Back to Stalingrad: Scenario 5, Hill 154.2

 

After an extended break it was great to be back in our happy place, battling over the grim Eastern Front. This time we'd made it to the fifth scenario in Warlord Games Campaign Stalingrad. Commander Roy had selected a veteran Heer infantry platoon to defend the hills. I had got carried away with the description of the soviet force and had got fixated on the "Human Wave Tactic" and "Siberian Veteran" elements mentioned in the scenario and let that dictate my army list picking. I plumbed for three platoons of infantry and one of mortars. the general plan was to advance steadily across the whole battlefield, shooting with one squad and leap frogging them with the other. the Siberian vets in the middle making a beeline towards the objective. the first set back was that my Siberian vets had lain unpainted for around five years, so task one was to get them painted up 

The Battlefield

The Germans were all deployed dug in across all the hills, with some artillery on the right flank

Turn One

With a nice run of luck, most of the German side was activated before the Russian horde made it on to the table top. I tried to stick to my tactic and advance on with LMG squads and firing to see if I could get some pinned units and then ran past them with the next units. This seemed to work initially with pins being received by the first units and the fresher units finishing relatively unscathed.

The above showing the entire Russian horde and the distance they had to cover against the well dug in enemy

Turn Two

Turn two began with some hopeful Mortar fire, I figured I might be able to reduce the squad holding the objective to a less imposing size. This was to prove quite difficult, my mortar fire was quite poor, but perhaps saved the day in moral factors later on.

the advance was going well in the centre

Although my right flank was getting an absolute pounding from a well placed artillery piece and MMG.

Turn Three and four

The mortars once again opened up and caused no damage, but were thankfully getting closer. after rereading the rules again we had judged that the hills would constitute difficult terrain so my charge range would be reduced to six inches. this meant another turn of running from my entire force into heavy fire. Certain squads were getting increasingly close to breaking. A very enthusiastic commissar begun polishing his pistol, ready for some inspirational encouragement. Thankfully, I had taken a captain and had him placed in the centre of my line. I figured I had almost a company out there so some senior leadership would be expected. This proved to be very useful and very little went wrong with regards to morale with the Russians over the whole game.

By the end of turn four the Russians had managed to get a veteran Siberian squad to the foothills of the objective Hill 154.2. The squad guarding it had eventually suffered some minor mortar fire but were now zeroed in

Turn Five

The turn started with Soviet mortar fire and the recipients choosing to go down to minimise the casualties. Along the rest of the line, furious fire opened up to attempt to further wound the defenders or stall the inevitable assault. On the right flank, disaster struck the usually fervent defenders, a FUBAR roll caused a relatively healthy squad to run off the table, exposing the artillery and weakening the whole flank. 

With a stirring speech the Captain ordered everyone around him to attack the 'Downed' defenders on the main objective.

The last order was to the assaulting Siberians, who easily pass their order test with a combination of the Magic Flag and the captains leadership. They are finally allowed to unleash the fury that they have built up over four turns getting shot at. With two veteran squads clashing over such a highly sought after prize we took to the books to make sure we correctly performed our first close assault in 3rd edition in ages. It was a high risk charge as we couldn't remember if the defenders get to either react by shooting all the LMGs or getting first swing in. As it turned out, the reaction shooting was impossible as the charge was declared under six inches away, but it was looking like the defenders would get a first swing as the attackers had to assault over difficult terrain. Then we noticed one fatal flaw, the defenders had chosen to go down earlier under accurate mortar fire. This meant the fight would be simultaneous, and with the Siberians being tough fighters, it was likely to go only one way. 

Thankfully for the Siberians, when the dust settled they were the only unit left on the hill

 

Commander Roy seemed to take it well 

Further pressure was applied on the left and right flanks, and both the hills were cleared.  Point blank SMG fire could be quite effective, who knew? 

Final Turn Six

At this point it was looking unlikely that I'd be able to get troops onto either of the secondary hills in time, despite clearing one of them, the other had a full squad of double LMG toting fanatics.

The secondary objectives defenders held on for grim death whilst mortar fire dwindled their numbers but there was no way the hill was being lost today.

On the primary objective the Heer defender attempted a brave counter charge, firstly generating as many pins as possible with close by units and then charging with the HQ unit, guns a blazing. Unfortunately, we remembered from earlier on, that the defenders would get to attack first and  almost completely wiped them out before they could even utter some strongly worded German fighting talk.

