A nine turn scenario where the German SS Division Totenkopf attempts to link up with 11th Panzer Division at the battle of Kursk after being separated on their left at the Psel river approaches.
The Germans have a recon Bn and a Regiment of Panzers to seek victory with. I’ll be the Germans in this scenario.
Opposing the Germans is the 51st Guard Rifle Division. The Division is supported by two tank Brigades – 100th and 237th. The 97th Guards Rifle sets up basically in reserve NW of the 2nd blue line shown below in the image for the 2nd victory phase line.
Germans must cover either 1 of the 2 blue lines with secondary weapons fire zones [more on that below] for either a Decisive victory if both, or a marginal victory in just the first line is covered. Less than that leans towards a Soviet Red army victory by degree. See text block below.
It is assumed for the context of the game that successful patrols occurred the night prior and the Germans begin the first turn with bonus DRMs for fire and other actions for this and their Veteran status. Giving a base +4 DRM. Which is nice.
The setup is fairly flexible. I’m using someone else’s starting points. I may have tweaked a little but it will all work for the most part. We have nine turns.
One of the things we need to identify upfront is how we will approach the attack based on the defenders setup. He has established a pretty obvious kill box that likely needs to be avoided. The Red Army player is taking advantage of the ‘scenario boundaries’
These images might be easier to see:
The 156th Gd regiment is situated on the ‘reverse slope’ behind a minefield and wire. Have a short range of 2 and a Firepower [ FP] of 9 as a company with their secondary weapons. With a long range of 4 and FP of 6 with Primary weapons. Targets are categorized into Hard, Medium and Soft. This accounts for MG’s Panzerfausts, arty, HE, mortars and of course riflemen.
The Victory Condition: VC- “cover either 1 of the 2 blue lines with secondary weapons fire zones”
Now what does that actually mean. Well as it turns out the Germans will need to have a Line Of Sight with that secondary shooting range to that hex line. So units adjacent or at same level will likely block LOS. This means if the Russkies want to slow us down they sacrifice units in the gully to cover or get into our LOS’s. Its also possible a cheap gamey way to hack the VC. But I’m surte that wont happen, as I intend to kill them all…it’s the only way to be sure.
The second line of reserves releases when Germans cross that first stream and road up on the plateau.
After passing comm checks and command checks we kick off the primary phase Operations.
Here anything in any order can occur. Fire, Move, Arty, Air, Smoke, ½ move, overwatch fires etc. A lot to cover in very wordy rules that bounce from concise to verbose, as ‘new versions and updates are added’. For instance the VASSAL module appears not to be playable with 2.5 current rules as it is missing the barrage charts [ which were not part of the 2.0 rules ] for instance. We just used the Fire table, as we couldn’t be bothered. PDFs for these need to be created and shared online ASAP. The rule book as exploded from 60 pages to 140. There are tables and summaries that if developed would speed play up significantly. – This is where the one man shop system at huge expense falls over. Once you get reps in and play a bit this will all be second nature. But until then you are wading through a non index rulebook that is twice the size it was when I first had access to Salerno.
So back to game play.
Tactically I wanted to explore the edges of the non dug in units and see if we cant exercise some flanking and kill off some units that will enable a drive around the flanks. ….and doah I forget to move my Engineers! I send a small force to Kochovorka and screen there with the idea that we can hit the left of the gully if need and also allocate some fires to the enemy and clear the gully and the far ridge.
Our Arty is effective but became detected and will now likely be subject to counter battery.
We lose a scout platoon in the mines, but find a seam along the artificial edge of the board. We will see what we can do with that.
Once you sit and stare at the map a while and take in contours as indicators and slope shading as LOS impacting elements, and move impacting elements the board becomes much more user friendly in its spartan application of color and texture.
With that said onto the Soviet turn.
During the Soviet Ops phase they seek out targets of opportunity and fires for their arty. Above we can see keeping infantry spread out means despite a significant potential attack the platoons spread over the hex cant really be hit, the attack is not possible. However the air does go in.
Combined arty and infantry pound on recon units who are attempting to identify mine fields and wire obstacles.
As the German 0600-0800 turn open recon elements get hit by mines and enemy fire, thwarting spotting attempts to place smoke and clear obstacles.
The Panzer companies press up and take some hits but deliver combined arty and both primary and secondary weapons fire on the exposed companies situated on the downhill, refused hillside. Company A and its attached Tigers make short work of one company and rough up another with their fire and a straffing run for good measure.
At the end of the German ½ of the turn the lads from Totenkopf are making slow but steady progress.
I am playing this on Vassal, and we are being given guidance by Chris as we go along. This is a really good system. The basics are not that hard, but the details can get you off in to the weeds pretty quickly. That being said, itis more than worth the time invested to get it done right.
His lack of digital support for updated charts and rules pisses me off no end and I know of at least 5 others who have sworn off the series due to this reason alone let alone sloppy scenario instructions, errors and the hassle of dealing with these tiny mis matched maps.