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RE: The Struggle For A Commission: The Diary
Session 3 - Tank Battles scenario 23 "Hells Fury III"
Wow, what a heavy session today. As said before, this is the 5th biggest in counter numbers in the PG collection and means its heavy tough going mentally.
We played 5 turns today (which is quite good) and as in the previous two sessions, the fighting primarily centred on the most eastern town called Nikonovo. A German force here, holed up in the town has basically been tasked with holding out and causing as much pain as possible on the attackers. Towns are the main objectives of the game along with inflicting casualties. Today was the bloodiest day in step losses to both sides as the fighting here really heated up as now armour joined in with the Russian Guards battalions in the attack.
The town is now surrounded and cut off from the other towns and of its 6 hex area, the Germans have enclaves in 4 locations, a couple of which are now having to defend in assaults. Tanks got involved, and initially it looked as if the German armour would be in trouble. But assaulting infantry, bad markmanship (by both sides) and other armour units joining in made it a mad-cap 30 game minutes. Some German troops in the woods to the north of Nikonovo also appeared on the brink of collapse at the end of the last session, but they spent this session really causing a lot of pain and losing no strength at all. This band were supported heavily by OBA and caused the Soviets a lot of misery.
The Soviets are now closing in (slowly) toward the next town called Maloe Kropotovo. My impression is that this is defended in more strength than Nikonovo so hopefully it will be a tougher nut to crack (hopefully !!), notwithstanding how tough Nikonovo has been to crack already.
The session started off well for the Germans as they won initiative well on the first two turns of the day gaining a 5 and 4 AS advantage. The Soviets started to look as if they would haul it back later on in the day, but things fell away again later in the session. When the day's gaming was ended until the next session, Soviet losses had been 36 step equivalents (12 FOOT, 10 AFV, 1 GUN, 3 TRUCKS), trucks count for both sides in this one so you can't just leave them hanging around. German losses today were 9 step-equivalents (5 FOOT, 2 AFV).
Total losses in the 14 turns have grown to:
SOVIET 56 Step-equivalents = 29 FOOT, 11 AFV, 1 GUN, 6 TRUCKS, 6 leaders)
GERMAN 15 step-equivalents = 11 FOOT, 2 AFV, 1 leader)
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