Panzer Grenadier Battles on March 29th:
Spearhead Division #16 - Final Accounting
Super-clunker monster tank rally
Author Brett Nicholson
Method Solo
Victor Germany
Play Date 2014-02-20
Language English
Scenario EFDx016

It was pretty clear before playing this one out in it's entirety that the Soviets would not win but I had fun moving the behemoth T-35s around and surprisingly not one of them broke down and in the end they were able to continue to be a nuissance to German units dug-in by the road; they kept rallying and coming back for more punishment. The Soviets actually got off to a good start; The one platoon of T-34As did manage to eliminate the StugIIIB assault guns and Soviet OBA was able to eliminate all 4 of the 37mm AT guns but soon a random event caused an ammunition shortage and the Soviets lost their 1x12 OBA increment. From then on it was all pretty much downhill for the reds. They did manage to clear the one southern hill of German units on map 5 and keep it occupied until battle's end but that was their high-water mark. There were plenty of Soviet foot unit step losses but only one step of Soviet armor was eliminated. The only remaining AT capable gun left in the German arsenal, the 75mm IG, did manage to get one lucky shot in and eliminated a half platoon of the T-35 super-clunkers. Most of the German OBA, at 3x16, was concentrated on Soviet tanks so Soviet casualties were relatively low until the end. The Germans had plenty of time to pick off demoralized Soviet foot units to meet the 8 Soviet step loss VC requirements before the 36 turns were up. As bad of a situation it was the Soviets kept rallying and returning only to run smack into a wall of lead again. It seemed that the Soviets were only getting their good rolls for recovery as plenty of "snake eyes" were rolled for demoralized units but never when it counted for DF. At one point before the T-35s lost a step they slowly rolled up, triple stacked to dug-in German positons by the road threatening them with 36 point combined fire value but never got the rolls needed to seriously damage the defenders. Twice the T-35s rallied and returned and at the end of play were some of the very few good order Soviet units left on the map. So I gave this one a "3" forgetting play balance as I did enjoy it enough as a solo play. As futile as the Soviet mission was they kept on and though they didn't accomplish that much the T-35 "Land Battleships" were center stage most of the duration. I was really astonished that with a move rate of 4 and the possibility of a mechanical breakdown per SSR#4 that these monster tanks got around as much as they did.

0 Comments
You must be a registered member and logged-in to post a comment.
Page generated in 0.075 seconds.