Round 1 - The Battle is Joined - Turn 6
soviets versus Garni as axis; All options on; Stock scenario, NOT played blind; Soviet password = ^m[cWg^^ Axis password= r2d2
Download the Soviet replay of the Axis Turn6
Synopsis of the axis turn.
It is very difficult for me to discern the enemy strategy from this turn. Though that may be his strategy! The turn seems to simply be a series of disjointed direct fire attacks. A quite lethal series of disjointed attacks to be sure, but seemingly without higher motive than inflicting as many casualties as possible. One partial piece of strategy comes though, in that it is clear that the enemy are trying to hold up my armoured column (of 6xT26 platoons and a single T-28 platoon) crossing the stream east of Arikamiai. But this is a forlorn hope as I have support north of the stream in place already.
On the north slopes of Slabada he commits units piecemeal in such a way that they are all at risk. The wood/rough barrier along the ridge line of Slabada is proving a tough obstacle to communication between the two halves of the enemy northern forces. To the south of the hill his forces exit the valley and threaten the 200VP victory hex.
Our spy next to the enemy's entry route spots a large number of trucks entering, one of which our guys with over watch on the road into Arikamiai actually take a shot at - hurray! Only to miss - boo! We neither hear nor see any sign of his artillery reinforcements.
Synopsis of the soviet turn.
The axis player has left a number of juicy target areas this turn. It is essential when defending to have mutually supporting (i.e. providing retreat routes in case of assaults) groups of units, preferably with bad going terrain mixed in so that the enemy cannot cut off all retreat paths. In the case shown below (Phase A of last turns plan for the assault on Arikamiai) The enemy has presented us with two potential pockets. Pocket A is an easy nut to crack given that we left those guys in the woods to the enemy's rear early in the game. We look pretty smart right about now for that tactic. Pocket B will be more difficult as there are a number of unknowns. Hopefully we will be able to reduce the unknowns to zero, and have sufficient forces left over to overrun the whole pocket. The enemy has three AFVs in pocket A up against our seven (one of which is disrupted). There appear to be four AFVs in Pocket B (again one of which is disrupted) and we can bring nine of our own to the party. A two-to-one ratio should be sufficient.
A quick word about attacking in CS. There is no way that we can hope to duplicate the success of the axis player in a direct fire fire-fight, and in fact there is no reason to even try. I try to battle to the mantra Surround, Disrupt, Capture. Surround - to prevent the enemy retreating (either during the direct fire to achieve disruption or during the assault itself). Disrupt - direct fire against the enemy stack with the sole purpose of disrupting the units in the target hex. Capture - assault a stack of disrupted units. In this manner a simple D result will spell the doom for a full strength platoon. Consider - to have a 50/50 shot of blasting a 6SP infantry platoon to smithereens you would need to fire with 76 SPs of Russian rifle platoons! To have a 50/50 shot of disrupting that same platoon you need only 5SPs! Taking into account that you will need another 6 to perform the assault, save the other 64 SPs for something else.
I think that Nathan Bedford Forest is credited with the quotation "Get there fastest with the mostest" which is never more true than attacking in CS. If you have a kitchen sink, bring it! Given that the concept is to Surround, Disrupt, Capture you need lots of guys to accomplish all three - and if you should fail you may end up with a bunch of guys hanging out in dangerous territory.
My apologies for the rather busy diagram below, hopefully it makes sense. The out of LOS axis units are positioned with a best guess at their locations. We know that at least one of the blue question marks is a truck that crossed our LOS during the enemy's turn.
[Green arrows = friendly unit movement; Yellow arrows = attempted movement to discover units; Purple arrows = assaults; Red arrows = Direct Fire; Red Dot = Known opfire available; ?= likely enemy units]
On the north slope of the Slabada hills the enemy have presented us with another couple of pocket opportunities, X, Y and Z. The picture below was taken at the end of the enemy turn playback and thus shows some units that are now not visible to us. X is a single isolated unit and thus can be surrounded easily. Note that though disrupted units that are assaulted will never retreat through a ZOC, units that are fired upon may (on occasion) retreat through a friendly ZOC. That is a pain in the rear when it happens, but is rare enough that I try not to worry about it too much.
[Green arrows = friendly movement; Yellow arrows = attempted movement; Purple arrows = assaults; Red arrows = Direct Fire]
Pocket Y takes a little more thought, as the order of events is important. We have only the BA-20 to overrun the trucks in the forest, thus we should do that first, as the BA-20s will perhaps not fare as well assaulting anything tougher than trucks. The SMG platoon slated to overrun the infantry are super-tough guys and can be relied upon to overrun the enemy infantry, AC and trucks if they end up stacked in the same hex, so they should assault last. Also, as we do not want the enemy infantry to retreat we should blast them with the heavy tanks just before we overrun them and after the trucks and AC have been cleared. The AC will be cleared by a butt shot from the T-40 tankettes and an T-28 overrun if necessary. Note that the retreat path of the AC can be narrowed so that it can only retreat onto the infantry platoon by placing a unit directly to its south. The disrupted BA-20 is a potential for this mission as it is pretty much useless for anything else. Given that we need to place a unit to overrun the AC in that hex anyway it turns out not to be the best choice. However, I do like to find missions for disrupted units in circumstances like this (surround, draw opfire, etc.)
