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Setup and Planning
Away from the public bravado of the MB my heart sinks as I view the battlefield, my forces, HO’s message and my turns available.
The scene;
My Soviet spearhead is tasked with wresting control of small German village from the rearguard of the Gross Deutschland Div.
I have some recon troops;
2 Armoured cars
1 Recon Platoon (2 squads)
112.7mm HMG
1 82mm Mortar
1 LMG
1 Spare HQ
A handful of lend-lease Scout Cars
2 Trucks
1 Halftrack with the Quad .50cal HMG’s
And a follow on force of;
7 T34/85’s
2 Platoons SMG/LMG
1 Sniper
2 Tank hunter’s
2 LMG’s
1 Company CO

The troops are vet’s so have half a chance of going toe to toe with Germanys’ finest. I can expect some more infantry and some assault guns to turn up during the battle. Nothing in my briefing really about the opposition except that they have the finest equipment Germany can provide which in the spring of 1945 means pretty good kit.
I don’t like the map, I’m hemmed in on both sides by wooded hills and have only 20+ turns to reach the 3 flags at the far end of the village.
Here’s the plan view:

There is a ridge just in front of the village which will shield my setup from enemy eyes and provide a nice over watch position. Assuming time issues will prevent flanking on either side I’m faced with punching straight down the road or over the ridge. Neither strikes me as particularly attractive.
I decide on the following plan;

As I’m light on firepower I decide the job of the on map forces is to find, fix and maybe destroy HO’s defences. The reinforcements promised will be the killer blow when they turn up, wether they go down the road or over the ridge will depend on what happens in the mean time. To start with I will occupy the ridge, loop left and right with an infantry platoon (Recce troops off to the right) this will keep HO honest and provide good eyeballs into his position. They will as far as possible avoid combat and concentrate on flanking. The final inf platoon will infiltrate from the ridge into the left hand side of the village. An AC will poke its nose round the corner of the road whilst the other and the scout cars will pop up on the ridge. The T34’s will sprint to just behind the ridge, drop off their inf and form up so they can breast the ridge all together. The HMG and mortar will take up over watch positions in the Pines at the road end of the ridge and the .50cal halftrack will skulk for now. It’s delicate but late in the game that firepower may well be decisive.

I’ve played HO a lot so expect him to bring units at me, he does a great line in forward defence, advancing from defensive positions to disrupt your attack backed up with fiendishly well placed AT assets and well placed ambushes. Also it turns out he HAS played the scen before so I’m unlikely to surprise him much – great.

Turn 1 Action
And it kicks off straight away! A couple of SPW’s, maybe 21’s with the AA MG’s hose my recon troops as they cross a clearing sending them to ground and a Stug shows itself just at the end of the turn ready to shoot vehicles off the top of the ridge. I get a couple of inf sound contacts and one definite sighting advancing towards the ridge (told you!).

Turn 2 Orders
Okay! I retreat all the vehicles that have crested the ridge, even the one T34 which is hull down, I want all the tanks to go over together. No point in letting HO take them one by one and the scout vehicles are just free points to him in this sort of fight. The Recce platoon on the right gets advance orders to get them across the clearing and the infantry get debussing orders into the trees on top of the ridge to get me some LOS over the battlefield. My vet forces are putting out a lot of firepower so I should get away with it and I may even plink his Stug which would be a good start as it seems badly placed to me. The plan, such as it is, has survived first contact!

Turn 2 Action
Those who the Gods are about to destroy they first encourage to mock their opponents placement. The Stug is, of course actually a JgPzIV/70. During the course of the turn I lose 3 tanks, it goes like this;
Initially all seems well, my crack T34 fires first but the shell ricochets (uh oh) and the inf advancing towards me shows as a flamethrower distracting units who should be concentrating on the TD.

The TD takes out his first victim, and some sort of inf has appeared on the reverse slope.

This group of fanatics take out a T34 and are busy lobbing grenade bundles as they go down under a deluge of grenades and SMG fire, Iron Crosses all round and a timely reminder that this is the cream of the Wehrmacht we’re up against here.

The TD takes down victim No.2 bringing my losses to 3 T34’s, a sniper and a LMG squad with the dubious return of one AA halftrack, a half squad/TH team, and one HMG given a good pounding but still alive.

Turn 3 Orders
Smoke the TD with the mortar. Pull the remaining tanks back to safety. I assign one tank to spray the trees where the flamethrower found cover.

Advance the infantry, need to get some spread to avoid the inevitable artillery. Check out the symphony of intricate movement!

I also get some reinforcements, an ISU152 and a platoon of infantry. Hope that’s not it, they get orders to double time up the road.

The recce troops on the right filter further into the trees.

Turn 3 Action
The turn goes pretty much as scripted except for this little piece of malfortune of the type that would have Leto gnashing his teeth with fury. As predicted a spotting round arrives behind the ridge, fingers crossed out of LOS of HO’s spotter but still manages to immobilise this T34, I now have 3 tanks and an SP gun left….

No other disasters and my storming Tankodesky finish off the flamethrower without breaking stride. Here’s the end of turn shot with my .50cal finally setting up and drawing a bead on HO’s panicked halftrack.

Turn 4 Orders
Forgot to take any screenies but the orders are more of the same, push the infantry forward and cower the tanks behind the ridge till the SP gun arrives. The scoutcars are going to pop up, hopefully out of LOS of the TD on the left hand side of the ridge.

Excellent DAR...hope to see some more of this sometime :)

There is more, the short story is that that [swearword deleted by poster] villain HO wasted me for a Major Vic. I will finish the what is now an AAR very soon, I have text for about half of it and notes and screenies for the rest, just need a few free hours which are hard to come by right now to finish up.

Beautiful stuff. Really enjoy reading this.