We fought 2 practice battles for the upcoming Firestorm campaign - both River Crossing Missions (new Mission in the Firestorm book - another HTL variant - with a river across the centre). The battles were fought side by side on a big table, but separate.
Barrie's Grenadiers v. Rich's Strelkovy
Barrie attacked on his left with Grenadiers supported by Stugs & fire from 105s & Pak40s.
Rich defended with 1 Strelk + artillery. plus a lot of minefields, wire & entrenchments as allowed by the Mission rules & more Strelk, antitank & SU122s in reserve.
The German's made slow but steady progress. After crossing the river & minefields, knocking out the SU122's (with the Stugs) & whittling down the Strelk, their Stugs attacked the remaining Strelk with Grenadier support & it looked all over. But the Strelk fought to the last man, took out the Stugs & drove back the Grenadiers with high losses. But the Germans managed one last infantry attack & this time finished off the Strelk to gain the objective with no Russians able to dispute.
Jim's Tankovy v, Byron's Panzers
Byron deployed 1 MkIV platoon & a Grenadier on the table with the other MkIV Platoon & Neblewerfers in reserve. The Russians deployed a wall of T34s (5 76's + 5 85's) on the left, Motostrelk & Shermans (6) on the right & Honeys (6) behind. Byron put anti-tank ditches in front of the two bridges (on his left & centre). This meant that the Russian armour could only cross the river using the VD ford on the left. They put their wide tracked T34s there & the Strelk on the right to use the bridges (& river crossing rules).
The Russians started well, destroying all the MkIVs except the CIC tank by firing over the river while pushing the Strelk over the river on ther right. They were also lucky that the Germans reserves were slow to arrive. But their big problem was feeding the T34's over the river over a 15cm long VD ford. They were pretty lucky with bogging rolls (though the wide tracks helped), but with the slow feed over, plus the need to maintain a command chain meant that initially only 2 T34s reached the nearest objective - not enought to resist a Grenadier counterattack. There was a further delay as the CIC Sherman had to move over to take command when the T34 cmd tank was destroyed.
On the other flank the other MkIV platoon had arrived in the nick of time to stop the Strelk. Then they destroyed the Shermans in a firefight across the river. However more T34s had filtered forward, counterattacked the Grenadiers and retaken the objective. The MkIVs moved over to try & destroy enough T34s to save the day. But there were too many of them & they held on to win the battle.
Pic 1: Overview of the table from behind Byron's left.
Barrie's Grenadiers v. Rich's Strelkovy
Barrie attacked on his left with Grenadiers supported by Stugs & fire from 105s & Pak40s.
Rich defended with 1 Strelk + artillery. plus a lot of minefields, wire & entrenchments as allowed by the Mission rules & more Strelk, antitank & SU122s in reserve.The German's made slow but steady progress. After crossing the river & minefields, knocking out the SU122's (with the Stugs) & whittling down the Strelk, their Stugs attacked the remaining Strelk with Grenadier support & it looked all over. But the Strelk fought to the last man, took out the Stugs & drove back the Grenadiers with high losses. But the Germans managed one last infantry attack & this time finished off the Strelk to gain the objective with no Russians able to dispute.
Jim's Tankovy v, Byron's Panzers
Byron deployed 1 MkIV platoon & a Grenadier on the table with the other MkIV Platoon & Neblewerfers in reserve. The Russians deployed a wall of T34s (5 76's + 5 85's) on the left, Motostrelk & Shermans (6) on the right & Honeys (6) behind. Byron put anti-tank ditches in front of the two bridges (on his left & centre). This meant that the Russian armour could only cross the river using the VD ford on the left. They put their wide tracked T34s there & the Strelk on the right to use the bridges (& river crossing rules).
The Russians started well, destroying all the MkIVs except the CIC tank by firing over the river while pushing the Strelk over the river on ther right. They were also lucky that the Germans reserves were slow to arrive. But their big problem was feeding the T34's over the river over a 15cm long VD ford. They were pretty lucky with bogging rolls (though the wide tracks helped), but with the slow feed over, plus the need to maintain a command chain meant that initially only 2 T34s reached the nearest objective - not enought to resist a Grenadier counterattack. There was a further delay as the CIC Sherman had to move over to take command when the T34 cmd tank was destroyed.On the other flank the other MkIV platoon had arrived in the nick of time to stop the Strelk. Then they destroyed the Shermans in a firefight across the river. However more T34s had filtered forward, counterattacked the Grenadiers and retaken the objective. The MkIVs moved over to try & destroy enough T34s to save the day. But there were too many of them & they held on to win the battle.
Pic 1: Overview of the table from behind Byron's left.
Pic 2: Barrie's attack is under way.
Pic 3: The end of the tank battle - T34s hold the objective on the hill.
It was interesting that although the River Crossing Mission looked daunting for the attacker, the attackers narrowly won both battles.
1 comment:
Memo to Russian commanders:
Gods of War get double template AND re-roll misses.
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