Tide of Iron - Stalingrad

Started by Silent Disapproval Robot, March 08, 2018, 04:29:18 AM

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Silent Disapproval Robot

Been a while since I played this one so we hauled it out for the Wednesday night gaming session.  Fun scenario.  I played as the Soviets and was tasked with preventing the Germans from breaking through our strongpoint at the railyard and pushing on to the river.  I had a few T-70 tankettes, several rifle squads (although two had no ammo), quite a few mortars, a few MG teams, some assault engineers, and some SMG assault squads. I also had a commissar available who could prevent routing via TT33 rounds to the back of any shirker's head. 

The Germans brought 2 Pz IIIs, a StuG IIIE, and a tonne of infantry and pioneer squads with flamethrowers.

The Germans set up with a very aggressive posture and it was evident they were going to try rapidly assault my main positions.  I'd set up in depth and was a but worried that I'd left myself too spread out and would be pulled apart piecemeal.  This scenario allowed the Soviets to use sewer movement so the first thing I did was send my two assault SMG squads to wade through the poop in the hopes that they'd be able to pop up behind the Jerries and give them some good news.

Initial setup



Close up of German deployment.  They started with a few under-strength squads.



Soviet initial setup. All the bombardment hexes had hidden mines in them, just in case the Germans tried to close assault.


Scenario perks for the Soviets.




Things started off badly for me when the Germans called down suppressing mortar fire on one of my two MG positions and managed to rout the entire team before the commissar could get there and administer some justice.  They then dropped some smoke and rushed forward.  I was able to get one of my squads with no ammo into the craters vacated by my MG team and their security element and swipe the ammo they left behind.  I also got very lucky with my little T-70 tanks.  The Germans ignored them in favour of lobbing HE rounds into the buildings I was occupying.  My infantry took some casualties but held.  My T-70s were able to get to point blank range and knock out one Pz III and immobilize the other.




I was able to set up a good observation post for my mortar teams and also got Vassili Zaitsev out in the rubble to do some sniping.



He managed to pick off a few officers and some pioneers but wasn't anywhere near as effective as the mortars turned out to be.  With the help of the observer, I was able to pin several of the German squads down as they tried to advance and the Germans were unable to get a good concentration of units together for an assault.  The flamethrowers did inflict a hell of a lot of carnage however.  They came within a hair of wiping out my main strongpoint and killing off my observer team but the timely arrival of my SMG teams from the sewers cut them to pieces.  The Germans tried one last rush and knocked out one of my strongpoints on their left but took terrible casualties in doing so.  My opponent conceded on turn 4 of 6.



Fun game!  I'd play it more if it didn't take so long to set up (plus it weighs about 40 lbs so lugging it around is annoying.)


bayonetbrant

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JudgeDredd

I've always wanted to pick this one up  :notworthy:
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