A basic assault scenario where the Germans must try and control a large town of 7 hexes! The Germans have about twice the Infantry and 3 engineers and a small amount of support armor: Tiger, StuGIIIG and a few SPW-251s but 2 x 24 off board artillery units as well. The Soviets have a smaller force of different types of Infantry units including a FLM engineer with and all kinds of AT Guns, and other support weapons and also a couple of Grant tank units that could show up starting on turn 5. The most important thing for the Soviets; is that they get four entrenchments and 3 mine counters.

The Soviet place the mines and entrenchments around the town of Gremuchii with most of the 76.2mm and 57mm guns in these surrounding entrenchments mixed with some machine gun units and in the town, the rest of the Soviet force awaits the German assault. The Germans have no time to waste, with only 12 turns, they have little time to soften up Soviet positions, so they move forward and shoot off-board artillery at the same time. The Germans also avoid direct conflict with the entrenchments and go around to openings into the town hexes farther north and with their engineer through the minefields which I have kept face-down, so it would be an interesting surprise even for me playing Solo.

The adjacent direct fire and assault combat starts within 4-5 turns, as mud has slowed the AFV’s a bit and the Tiger will take even longer to get into the action. The Soviets are banging away with their 81mm mortar back in the forest and their 76.2mm guns in surrounding entrenchments but the Germans have hit pay-dirt a couple of time, with some very nice rolls of off-board artillery. The assaults go on for the rest of the game, with the Soviets pulling units out the entrenchment hexes to reinforce assaults hexes or town hexes. In fact, a weird situation happened where I moved a loaded Soviet wagon with a 57mm AT into a hex that was then assaulted with that loaded wagon but fortunately there was other Soviet infantry in that hex. That Soviet FLM Engineer unit with other support units has given the Germans a lot of problems before it was finally taken out 4 assaults later at the cost of 3 German Infantry steps and one step of Tiger tanks which had to be brought into the assault hex to reinforce it. The Tiger with other INF took out the FLM and another step of Soviet INF but at a cost of the one step mentioned before. In all the other scenarios I played before, the Soviet FLM unit was not a factor and was taken out right away but not this scenario, it with support, took up a lot of German resources and time and was a real beast of a unit.

The Grant tanks showed up on turn 7 and anything later than this, and they might not have been a factor in the slow mud travel but they took a hit from the StuGIIIG but the survivors pulled into a vacant town hex, as both side had left that hex to reinforce other assault hexes. 12 turns went very fast in this scenario and it took me sometime to figure who won? There were 3 hexes contested in assault combat, 3 hexes in German control and 1 hex in Soviet control. Both sides lost 13 steps and both sides lost a leader. The Germans had a minor victory for more hexes controlled but the Soviets had a minor victory for eliminating 10 or more German steps. So the Game was a Draw!

Dang, another really good scenario! With the 12 turn time factor, this is a tense one. The assault combat was actually interesting in this scenario, trying to figure out how to keep arranging them and where to draw resources from. The Soviets need to stale, the Germans need to push, good fun!