Panzer Grenadier Battles on November 21st:
Desert Rats #16 - The Panzers Pull Back Desert Rats #19 - The Panzers Return
Desert Rats #17 - The Tomb Of Sidi Rezegh Jungle Fighting #7 - Line Of Departure
Desert Rats #18 - A Pibroch's Skirl South Africa's War #5 - Irish Eyes
Over quickly
Author scrane
Method Solo
Victor Soviet Union
Play Date 2017-09-05
Language English
Scenario EFDx024

This is perhaps a rather weak scenario, although it looks promising on paper. It's basically a meeting engagement between mechanized forces, the Germans want to control towns and/or destroy lots of Soviets, the Soviets just want to destroy Germans but are better positioned to occupy a small town.

In my replay, the Soviets raced to occupy the small town with motorized infantry, while establishing a blocking force of infantry and armored cars to prevent the Germans from advancing into a position where they could attack the town. Their tanks followed up en masse to support the infantry positions.

The Germans sent armored cars ahead of a small infantry force to engage the Russian blocking force while a mechanized infantry company raced to get to the town the Russians had just occupied. They hoped, with their tanks close behind, to have enough strength to eject the Russian infantry from the town.

Instead, the German halftracks were caught by long range Soviet tank fire and wiped out. The Soviet tanks made it into position to support both the town and the blocking force. The German tanks were not quite in position, so they faced a choice: either drive headlong into massed Soviet tank fire or call off the attack. While it is pretty likely the Gerans could have acheived a draw by brawling with the Soviet tanks, it seemed like a poor choice in the broader operational/strategic picture: why throw away a tank battalion to achieve a draw? Better to live to fight another day. So I called the game after 6 turns!

I had high hopes for this scenario since it seemed like a nice combined arms battle, but the single road and the distances that needed to be covered turned it into more of a race then a general engagement. Since the Russians begin a little closer to the town over which both sides were intent on fighting, they were able to catch the german infantry, achieve their VC, gut the German initiative, and then have a great initiative advantage going into turn 7. Had the Germans chose to fight, they would take serious lumps for no t much chance of gain. Once the Russians won the race to the town, it was game over.

0 Comments
You must be a registered member and logged-in to post a comment.
Page generated in 0.061 seconds.