Got to play The Ring from the Action Pack this weekend. Executive Summary - way cool. Prior planning will really help. I was the German, so much of this will be German-oriented.
Given the OB's, I think the Germans really need to try to exit some CVP in order to win the game. I don't think he can stay on the board and fight it out in the bd 10 village and hope to win. Too many Russian units coming from too many angles with too much time; eventually broken Germans won't be able to bounce back and the Russian advantages in manpower and time will win the game.
The Russians need 70 CVP. They'll get 21 from the board 10 buildings, so they need to cause 49 German CVP. The Germans have 99 CVP in their OB, and for every one they exit, the number the Russians need to kill goes up by one. So if the Germans exit 26 CVP, the Russians will need to kill 49+26 = 75 CVP of German units, but there'll only be 99-26=73 German CVP left on the board. So the magic number for the Germans to exit is 26 CVP.
This is doable. 26 CVP is 1/4 of the German's OB, which isn't too awful really. If you don't get too daring with the Wespe's and Hummels, you can have most of that 26 CVP be motorized. BTW, it was a thrill to play with Wespes and Hummels, remembering the old Panzerblitz days.
You gotta figure the first two Russian groups will be the massed infantry and then the T-34/85's. Then you try to guess what board edge they'll come in on.
Others have suggested bringing the infantry in from the south, but that makes their job very tough - they'd have to plow straight through the German defenses to get between the Germans and the western board edge, and they'd be taking flanking fire all the way. I think it's better if the Russians just bring the infantry in on the western board edge and force the Germans to plow through THEIR lines if they want to win.
My German defense had about 1/3 of the infantry in the bd 43 walled village (the Festung), 1/3 in the bd 10 village (including the 10-2/HMG at level 2) and 1/3 defending the bd 17 village. The remaining gaggle of infantry watched the southern approach from bd 42. If the Russian infantry came in from the south, the Germans would slowly withdraw the 26 Exit CVP to the northwest while holding out in the Festung and the bd 10 village. If the Russian infantry cme in from the west, we cross our fingers and hope to find a hole in the Russian lines big enough to exit the 26 CVP in.
One Wespe and the Panther were set up to cover the 6 hexes of open ground on the edge of bd 42, the Wespe well back of the hedge line. Another Wespe set up around 17G7, covering the big orchard. The Hummel set up around 17Y10, facing in toward the bd 17 village. The Ammo Trucks are pretty much limited to roads, so be careful, and watch the vulnerability of the open-topped SPA's to the Russian 50mm MTR's and .50 cal HMG.
The 75mm ATG would be nice to exit, but I don't see that happening. He'd have to be towed by the SdKfz 11, which is a nice fat juicy target. I'd rather have the ATG onboard doing me some good instead of losing it as CVP. And it ain't worth a lot of CVP either. Not trying to exit the ATG means we could use the SdKfz 11 as a mobile reserve, which was nice. The ATG was set up in the northernmost multihex building on bd 10, covering the open tank country to the north and with good LOS to the rest of the bd 10 village just in case. This turned out to be a good spot.
The action opened with Tim bringing the Russian infantry horde in on the west board edge, as I feared. The main thrust was directly east and southeast through the big orchard on bd 17; smaller forces covered his flanks to keep my Festung boys from getting frisky from the south or my bd 17 boys from pinching in too much from the 17Q row.
My boys responded by repositioning as well as they could, with the Panther and the bd 42 infantry running into the Festung (making it an Uber-Festung) whilst the SPA's and 10-2/HMG rained shells down on the Russian horde. My dice were unbelievably hot. Two very useful MG positions were the 9-1/HMG around 17Q8 and the 8-1/MMG around 43C1 (both in foxholes). From there, these boys had nice interlocking fields of fire for firelanes and stood up relatively well to the gnarly Russian .50 cal.
Although I had some trouble with the Russian mortars and HMG's firing at my SPA's, it was easier for me to find new firing positions than it was for him, as my 10-2 and HMG were doing the Big Nasty from bd 10. Eventually the SPA's found the range and whole Russian squads were being vaporized on the 20 and 30 column of the IFT. A couple of Russian squads went berserk and one of my Wespes recalled, but the Russian advance toward bd 10 was held in check with the aid of great dice. It helped that the Russian OBA drew two red cards; I'm sure Tim would have smoked my 10-2/HMG out of existence if he had the chance.
Meanwhile, the Russians advanced to the brush hedgeline on bd 43 but held pat, not wanting to brave fire from the Festung in addition to flanking HMG fire from bd 10. Eventually the T-34/85's came in from the north board edge and caused a bit of a panic, but one T-34 failed an ESB roll and another was zapped by the for-once-well-positioned 75mm ATG while the thin German infantry reserves grabbed PSK's and held the outskirts of the bd 10 town. Seeing little hope of threatening the growing Festung forces, the Russian resigned.
All in all, a neat scenario. I think the Russian has to seal off the western board edge with his turn 1 infantry horde. He doesn't have to take the bd 17 town, all he has to do is block the western exit routes. It's kind of an ugly proposition, but I think it's worth it for the Russian to make an all-out effort to capture the bd 43 walled village with 30-40% of his turn 1 forces. If he doesn't try to take it, it's too easy for the Germans to beef up the Festung with enough Exit CVP to win the game. And if he doesn't take it right away, it's too difficult to attack later on as the Germans reinforce it. If the German player loses the Festung, he's gonna have a hard time trying to punch a hole through the Russian lines to exit the board; the Festung anchors the defense for whoever owns it.
The German 10-2 and HMG go well at level 2 of bd 10. It'd be good for the Russian OBA to smoke this position if possible. Until this happens, the Russians will have a hard time making lateral moves along the western edge of bds 17/43, which means that he should probably send some troops up the 17W hexrow to seal off that exit route and pinch the Germans in the bd 17 village from another angle. The board is so big and the Russians have so many troops that it really pays to develop 2 or 3 good angles of attack here.
Tim also wondered if he shouldn't have just sent in the Russian cavalry on turn 1 so he could get the 9-2 onboard first. An interesting idea, but I think their mobility is best used for later in the game (rushing to shore up the Russian lines on turn 7 to prevent a German breakout on turn 8). One rather devious idea is to bring the Russian cavalry in from the east board edge on turn 1; they'd probably catch the Germans completely by surprise and could possibly take most of the bd 10 town outright. Then they could neutralize the big German asset of the 10-2/HMG and see what they could do about keeping the Germans from exiting the board. Interesting.
At any rate. A very good scenario with lots of replay value. Neat toys on both sides. Four, maybe 4 and a half stars. Really rotten luck for Tim, who stood up to it all with a minimum of whining.
Tom