Panzer Grenadier Battles on March 29th:
Spearhead Division #16 - Final Accounting
Remember that morale is everything, except for initiative
Author Matt W
Method Solo
Victor Lithuania
Play Date 2012-10-06
Language English
Scenario IrWo009

The Soviets and Lithuanians enter from opposite sides of the board. The Lithuanian tanks are markedly inferior to the Soviets who have five platoons of T-34s but also have a boatload of BT-7s with "armor" factors of "1". Nevertheless neither side has any antitank weaponry except that carried on the tanks themselves. This means that the Lithuanians have very little chance of knocking out the T-34s with AT weapon fire.

The good thing for the Lithuanians is that the bulk of the victory point hexes (towns) are on their side of the board and they quickly move to control those and move their truck borne infantry across the river to a point just out of range of the T-34s range and prepare to be attacked. The Soviets down by eight victory points in town hexes need to attack and do so quickly, trying to catch the Lithuanians unprepared.

Here is where it gets interesting. The Lithuanians HMGs end up next to a stack of three tank units, a T-34 and 2 BT-7s. They immediately assault with a 9-1-0 Kapitonas. Despite being halved for assaulting without infantry support they assault on the 18 column due to morale and a leader being present. The Soviets, unfortunately are also on the 18 column since they have no column bonuses whatsoever. The Lithuanians all survive their M2 result in good order while the Soviets have a mix of results from their 1 leaving a BT-7 disrupted and the T-34 and reduced BT-7 demoralized. They waited to recover which turned out to be a bad thing as the LT38s blazed away and hit the disrupted BT-7, leaving it demoralized and reduced. I should note the the Lithuanian armor stayed in covering terrain (woods and town hexes) in order to have some protection against the T-34s gunnery, and stayed out of range of the BT-7s and T-28s altogether.

The remaining T-34s moved to get into position but I finally needed to try to recover the tanks in the assault hex and predictably none did. The BT-7s were both destroyed and the T-34 luckily survived its M2 check and began a long fleeing and recovering journey.

As I mentioned the remaining Soviet tanks had moved to get into position to assault the Lithuanian infantry including the HMGs but the ensuing turn resulted in three activations for the Lithuanians, all of which were assaults of infantry/HMGs on Soviet armor. A rout had begun. A single Lithuanian infantry platoon with a Lt. 9-1-0 assaulted on the 13 column (morale and leader bonuses), two platoons assaulted on the 18 column with their 9-1-0 Lt. It was simply a slaughter. The Soviet infantry finally caught up to the tanks but it was too little too late and they too became fodder for the morale failures which came out of the assaults.

In the end the Lithuanians had taken all the town hexes, elminated 6 steps of T-34s, and all but one step of the BT-7s and T-28s. In addition 3/4 of the Soviet infantry steps were gone. To be fair, the Lithuanians had tremendous luck, especially on morale check rolls but this was an outcome I was just not prepared to see. Upon viewing the initial forces I felt sure that this one would be a battle royale in the middle town with the Lithuanians holding on for dear life and littering the town with wrecks of their LTL and LT38 tanks as the T-34s ripped them apart. The longer range of the LT38s, helped to keep the demoralized surviving tanks well away from the action so that when they did recover (rarely) they had a long trip back to the battle.

This one showcased the PG system in spades. The morale and initiative superiority of the Lithuanians made everything possible. I give it a "4" and strongly encourage you to play it in any format. It's a blast.

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