Today I finally got some playing done, after almost a month of no FTF! We played the now official remake of the classic, Debacle At Korosten. And to my amazement, I actually won. This has got to be my first victory in...well a hell of a long time, anyway! Felt good. Felt really good!
My setup: I felt that the halfsquads on the far east and west flanks were goners anyway, so I didn't even pretend to include them in my defence. I set up all my full squads inside the road perimeter, and was determined to make him fight for a breakthrough here. I intended to use the 6+1's as recombining machines, since their +1 modifier won't make a difference there. You actually have an abundance of leaders in this scen, as the German. Scattered the rest of them fairly evenly about. I really screwed up placing the PSW, I think. I put it in Q5, with its crew in P4. Would have worked, if I only had defended Q5 well enough. Which I didn't. Instead, I threw away my greatest asset in the early game, namely the almost invulnerable armoured car. Oh well. Finally I put 447+MMG, 9-1 in P6. This turned out to be a wise move.
The first two Turns saw Russian cavalrymen mounting diversionary attacks on the east and west flanks, with the main thrust coming straight up the centre. IMHO, he wasted a great deal of manpower in one-squad cavalry charges. Soon the areas around Q8-P7 and L3 were a mess of broken bodies, dying men and horses, and screams of terror. The slaughter was totally one-sided, with not a single German casualty, except for the driver of the truck in S7. We figured the diet for these units would consist largely of horse-sausage for some time to come!
Among the broken rabble was the best Russkie leader (9-2). He and four other broken 527 were chased around by a 2-nd line HS for the next two Turns. Great fun. :)
Now he had managed to enter CC with my MMG squad and leader. Usually not a bad move, and I was really agonizing over whether or not to break and get the hell outta there before CC. In the end I stayed, which probably decided the game. You see, these guys just wouldn't lie down. I got another squad and a leader (447, 7-0) in there, and they held on until Turn 5, at which point they had killed 3x527 and a 9-1, all without taking a single casualty, and against pretty steep odds. They even had a field promotion that landed me yet another 8-0. This was the NECC (Never-ending CC) for my opponent. Should have Limahl write a little tune to this particular disaster... :)
Now due to my ineptitude, in Turn 2 there was a 527 standing next to my PSW while my crew was trying to mount it. Of course they broke under his fire. Next he captured it and turned it into a wreck. Boo-hoo.
By Turn 4 or 5, the Russian had made a comeback and eliminated a big chunk of my force, mostly due to my impulse to run away with my Good Order forces and leaving the brokies to fend for themselves. This was a Bad Move. It landed the Russkie 7-8 almost free CVP. With the PSW and a few other casualties on the fringes of the battlefield, he was up to 17 CVP. Oops. At this point, things were looking up for the battered cavalrymen. He had only to exit 24 VP, with cavalry counting double. So, six squads on horses out, and he's home free. And he's got a lot more than six squads left.
Ok, but my reinforcements had arrived. And lemme tell ya: Ya don't ever wanna f*ck with mechanized infantry (hereafter: MI)! Cavalry just can't compare.
Just look here: The SPW251/1 is faster than non-galloping cavalry, _much_ faster on a road. The infantry passengers don't get halved firepower for mounted fire, only for bounding or advancing fire. They can fire as bounding fire in the MPh. Best of all, they have a net +4 TEM advantage when compared to cavalry. +2 TEM for my guys, -2 for the poor Russkies. I was never really aware of how powerful MI is, before this scen! Wintergewitter next! :)
Lemme tell ya: My guys never even set foot on the ground! (EXC: the squad whose ride was shot up; and this is perhaps the greatest liability of MI. The ride can get shot up pretty easily with AT weaponry. Especially Russian ATR at short range. He had 6 final TK... Motion status and a small target size are your best friends here)
Anyway: They were scootin' around, doing overruns, encircling Russkies, cutting rout paths... Man, the Russians were just shattered. At the end of Turn 8, with one Turn to go, He had all of his forces, actually 24 VP in all, (which is the exact number he has to exit) in the woods around M5, and I had all my halftracks on the road he had to cross, full of infantry and bristling with guns. He conceded then, since there were a couple of units who simply didn't have enough MF to make it off the board, and he couldn't win.
Very nice scen! I initially had doubts as to the viability of the German position, but it turned out they aren't all that bad off, and the Russkie really needs to take a lot of CVP. My two biggest breaks in this game were the never-ending CC and the fact that I had his 9-2 on the run for so long. The biggest bummer must have been the totally needless loss of the PSW. Once again: Very nice scen. Play it! I definitely will again, someday.
Joakim Ruud