Fire In The Steppe, Scenario Thirteen: Tank Battle at Leshniv

This scenario looked good on paper and in fact played well also but it was a bloodbath. The Germans are sitting pretty however in dug-in positions or setup in the safety of town hexes, with more off-board artillery than the Soviets and a lot of armor reinforcements coming in on turn three. Both sides alternate getting airpower. Those German StuGIIIBs are pretty tough sitting in positions within the town hexes.

The Soviet decide not to mess around and want to rush the German positions before there reinforcements arrive and have nice KV-1s, T-34As and a ton of BT-7s and 5s but not very many Tank leaders, so all the armor stack 3 per hex and this is also the problem with their infantry, not very many leaders so they also stack three per hex, which hurt them with German artillery and air-strikes.

I am not sure my Soviet tactical strategy was very good in this game play or not! In this bloodbath, The Germans lost 42 steps and the Soviets lost 53 steps, with all tank steps counting double. However the Soviet achieve none of the objectives. They only contest two town hexes, let some German units slip south of the east-west road and lost more steps than the Germans. I should have pulled what Soviet armor I had left and tried to control more of the town hexes than the Germans to at least get a Draw but I thought of this too late. This ended in a Minor German victory.

Good fun scenario and kind of cool to try and manage the different armor engagements but the lack of Soviet leaders was telling in this scenario and gave the Germans an advantage.