Round 1 - The Battle is Joined - Turn 8
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 Turn8
Synopsis of the axis turn.
Bad news this turn - the two-week warning has arrived. We are playing a turn every 4.5 days at the moment so a result is unlikely, as we will probably only play a maximum of four more turns.
The axis continue to try and break up our planned assault, but their counter is getting weaker every turn, and more dangerous as we bring more units to bear. The enemy appear to be sending everything that they have into Arikamiai, which we will hopefully make into a sizeable prison camp soon enough!
Axis scouting HT disappears from LOS
Well it had to happen at some point - one of the enemy scouting HTs has managed to evade my LOS and is on his way to my artillery positions. Hopefully, the fact that they are now truck mounted will cause him to underestimate their Houdini-like skills. Note that a 251/1 uses 12APs to cross open and 8APs to use unimproved roads. Thus by the time he enters the hex out of our LOS (marked by the arrowhead) by has used exactly 100APs. Some of you in the audience may exclaim that we do not need to count anything as the tractor would have seen the HT emerge over the ridge line had he continued moving. That would be true except for a fairly major flaw - non-combat units do NOT spot enemy units while they are moving. The "?" only appears at the start of your turn when the enemy unit in question has only been spotted by non-combat units.
Non-combat units can be useful for providing warnings about flanking attacks and so on, however, if you use them like that then make sure that they have LOS over where you think the enemy will stop, rather than where he will move.
The enemy brought on their artillery reinforcements as expected and dismounted them in full view. This is an obvious error as the axis player knows that we have marauding BA-20s all over the place back there and he has no supporting troops. This makes these artillery very vulnerable indeed. Remember that you are never forced to bring reinforcements on to the map. If you choose to not bring them on then they are available at the same hex the next turn. You can wait as long as you want, thereby tying up enemy troops, or waiting until your own troops arrive to relieve the situation.
In Arikamiai he has pushed onto the outskirts of town with engineers in smoke. This is a good move as he gets to see what is coming and they are a bugger to move as they are in smoke and a village.
Synopsis of the soviet turn.
The first thing to do is to check out what juicy morsels the enemy has left for us. The obvious one this turn are the newly arrived artillery battalion. We know that they each have one opfire available after unloading, thus we will have to survive a maximum of three opfires. The first thing to do is overrun the transport platoon and hope that it retreats without being destroyed. Then we can overrun it again. Note that assaults do not trigger opfire so that we will get adjacent to the enemy artillery without triggering opfire at all!
[Purple arrows = assaults; Brown arrows = hoped for retreat path; Red arrows = direct fire]
If we do destroy the transport by assaulting it then that BA-20 will move adjacent to the unlimbered 105s and if they survive any opfire that they trigger they will overrun the 105s. If they are disrupted then plan B goes into operation and the mg platoon and AT guns will open fire hoping to draw the rest of the opfire before the second BA-20 goes in for the kill. Remember, artillery cannot retreat from assaults and are thus automatically captured. This plan assures the destruction of all the enemy in this sector. The only way that it can fail is if the enemy opfire is not drawn before the last BA-20 delivers the coup de grace.
There is one other moist morsel, and that is the 251/2 guarding the 200VP hex to the east. Our tankettes can surround and overrun this unit if our T-28s can disrupt it.
On the Slabada Hill our units are slow to recover from disruption and we are thus unable to continue the thrust to the summit. Furthermore, the enemy is now swinging around the eastern side of the hill and pursuing our slow moving forces. It appears that they have pursued a little too close as a number of our AFVs are now in a position to remain in place and fire twice - from uphill!
[Red bars = ANVILS; Red Arrows = HAMMERS; Brown ovals = Pockets]
They will act as the anvil to the hammer of the reinforcements from the SE, to crack pocket "A".
Around Arikamiai we will attempt to clear the woods south of town before assaulting the town. The reason for this is twofold: we have to wait for the heavy tanks anyway, and the high cost in APs of assaulting units in these forests makes them excellent retreat routes for his other units. Once they are denied him we can assault easily in the village hexes.
So what actually happened?
Unbelievably the enemy moved one of his remaining SPArty platoons under where we had plotted an air strike, the air strike arrived, struck the right hex, and destroyed the enemy unit! Though everything that I have said about air power is true, I have to take it back for a turn or two :-)
The Yak returns to base after reducing two sIG IBs to smoking ruin, just like his comrade before him!
Elsewhere, everything else was much as planned. The overrun of the 105s was completed. It turned out that we did destroy the transport platoon when we assaulted it (boo!) but then only one opfire went off when the BA-20 moved forward and that missed (hurray!). The 105s were then quickly dispatched.
On the Slabada Hill we opened up with everything and got one result which retreated the enemy PzIIIs away from us and into a position where they could be isolated, disrupted with a butt shot, and overrun! We had to expose a tankette to potential retaliation in order to make sure that the enemy did not have a unit in a hex out of LOS that would have provided a retreat path. Everyone else followed up to form the anvil. Their hammer comrades took out the 251/2 as expected and reclaimed the 200 VP hex.
Around Arikamiai we moved into the woods and overloaded hot spots as best we could. For example, his PzIII in the woods to the south was attacked by no fewer than six AFV platoons. Under the pressure he was forced to retreat and presented a butt shot to the BT-7s. Not that they did much with the opportunities.
I smoked up in front of his engineers with LOS to cut them off from the developing proceedings and targeted that hex for an artillery stonk next turn. If we can disrupted them and then overrun them we will get a free look at what his defences are behind them.
Download the end of Soviet Turn8
Download the Axis replay of the Soviet Turn8
Combat Results Analysis
| LOSSES INFLICTED BY: | Expected | Result | Cumulative Expected | Cumulative Result |
| Axis Direct Fire | 14.87 | 16 | 88.66 | 118 |
| Axis Opfire | 5.3 | 5 | 16.8 | 11 |
| Soviet Direct Fire | 16 | 18 | 89.23 | 98 |
| Soviet Opfire | 2.02 | 1 | 8.07 |
5 |
See full graph Download full spreadsheet
VP Status (axis minor loss)
| Beginning of Axis Turn | End of Axis Turn | End of Soviet Turn | |
| Axis Unit Losses |
255 |
256 |
311 |
| Axis Unit VPs |
736 |
741 |
921 |
| Soviet Unit Losses |
171 |
187 |
192 |
|
Soviet Unit VPs |
549 |
601 |
616 |
|
VP Hexes |
600 |
800 |
600 |
|
Total VPs |
413 |
660 |
295 |