tried hard I decided to pull back, dig in and consolidate and hold my armour as a counterattacking force. Several times I got more than 150 kills and >250 Heavily Wounded by waiting patiently and then springing ambushes and then counterattacking. Even the PzIIs are devastating when counterattacking infantry.

I used the PzIV/F2 as the Queen on my chessboard. It sits well back behind the others and I always hide it in cover and micromanage it, taking quick shots and then reversing (turn off Fire At Will so it actually reverses instead of getting killed while reloading). The KV-1s are my biggest priority and I plan a flexible defense around their appearance. I try to get them into areas where I can unleash 3-4 different weapons on them at once rather than try the long range 88 sniping match I so often lost on my familiarisation run.

I gave up front slope defense, I don't defend obvious artillery targets and I try to never have a slugging match with armour. I also don't send the StuGs after anything other than light tanks or to ambush T-34s from the side.

It's a struggle and a challenge and I look forward to playing it again after the Voronezh campaign.

[Lich]

After this update to the Borki campaign I noticed that the Germans get more infantry BG's up close to the front lines which I'm not sure will help much. Another thing that will help you on that campaign is trying to abuse the operational map. Trying to wall off the single russian owned square in the bottom left of the map will make every attack in that area a huge disadvantage to the Russians numbers wise. Due to them only being able to use two BG's in their assaults against more than triple the BG's on the German side. The bottom right side of that map is still questionable about the best way to go about defending it. I'm still unsure if I'll be able to pick apart all of those darn tanks. Either standing your ground and attempting to bring up the reserve BG's or falling back and forming up with them in more of the middle of the map to defend.

All in all the left side map including the village is a cake walk. It's the right side will all of those tanks that makes me scratch my head at the best solution.

[Zero]

Originally posted by Lich:

After this update to the Borki campaign I noticed that the Germans get more infantry BG's up close to the front lines which I'm not sure will help much. Another thing that will help you on that campaign is trying to abuse the operational map. Trying to wall off the single russian owned square in the bottom left of the map will make every attack in that area a huge disadvantage to the Russians numbers wise. Due to them only being able to use two BG's in their assaults against more than triple the BG's on the German side. The bottom right side of that map is still questionable about the best way to go about defending it. I'm still unsure if I'll be able to pick apart all of those darn tanks. Either standing your ground and attempting to bring up the reserve BG's or falling back and forming up with them in more of the middle of the map to defend.

All in all the left side map including the village is a cake walk. It's the right side will all of those tanks that makes me scratch my head at the best solution.

Yay, more infantry for the meat- grinder.

[ThunderChief]

Originally posted by Lich:

After this update to the Borki campaign I noticed that the Germans get more infantry BG's up close to the front lines which I'm not sure will help much. Another thing that will help you on that campaign is trying to abuse the operational map. Trying to wall off the single russian owned square in the bottom left of the map will make every attack in that area a huge disadvantage to the Russians numbers wise. Due to them only being able to use two BG's in their assaults against more than triple the BG's on the German side. The bottom right side of that map is still questionable about the best way to go about defending it. I'm still unsure if I'll be able to pick apart all of those darn tanks. Either standing your ground and attempting to bring up the reserve BG's or falling back and forming up with them in more of the middle of the map to defend.

All in all the left side map including the village is a cake walk.

I think we discussed this in an earlier thread. I'm not a fan of abusing the map mechanics. IRL the enemy could easily have fit more BGs into the open terrain in front of the village. In fact open terrain could perhaps get 3 nodes and bad terrain could get 2 to reflect this kind of opportunity for force concentration.

Originally posted by Lich:

It's the right side will all of those tanks that makes me scratch my head at the best solution.

For me the answer is terrain, airstrikes, force management and counterattacks. You can remove most platoons from a BG and add artillery spotters to it by adding command squads and right-clicking on the BG icon to select the exact spotter you want for the primary commander (e.g. getting high calibre rockets to disable enemy armour on obvious axes of advance).

This way you can fight delaying actions by accepting battle on Turn 2 (fighting in the dark is pointless with the KV-1s currently able to 1-shot your AT in the dark), positioning your men at the very rear of the battle map and using off-map artillery and airstrikes to whittle down the Soviets, and then withdraw your forces. Make sure you leave a space on the road to Borki so your BG can retreat instead of routing, and don't leave it too late to retreat.

This doesn't feel gamey to me because it's not an exploit, it's a proven rearguard tactic. If you have air superiority, why not use it. If the Soviets have to attack, why not draw them in.

So you can hold the village in the SW of the map without exploiting the map limitations, withdraw your left flank in rearguard actions and then counterattack down your extreme left flank when your armoured reserve is available, concentrating both armoured BGs for maximum effect.

[zaigre777]

Originally posted by ZeroCrack01:

However, later on, the swarms of T34 and KV1 steamroll everything, literally everything. 88s have crap ammo against kv1s over 1km and are literally blind in close combat, unlike hatched tanks with ultra-rapid traverse and thermal view.

Seems to me also that tanks see too well when hatched,especially in terrain that wouldn't suggest that (towns and forests),while AT guns are often blind and deaf to nearby tanks.

[CobaLT]

I got a minor victory on this campaign. I think i got lucky because I remember having a couple of battles saved from the brink of disaster by a crazy amount of stukas pummeling everything. One tip I can give you that I remember is to try to track the heavy tanks and then shell them until their crews bail.

[Toni]

Originally posted by zaigre777:

Originally posted by ZeroCrack01:

However, later on, the swarms of T34 and KV1 steamroll everything, literally everything. 88s have crap ammo against kv1s over 1km and are literally blind in close combat, unlike hatched tanks with ultra-rapid traverse and thermal view.

Seems to me also that tanks see too well when hatched,especially in terrain that wouldn't suggest that (towns and forests),while AT guns are often blind and deaf to nearby tanks.

This is an old thread. Spotting and visibility and many other related things have changed a lot since then! An example: Update 10/18/2019 added "Dead Zones" for tanks:

"15) Dead zones for vehicles are calculated based on the number of active crewmembers and the location of observation devices."

https://steamcommunity.com/games/312980/announcements/detail/1554231152198952707

[Archipilot]

Originally posted by Toni:

This is an old thread. Spotting and visibility and many other related things have changed a lot since then!

Yes, the game mechanic has changed quite a lot since the summer!

But this campaign is still hard as hell. In that way, it's a nice change of pace from the regular campaigns and is a sort of morbid fun, kind of like playing football in a summer thunderstorm with lightning bolts crashing all around as everybody slips in the mud and wonders who is going to be the first to break a bone or be electrocuted. I tried it (as the Germans) a few weeks ago and after the second turn decided to take a break to embark on a workshop course entitled "How to Use Your Flak 36 Effectively and Not Die." Still doing the homework for that, plus waiting to see if there will be any more changes to the 88mm -- maybe a nice revised 360 degree Level 2 trench system to enhance survivability of crew and gun?? Gotta have hope.

[zaigre777]

Originally posted by Archipilot:

"How to Use Your Flak 36 Effectively and Not Die." Still doing the homework for that, plus waiting to see if there will be any more changes to the 88mm -- maybe a nice revised 360 degree Level 2 trench system to enhance survivability of crew and gun??

i use your sideways placing of 88's to increase front survivability...works great so far

[Zero]

Hill slopes are your friends on this one. Is is there on the low level, where you can concentrate all your firepower and can even defeat superiour tanks which come over the hill. Spreading AT units is a mistake.