Finally finished Kursk. Rather tough battle at times but just take it slowly. The Soviet Air Force was really big and because of that I decided to deploy four fighters. The Hornisse is not very good against Yaks and Lavochkins, but this is compensated by the great ground attack abilities.
I basically had three battle groups. The strongest was in the east, another one in the west and the weakest in the middle. At first the Stukas were used in the SE to avoid the enemy fighters and this worked well. There are a lot of AT guns protecting the Soviet units but nothing an experienced infantry can't eliminate. Brummbärs have IMO too good stats. They can actually attack infantry protected by a two star 45 mm AT and not take losses at all. I don't complain of course.
In the west I stopped and retreated a bit after I noticed the Soviets were heading my way in force, but they didn't follow. Then I advanced just enough to lure them to attack. It worked well and the road to Rakitnoye was open. In the middle I only advanced to Cherkasskoye (the town with an airfield) and then dug in.
The infamous Soviet armoured horde was met around Belenkhino (the town with railroad and secondary objective). My line of tanks, infantry in woods and the town and StuGs in the back was probably too intimidating because the Soviets only made couple of attacks with expected results. Then enter Stukas and artillery barrages from K 18s and the armor just melted away. After all the enemies were in bad shape it was just mopping up the remains.
To make sure my core is in good shape for the upcoming 43-45 dlc, I decided to delay the taking of the western objective of Rakitnoye until the last turn (the defenders were eliminated long ago). I was lucky and was able to repair all my core units to full health at the end.
IMO this is the best DLC thus far even with the bugs. Especially after the super easy Burma Road the limited resources you are given make the campaign very good and challenging. Thank you Artistocrats!
My core at the end:
Infantry: 5 x Gebirgsjäger, 2 x Hvy Inf, 2 x Eng, 1 x Fallschirmjäger, 1 x regular Inf, 1 x Bautruppe
Panzers: 3 x PzKpfw IV H, 2 x Brummbär
AT: 3 x StuG III G
AA: 40 mm Bofors, 2 cm Flakvierling 38 (one each)
Arty: 5 x 17cm K 18, 1 x StuG III E, Armoured train
Luftwaffe: 3 x Fw 190 F, 1 x Me 410, 4 x Ju 87 D
SS-units: Wiking, Inf '43, PzKpfw IV F2, Brummbär (one each)