Unity of Command Forums

I have just finished Black Turn campaign. What caught my attention is the great variation in scenario difficulties (see attached screenshot), and near-impossibility of Final two scenarios without buying additional reinforcements.

Why are reinforcements so expensive in this campaign? Just reinforcing two panzer divisions costs more than you get from a victory in Moscow

Another critique of Black Turn campaign: achieving BV in Uman Pocket and Luga to Leningrad is much too easy.
I got it the first time in Uman, and second time in Luga, and didn't have problem to repeat BV so far.

The variability in AI behaviour meant Uman Pocket doesn't have a very strict timetable for BV's, as it's one of the scenarios where changes to turn limits could unbalance things.

We decided to leave it as it is, so it's deliberately easy. The Germans also have so many good mobile units with only a thin Soviet screen in front of them that capturing Uman and Pervomaisk will generally always be easy. I dislike artificially padding unit strengths or adding generic units to make a scenario more difficult, and even though it had to be done for balance reasons in some scenarios, we settled for Uman being easy.

Luga to Leningrad also isn't all that hard if you get your opening moves right, but it can quickly become more difficult if you make some mistakes with unit deployment which the forces near Leningrad can take advantage of.

Like I've said for Red Turn: when you truly understand the system, getting BV's really isn't all that difficult after a few tries to get the feel for a scenario, should it not be winnable immediately.

We made reinforcements more expensive to make things more challenging, it was my choice to balance replacements in such a way that you couldn't just buy everything you wanted near the end like in Red Turn and the original.

As I said, I never managed to fail Uman, and Kiev. Actually Kiev should probably have BV limit of 6 or 5th turn for main city. It seems casual scenario considering that supply line to the city is so easy to cut.

ComradeP: How would you play Uman and Kiev on the Soviet side, as not to lose too much?

High score so far, max for everything but Moscow and Donbas.

Some battles in life are hard, and some are easy. Ah. Banality.

As for Donbas Nip, it was the only scenario I didn't win in my first clean playthrough of Black Turn. But now, after evaluating and pondering the challenge this scenario presents, I have more or less mastered(I'll take my cheese on a cracker please.) it. Donbas Nip feels very ungerman after playing both the Stalingrad- and Black Turn-campaign as it forces you to conduct your own offensive in a corner, while your fairly weak units play the part meat-barricades against the soviet offensive on the rest of the frontline. This unbalance is somewhat painfull, but it does pose a beautiful and stimulating challenge.

After this mentioned ponder-fest, I can now BV Donbas Nip in 6 turns fairly consistency. I plan on elaborating my strategy in an AAR at some point(Sadly, life does not allow me spend most of my time with UoC as of yet.), but as with many successfull UoC-strategies it can be summed up with the credo "Supply, supply, supply!".

Hell. Donbas Nip get's a visit from me now.