Our SE reinforcements will run north as fast as possible with half the force making a showing on the road and the other half trying to sneak up to the west of the road.
So what actually happened?
Download the end of Soviet Turn6
Download the Axis replay of the Soviet Turn6
The plan for the area east of town went off with only a minor hitch or two. The scouting infantry platoon moved first and found a layout similar to what we expected, other than an extra infantry platoon, and the fact that the hex to its north was empty - hence that is where it ended up. This worked out fine as that hex allowed it to cut off the final retreat hex of the HTs and AC. Our attempt to disrupt the AC in the far east caused it to retreat - DOH, but it presented a butt shot and was polished off by a T-26 platoon. The T-28 moved forward and drew opfire but was retreated so could not continue and draw the final opfire from the disrupted PzIII. That task was eventually accomplished by a T-26 pushing through the forest to the SE of the PzIII in question. Engineers smoking the road allowed the T-34s to advance and draw the last enemy opfire in the most optimal conditions, they then proceeded to scout out the west flank of Pocket B and cave that side in. Another T-34 (having the best anti-infantry capability) disrupted the newly discovered infantry and a couple of butt shots later a company of T-40 takettes rolled up the pocket by capturing the last hex. We then prepared for a potential enemy counterattack.
A quick aside to discuss the importance of movement order. In the situation above (after the action has taken place) we want to retreat the leftmost T-34 towards our own lines and spin him to face the expected enemy line of advance. We also want to spin the rightmost T-34 in place. Which of these two moves should we execute first? Is there any difference? In fact there is. Consider the situation if there is an enemy unit to the west (left) with LOS onto the hex of the rightmost T-34 and opfire available. Then, if we retreat first and trigger the opfire the enemy unit will target one of the T-34s both of which are offering a side or butt shot. How about if we spin the guy in place first? Then if the retreat triggers opfire the enemy unit will 50% of the time target the unit with its forward armour facing - a much better deal for the good guys.
[Green arrows = friendly movement; Yellow arrows = attempted movement; Purple arrows = assaults; Red arrows= Direct Fire]
Having overrun Pockets X and Y on Slabada Hill we prepare to collapse the final pocket. If we can form a pocket here we are guaranteed to capture the PzIII platoon with the leader (a choice target as discussed last turn). With a couple of lucky retreat results we may also be able to collect up the mg platoon on the ridge and the disrupted PzIII platoon positioned behind our primary target platoon. However, once the dust had settled the enemy support platoons had retreated away from the final action and we were only able to nab the one PzIII platoon and the leader. A suboptimal result, but a nice one for the good guys nevertheless.
The final part of the turn was to take out the HT that is leading the enemy probe along the Slabada Hill road. Some players may find the following tactics objectional, try to account for such disagreements before the game in the RoEs. The tourney rules state that "Non-combat transport units cannot be used to surround, block movement, block line of sight, or perform "recon" duties". As the truck has not moved it is not actively used, though its ZOC is blocking the HT retreat path... In this case it is not really important as the infantry platoon can double time around the HT cutting off its retreat route and then overrunning it after it has been disrupted by the T-26 platoon. However, better to clarify before a game than during.
[ZOC = Zone of Control of the Truck platoon]
Note also that the disrupted mg platoon uses its ZOC to block the HT from moving SE. The mg platoon is able to approach the enemy HT even though it is disrupted as there are closer enemy units to the south.
Combat Results Analysis
| LOSSES INFLICTED BY: | Expected | Result | Cumulative Expected | Cumulative Result |
| Axis Direct Fire | 17.8 | 27 | 58.2 | 84 |
| Axis Opfire | 1.46 | 1 | 10.0 | 5 |
| Soviet Direct Fire | 39.2 | 37 | 58.7 | 65 |
| Soviet Opfire | .98 | 1 | 6.0 |
4 |
See full graph Download full spreadsheet
VP Status (draw)
| Beginning of Axis Turn | End of Axis Turn | End of Soviet Turn | |
| Axis Unit Losses |
108 |
109 |
216 |
| Axis Unit VPs |
321 |
324 |
635 |
| Soviet Unit Losses |
122 |
152 |
152 |
|
Soviet Unit VPs |
381 |
479 |
479 |
|
VP Hexes |
700 |
700 |
700 |
|
Total VPs |
760 |
855 |
544 |