Bunkers Burning - Combat Mission: Red Thunder

Should be winnable for the Soviets, if some decisions go their way, especially taking out key parts of the German defense.

If the Allies loose their tanks this is a turkey shoot for the Axis. If the Axis is reckless with their AT assets I guess the Allies could win but hard slog for sure.

I thought it was a very hard slog for the Soviets - possibly doable but would need quite a bit of luck and elimination of the Axis AT capabilities. The Axis optics advantage makes this a tall order. In our game, only one of my tanks ever actually saw the thing that took it out. It is impossible to get the Russian armor to area fire on the enemy defenders (unless they’re very close when the flamethrowers kick in), they just keep wasting their ammo on the concrete bunker(s) - this is really frustrating. I think the Soviets need a lot more smoke rounds than are provided to have a realistic chance. However, if they do manage to break through in force, they would probably clean up. Bloody good job to those players who won as Soviets.

Note: rating is for H2H play only. Might be perfectly fine as human Soviet vs. German AI.

The designer notes indicate this battle should only be played vs the AI, preferably as the Soviet player. I would agree as it is quite boring as the defender since there is virtually nothing to do after the initial deployment other than hit the red button. That being said, I think it is an excellent tutorial to practice assaulting dug in infantry with mines and obstacles. Overall, not recommended for H2H.

As the attacking Russians I found the scenario bloody and challenging. Lots of mines and no way to detect or clear them. My mistake to forget to make liberal use of smoke and get bunched up. Not much of a scenario for the defender though. No room to maneuvre. Better as Russian vs AI.

KanduAs the attacking Russians I found the scenario bloody and challenging. Lots of mines and no way to detect or clear them. My mistake to forget to make liberal use of smoke and get bunched up. Not much of a scenario for the defender though. No room to maneuvre. Better as Russian vs AI.

I want to expand my comments. Play balance depends a lot on if the game was being played for the first time without foreknowledge vs if the player had played it previously or studied the map and forces pre-game as if it was a board game. Playing it blind as I did makes it anyone's game. The German positions are generously covered by mines which the Russians can easily stumble into. I got lucky when I decided to crawl a disabled tank along the forest on a hill and found a clear path. Another tank hit mines. I assumed that whereever there were obstacles or wire, there would be no mines and this allowed my engineers to blow a pathway through wire to create a single clear patch. Apart from that, they are not much use detecting or clearning mines. Elsewhere I did the Russian thing and just charged through minefields at three locations. Didn't know they were minefields until I started taking casualties.
If playing the game with foreknowledge then balanced shifts strongly in the Russian favour.

This is a great scenario to test yourself against a well designed defense. I feel this scenario is much better in PBEM than Red Dawn