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.
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.
