Chapter 1: Advice for Soviet Players
Chapter 2: The Defense of Odessa
Chapter 3: The VVS
Chapter 4: The Transcaucasus Military District
Chapter 5: The Soviet "Other Forces"

Soviet players must keep one very grim truth in mind when deploying their border armies along the Axis-Soviet demarcation line with Greater Germany: not a one of the front line units will survive to run away, and very few (if any) of the aggregate of those armies will escape destruction in the border battles.

Therefore, the Soviet goal must be to cause the maximum delay to the German armies using the absolute minimum of Soviet resources; any casualties suffered by the Axis will be a purely incidental bonus at this stage of the campaign. This means that the Soviets must set up overrun-proof lines (double lines, where feasible) as close to the border as possible, using the fewest support troops from the safer rear areas.

The Soviets receive a lot of infantry replacements in 1941; everything else is harder to come by. Therefore, use your infantry to delay the German advance and try to preserve your support assets wherever possible. Your combat engineers are invaluable for use in repairing rail lines and building forts and are extremely difficult to replace; they should be thrown into the border forces only as a last resort. Use the 1-6 AA units where that odd strength-point is called for on the front.

Your 4-2-8 artillery units will also be painful to replace in 1941; use them carefully. Your engineers, paratroops, 4-2-8 and 3-2-8 artillery units, and to a somewhat lesser extent the AA units and siege artillery should be deployed as far to the rear as possible, where they can provide much-needed support to the masses of low-quality infantry divisions raised during the first months of the war.

As a general rule, the Germans can overrun stacks of 6 in 1941, 7 in 1942, and 8 in 1943. Four strength points are safe in swamps, where all c/m and artillery units are halved, but five are needed in all other types of poor terrain (in forests, cities, and intermittent lakes or behind rivers) where the German artillery units are not halved.

If you want to play games and try to keep track of where the German "big guns" are (especially the 12-10s and the 5-3-8s), then you can build optimum lines of exactly overrunproof stacks in each sector of the front. However, all you have to do is miscalculate by one factor, or forget about operational rail movement, or lose track of a couple of key enemy units for just one turn, and the consequences will be most unpleasant. It is easier and safer in the long run to just make sure that your front lines are adequately manned as German capabilities increase during the campaign.

Initial Deployment

The initial deployment is the best place to optimize your strength, however, and is of critical importance. It is safe to have only five strength points in the front lines on your flanks-the three hexes adjacent to Memel and the border below Lwow-since the German cannot move 50 strength points to overrun them on the surprise turn.

These conditions are most difficult to meet north of the Pripet marshes. It is impossible to establish a double line in the Baltic MD. Therefore, the goal must be to delay German exploitation of the border breaches. Holding onto Riga, Daugavpils and the 1B:3213/3214 corridor severely curtails German infantry admin movement in the regular Jun II 41 turn if you are using the more liberal Balkan Front admin rules.

Establish your first line right on the border; do not give even one hex to the Germans for free. Make Riga full ATEC with AT and artillery units supporting the NKVD division, and be sure to use 3 points of position AA to defend against the Luftwaffe (a 1-6 AA regiment would reduce the stack to 1/2 ATEC). Base some low-quality fighters that you can afford to lose in the port, simply to keep the Luftwaffe honest in escorting the bombers. You might even want to base a Baltic Fleet BB in Riga to support the garrison.

Make sure Daugavpils is garrisoned by 7 strength points, and remember to wreck the airbase, rail line and bridge there as soon as possible.

All cities in the border MDs must be garrisoned at the start of the game, if only by position AA, in order to keep commandos from capturing an airbase during the surprise attack turn. This would allow other troops to be airlifted in during both the surprise and regular Jun II 41 turns (note that this ploy is devastating at Parnu on the Baltic). Major cities, such as Kiev and Odessa, should have more substantial protection.

It's possible to extricate the 11-6-8s at Lwow, but it can be very tricky. The main threat is the gap between the rough terrain and the 1941 Soviet border at 3B:0320: be sure to have an overrun-proof stack that has a ZOC in 3B:0321. Rowne and Sarny should respectively be immune to airborne landings and overrun. If you're going to contest the Luftwaffe in June 1941, fighting off harassment missions behind Rowne seems like a worthwhile place to attempt it.

More East Front

Chapter 1: Advice for Soviet Players
Chapter 2: The Defense of Odessa
Chapter 3: The VVS
Chapter 4: The Transcaucasus Military District
Chapter 5: The Soviet "Other Forces"
Chapter 6: The Soviet Border Armies