Conclusion

A great deal of fun was had by both sides, ultimately with double the points on the Russian side, it was always going to be a tough job for the defenders, perhaps more lesser quality troops to increase the fire power might have swung it. For now though, onto the next scenario - Downtown Stalingrad.

The Continued Adventures in Gaul of Pickupstix and Weetabix

 Join us for the scintillating final instalment in the six campaign between the Gauls lead by the chief Pickupstix and his rival Paulus Nuitini. As the Gauls had won the previous engagement I was to pick the scenario, and for perhaps more cinematic reasons, I thought it would be thematic for Pickupstix to corner Paulus Nuitini and have a fight to the end. So the chosen scenario was Fall of Heroes, were the attacker has to seek out the oppsoing leader and make them a casualty within ten turns.

I had the cunning idea of completely surrounding the Romans who would have to huddle in the middle of the battlefield in complete terror.

Turns out Paulus's lads weren't for having any of that and the cavalry tore off immediately towards my naturist tribesmen and engaged them solidly

Being on the end of a charge fairly nullified their bonuses and their lack of armour and clothes became an issue

meanwhile the rest of the romans supported the cavalry and they moved in closer to my slinger tribesmen perched on the cliffs

The additional lethality of the slings didn't seem to materialise as the romans made save after save

The bare bummed Gauls were feeling the squeeze as the casualties mounted from the cavalry so it felt like i needed to help them out a bit and charged the boss and his massive block of troops into the cavalry to relieve them a bit

While it felt on one hand the noose was tightening around the Romans, it actually meant that all their squads were able to focus on one part of my army whilst the other other had to trudge across the battlefield to engage. Darn it!

At this point Paulus had all three squads engaged with my warlord, so I couldn't use the ranged attacks. this was perhaps strategic error #67 on my part. I chose to withdraw my leader and his merry band and voluntarily retreat. this I hoped would allow a couple of volleys from the slingers and bowmen to wreck havoc

This havoc never really materialised, the understrengthened cavalry managed a savage charge into the slingers who failed their hit and run tactic that had worked so well for me in the past

the other two infantry squads hid in the trees

Bringing my javelins up I was hoping for a sneaky shot at the cavalry, after a very poor round of shooting from them and another brutal charge from the cavalry, my nobles also piled in to the cavalry

Eventually the cavalry broke and left the field. I had fully intended to pepper Paulus from a distance and hope for a couple of round of very lucky shots but his 2nd in command had other ideas and Spagetti left the cover of the wood to engage the archers after seeing off the nobles very quickly

All the while cheered on by the completely unharmed boss as he cowered in the woods

An extremely exciting end to our campaign, the roman cavalry were utterly terrifying as they romped around the battlefield but the tactics used by the romans in focusing on one part of the surrounding army worked very well

Ultimately the goal of the campaign was to have the largest warband at the end of six turns. After this  game we calculated the denarii and diced for the casualties and replaced them, then worked out the total denarii amount for each warband. The final scores were pretty close

Romans: 1341

Gauls:    1271

Very enjoyable campaign, all in all. SPQR gets a fair few knocks in reviews. but we felt it really comes into it's own in a campaign, it allows you to see where the army is weak and beef it up and is a really good excuse to paint at nice rate. The characters also take on little personalities once they begin to level up and its hard seeing them take damage. The rules are quick enough to play on a weeknight and don't require a huge brainload which we appreciate more and more.

Adventures in Gaul

 

We've had a little break from big battle scenarios, but have been amusing ourselves with smaller skirmish rulesets, in our recent SPQR campaign we're five games in to our six game stretch 

those pesky Roman were attacking our gallic village. The bounders! Plenty of tactical manoeuvres at the start to get the extremely powerful Roman cavalry in a position to cause the most harm and keep them safe from archers. The nudey boys had a not so tactical party near a standing stone, which seemed to draw them closer into range of a big group of better dressed and armoured lads was able to suprise them with a mega toot toot of their horn and a quick charge. Once pinned down and unable to pull off charges the cavalry were destroyed. By this time the Roman infantry had joined the fun and wiped out the nudey boys in very quick order. This unfortunately left them exposed to a javelin attack to the back. 

At this point the Romans remembered they had to get to the village to pillage it and started to trudge off to do their robbery. Soon after we had to call the game as night was descending and it was unlikely the pillaging would have been effective

very excited about the next game for the finale, i think our warbands are ending up around the same size so theres everything to play for