Situation #2 - Game 1

December 22, 2013

In a real sense, the Russians are set up for a slaughter, which are reflected in the victory conditions specifying survival and position. The German challenge is to destroy as many Russian units as possible, as fast as possible.

Germans move first, and with the amount of transport they have, they can get across the board stupid fast.

The Russians first move is to simply get everything on the board as best they can.

I don't really have a strategy yet, other than using very limited Russian transport to get some strong pieces into play as early as possible. This is a move and unload, return and load, move and unload exercise.

As the Russian side, make the Germans be everywhere.

Setting up

In this Situation, I allowed the Russians an initial "staging" pre-move where the Russian forces could deploy along half hexes without movement cost. Road movement bonus does not apply for staging.

Then Germans entered on Board #1, determined by random dice throw.

Turn 1

Germans, as expected, make deep penetration on Board 1, partial along Board #2.

Russians attempt to get artillery to high ground as fast as possible to cover infantry advance.

Turn 2

Germans dismounted 81 mm mortar platoon (unit 81) north of Hill 109, which was promptly picked off by the Russian 120 mm company parked south of Hill 126.

Turn 3

The Germans have guns set up on hill tops for good field of fire to prevent infantry movement. Unfortunately, these guns may have been deployed too soon, because…

Russians having emplaced guns first are picking off German artillery positions. Unfortunately, the Russian SU-76 didn't stay close enough to one position to fire on it. Definitely a tactical mistake, being out of range.

And it's looking like the Russians brought their guns up too fast as well…

Turn 4

Heinz finally took a piece of Ivan's artillery off the board. Otherwise more repositioning.

Ivan, in the meantime, rolled a boxcar on a 3:1 on a panzer. Bad. Very bad.

Turn 5

Ivan gets lucky on some clse assault, including rolling a 1 with 2 recon unts (weak sauce) against a PzKwn IV.

Turn 8

Ok, a couple of straightforward turns, and we're back at e top of the 8th with the Germans sort of in the "lead," but having serious trouble completely stopping the Russian advance. Infantry has serious defensive strength! And, Heinz keeps rolling 6s. On a 2-1 overrun, that's just lame. All of a sudden,there seem to an enormous number of Russian units on the map.

One win for the Germans is an artillery emplacement on Hill 107 which keeping Ivan's SU-76 dispersed. Would be nice to kill it and free up the guns for other targets, but this working well enough.

The Russians, meanwhile, crawl slowly south, managing to disperse SG III-75 (823) along the way. This is that AFV platoon which can't seem to conduct an overrun. Getting what it deserves, now.

Turn 9

Not looking so good for the Germans to win it. Losing those two armor units really hurt.

The Russian's close assaults are just grinding away at the Germans.

Turn 10

The Russians carry the day with a marginal victory. For this game, the close assault odds blunder worked in the Russians favor. The German's inability to roll less than a 6 on some critical overruns definitely worked against them.

Rule blunders

The rules to PanzerBlitz are not that complicated, and largely reflect common sense. But it still takes a few games to get everything figured out correctly. What follows a list of blunders during this game where the rules were not followed.

1. No stacking for road movement rate. The germans came in stacked on the roads and moved all their forces north PDQ. Too quick in fact. This was discovered during Turn 2 while looking for infantry dismount rules. The benefit of this violation went primarily to the Germans as they have the large majority of the vehicular units. However, this did the Russians insofaras they could get a lot of infantry on the board along roads and not end up all spread out.

2. No passing other units on road without paying terrain movement cost. Again, most benefit to Germans, allowing them to move north probably one third to half again as fast as would otherwise be possible.

3. Dismount stacking violation: once units are dismounted they count for stacking purposes. For example, artillery mounted on three halftracks can't all dismount in the same hex on the same turn. In fact, having 2 mounted units in the same hex precludes a dismount by either.

4. Confusion on close assault versus overrun allowed the Russians to knock out 2 panzers with close assault. These should have been dispersed instead of kills. Advantage to Russian here.

AAR

This scenario seems surprisingly better balanced than it would initially seem. The Germans have a relatively large advantage in armor, while the Russian infantry is surprisingly difficult to kill.

Next up, bring the Germans in on board 3, then board 2 for the last game in this series.

Tactical blunders

• Town hexes forces a combined defense factor for stacked units. Cannot do selective fire on stacked units in towns. This means instead of putting artillery on the high ground where its weak, should stack it with some infantry in a town.

• An optional rule allows Russian guard units spot fire as FOs. Should consider using that.

• Probably should have tried to leverage roads a lot more as Russians. No question would be taking some licks, but need the speed.

Rule clarifications

• In the event two units have the same defense and are stacked and a selective attack is made on their position, an impasse results with respectto which is the weaker unit. Two ways of handling it: attack the unit with the weaker AF, defender advantage; 2. Roll the die even is weaker unit, odd attack strger AF unit.

Future experiments

• Anticipate the possibility of getting a dispersion on close assaults, and get more infantry into range for a following turn to capitalize on pinning down a piece of armor.

• Consider moving transport along with infantry so if they need to mount it saves a turn.