It was time for WWII Tuesday and I decided it would be nice to shift back to ground warfare and try out another micro armor test play. This time, I decided to make it an armor clash (primarily). The scenario would be based on a fictional armor fight taken place during the Soviet counter offensive after Kursk.
I set up the table using a Cigar Box Battle green ground cloth, folded in half. this would give me a six kilometer by four kilometer play area. I wanted a lot of spacing and challenges for the Germans covering a wide front. The Germans would set up on the table a foot in and would have to defend the wide side on the table and cover all the roads leading off the table. The Soviets would see the German set up and be able to enter in as they chose. Their mission would be to get regiments off the table, with the regiment needing to be in supply when it exited. The Soviets also could recycle their regiments if they chose on a three up using a D6. The game would be eight turns long.
The table was set up with a decent road network (required for tracking supply in the rules), with a smattering of towns, rolling hills and woods. There was also a small shallow river that was crossable.
The Soviet force included two mixed T-34 regiments, a Valentine VIII Regiment and a motor infantry battalion. All forces would be recycled by removing them from the table and rolling a three plus to bring them on the back edge (the Soviets did not use this rule). There was also a later arriving KV-1s regiment that entered on turn three. The force was commanded by a Motor Corps HQ. This gave the force a command rating of 8.
The German force included an understrength Panther battalion, a somewhat understrength mixed Pz-III/IV battalion and an understrength Panzer Grenadier battalion. The had a Regimental HQ and Tiger company to round things out. The German force had a command rating of 5.
The Germans had to cover the three roads, so they set up a battalion on each. The Panzer battalion was on the right, with the Panthers in the center and the PzGr on the left. The regimental HQ and the Tigers were in support of the PzGr battalion. The Germans kept their forces pure and did not do any cross attachments.
The Soviets seeing the set up decided to push their infantry and Valentines up the center to pin the German infantry and Panthers and concentrate their fast armor against the German Panzer battalion to try to overwhelm it. The reserves were also planned to enter on this side.
The attack went forward with the Soviets taking their initial positions in the center and the attack on the left. The Soviets used most of their command points to push the flank attack on faster and approach the German panzers. The Germans set pat and engaged in long range tank fire against the Soviet tanks. Both sides caused a few suppressions initially. The Soviets pushed their attacks forward for the next few turns taking some losses and having one of their regiments coming close to being exhausted. However, the toll on the German panzers was greater, as the did become spent and had to start to fall back. The TVs arrived and shored up the Soviet attack.
Before the flank could collapse, the Germans decided to transfer the Panther battalion to the flank and use the tiger company to hold the center. The Panthers arrived in the nick of time to stop collapse. Even with this timely arrival, the Soviets continued to push forward. Luckily for them, the Soviet gunner was very accurate, or was it those bad transmissions on the Pantry Ds? The German player rolled four one saves and loss most of their tanks in one attack!
The Soviets started to move their Valentines forward to start pressuring the Tigers. However they had positioned themselves poorly and it was taking some time to get their act together to get into the clear.
The Germans had been engaging in long rage HE attacks against the Soviet Infantry for most of the game with some decent effect. With the Valentines out of position, the Germans decided it was time to use their PzGr to attack the teetering Soviet infantry.
However, The loss of the Panthers was too much, as the formation was spent and started to fall back with the Panzers, this was going to leave the road open to the Soviet tanks. With the obvious, the Germans conceded, giving the Soviets the victory on turn six. The Germans could have held out a little longer, but it was clear that it would not be for another two turns.
Everything worked out fine. I was a little worried about the open zones, but this turned out not to be a problem. Extended company deployment was a bit of an issue and I will need to come up with a rule to deal with that!
- Manteuffel