By turn 14 David was gathering the remaining Soviet forces in the center for one final push. The Germans had been able to redeploy into what were basically their final line of defense in anticipation of the assault. The Soviets by this point had taken a beating in terms of step losses. However, with a battalion+ left of T-80s, a company+ of BMP infantry, and a lot of artillery and air available, it might have been close. The main problem for the Germans at this point was lack of anti-tank capability since the Marders don’t have missiles and most of the German infantry had expended their shots or were out of position. The German companies were also all a bit banged up, and thus vulnerable to morale check failures, as we saw happen down in the south. At the same time, David had another set of mines to get through and a lot of open ground to cover. He also had potential morale issues.

The last images show the final situation in the center, where David has finally policed up the remaining German infantry on the center hilltop, again using massed T-80 fire. He has also pushed up another company of T-80s to suppress another pesky German infantry platoon. The other image shows the southern edge of the map, where German company C-5 has (finally) rallied and is now doing a small-scale counter attack to try to at least distract David from his pending push in the center. While only consisting of 5 steps of Marders, I think David would have had to detach some forces to deal with it.

Unfortunately, we both had some real life issues come up and were unable to finish off the scenario. The one thing we didn’t get to test out was Soviet airpower, which was due in on turn 18 in the form of some SU-25s and SU-17s. The Germans were as prepared for that as they could be though, with all the platoons carrying the stingers in combat formation/cover and the two steps of Gepards pretty well positioned to cover the German defenders in the center.

Still, this was a great scenario and we had a lot of fun with it. Getting to finally see all the rules at work together (basic rules, infantry actions, mines, obstacles, breaching, effective artillery, CAS, and Air Defense) was very cool and very informative. The vassal module Chris Chapman has slaved over is great, and the hidden engineering stuff works great. Ditto for the on-counter ammo tracking. I highly recommend this scenario if players want to see how a more “set piece” Assault game plays. Thanks to David for a great game and for being a great sport when he had some dice trouble.

 

[Editor]

What a great game. What do you think? Did this capture what we think or thought WWIII NATO v Soviet warfare might have been like?

This was a fascinating and well written AAR. Thanks for sharing this.