This was a project, in collaboration with a good friend, to help mark our club's 40th anniversary.
This particular scenario has a great mix of units that work well for a multi-player participation game. We play-tested the scenario at least five times, and after all that still felt it was
good fun, even if the odds of a Soviet win appeared to be slim.
I pushed myself to learn some new tricks and cooked up some aids to play. I wanted each player to be able to run the units they were in charge of without any complication and at the same time to get a solid sense of how the game plays. My mate and I played the first turn as an example, and then let the players loose. By turn three of a very enjoyable seven turn game the six players at our table were running everything themselves.
The Death's Head at Andreevka pits a spear-head of the 3rd SS 'Totenkopf' versus elements of the 36th Guards Separate Heavy Tank Regiment. The SS have crossed the river Psel and invested the village of Andreevka in order to hold the river crossing. The heavy tank regiment, and two platoons of infantry are tasked with clearing the village.
Both sides expect reinforcements; the SS can count on the support of two squadrons of StuG III's while the Soviets will deploy more armour and are expecting a battery of rocket artillery to smash the fascist defences....
Here is our table set-up, as close to the scenario plan on page 210 as we could manage. The Village lies at the North end of the board. The Soviets enter from midway up the East side, through the tall crop fields.
The Germans are well dug in and started this game with five units on Reserve Fire. Two squadrons of Churchills began aggressively moving toward the village; the outlying vehicles screening two squads of tank-riders making a break for the woods.
To the rear, infantry on foot cry '
Urah, Urah!' and surge through the tall crops toward the German trenchline.
The heroic Guards Tank Regiment members know the main gun of their Churchills have poor HE, so they pour on the MG's, saving their shells for hard targets.
SS Command, ready to pounce.
Tank Riders Disembark, pushing for the safety of the woods, only to be pinned by MG fire from the dug in Germans. If they can make it to the woods, they will be able to put pressure on the German trench lines.
The German Command is smug, their infantry are safe and un-pinned in their trenches. A Tripod-MG34 in the Church tower has begun efficiently disrupting and killing members of the two squads of tank-riders in the open. Will they reach the woods intact?
But while distracted by the tank riders, the remaining platoon and a half of infantry have moved into position at the edge of the fields...
The German Commander perceives a target rich environment!
And the Soviet leadership wonders how much longer until the NKVD rocket artillery changes the picture.
The feint with the tank riders will only last as long as the two squads can survive. The Churchills are trading fire with the German Anti-Tank guns, eliminating the deployed gun threat, but the trench lines filled with infantry are a tough nut to crack. It will take the massed RoF of an infantry assault to best empty those trenches.
With the start of a new turn Soviet reinforcements arrive. At last the Forward Observer Team arrives to direct a barrage of rocket-fire. The initial spotting round deviates significantly, but a Spotter+ re-roll makes all the difference. The barrage lands in the heart of a dangerous group of units with Reserve Fire orders.
The result is just what the Russian team needed; a little bit of destruction and a whole lot of Pinned results, opening the way for the Heavy Tank Regiment to move in.
German Command now reports a somewhat different overview of the situation...
Soviet armour surges forward with additional reinforcements pushing through the Eastern woods to knock out the German Command vehicle. The Churchills engage in a duel with the remaining un-pinned Panzer IV while the infantry break cover and rush toward the German trenches.
The fox is in the hen-house now, as Soviet SMG equipped squads, supported by the Churchills, begin to make short work of their dug-in enemy.
Burning German armour litters the field. And adding insult to injury, the crucial counter-attack by the reserve force of StuG III's fails to materialise. Only
ONE StuG III makes it to the table this turn!
The lone Stug III engages the enemy armour in the eastern woods, but stands no chance of overcoming the horde of Russian tanks still on the table.
The Soviets are in Andreevka, there is no German armour on the table at this point.
It has been a cost effective fight for the Red Army; each platoon of infantry has lost only about half their strength..
Only two Russian tanks have been knocked out. A third is immobile.
A Sturmovik patrols the fields to the West... Where are the German StuG III's? They keep arriving one-by-one and are easily eliminated.
The Katyusha battery reports it is ready to fire again. We are seven turns into the game and the Germans concede that they are only points away from breaking. This is a glorious (
and completely unexpected) victory for the Red Army!
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July 12, 2009, 10:19:52 AM