First Panzer Battles Tournament

[ComradeP]

Perhaps they were too high, perhaps they were not. You do need a liberal amount of smoke for it to have a real effect on an area.

Using smoke in the first turn limits return fire and the number of units the Soviets can spot, which is nice. You don't want the Soviet artillery to hit your assault stacks immediately. It limits releases of Fixed units as a side effect.

As numerous scenarios show, the Soviets face few constraints when it comes to moving their units around aside from their units being Fixed. There's no reason for them to stay in their initial bunker if it's in a quiet spot, so they can pile most of a battalion into 3-4 bunkers and give the Germans hell. This is what limits German breakthroughs as it's nearly impossible to counter due to using equal stacking limits and having a limited amount of good HA direct fire units. Sheer weight of numbers will mean you'll get through, but your troops might not have much fight in them.

First bunker cleared on turn 4. The loss of a number of Marders will probably hurt on the long term.