Christening the Panzers - Mokre 1939

 Having painted up a load of new early war panzers (or repainted some older ones) I wanted to get them on the table, so broke out one of the Dominion of the Blitzkrieg scenarios. This one was Mokre in September 1939, which we've already done with both Megablitz and NATO Brigade Commander, and there is a huge Mokre scenario in the Command Decision 'Birth of the Blitzkrieg' book which I have yet to convert to One Hour WW2.

Anyway, Mokre featured 4th Panzer Divisions rather shambolic attack on the Volhynian Cavalry Brigade near the straggling town of Mokre. The Polish cavalry were amply equipped with anti-tank guns and supported by an armoured train!

Battlefield from the east. There is a north-south railway line running behind the Polish front line, Mokre itself straggles along the railway line amongst wooded country. There is another village further south whose name escapes me (Kokrum?) held by a Polish infantry Regiment. I went for a 2' x 2' cloth for this one, which may have been  a bit big.

Here are the Poles. A normal infantry unit on the left, in the centre are entrenched anti-tank tanks (Polish cavalry units had a lot of towed 37mm AT guns) and on the right is another cavalry unit (19th Uhlans I think).  In reserve is another cavalry unit and the mighty armoured train, which is rated as an elite artillery unit, so gets three fire missions as long as it stays in reserve. Polish cavalry 'briagdes' were quite big, more like small divisions and the elite of the Polish army. This formation also included around a company of light armoured vehicles (tankettes and armoured cars) but I didn't represent these.

The figures are mostly from my WW1 and SCW collections as the hats and uniform colours are very similar to Polish ones. The '37mm Bofors' AT guns are Republican SCW AT guns with crews in Adrian helmets. 

The train is converted from one of those 'train in a box' gifts. The engine is rather on the big side, but I do have a spare so I might cut it right down and fit armoured plate all over it to reduce the profile. The real train mounted turreted 75mm guns so I've put a T34 turret on the armoured box car. 

4th Panzer assembles. It consists of three tank units (one is elite), two infantry units and an unreliable Stuka. The Stukas are unreliable as the dawn bombing attack was very ineffective, but its presence in reserve will still hamper Polish movement. The elite tank is on the right where it conducted a wide outflanking move irl.

In 1939 4th Panzer had over 320 tanks organised into four battalions of three light companies each. The vast majority were Panzer I and Panzer II with no Panzer III at all and only twelve Panzer IVs in the entire division. The division only had a single Motorised Infantry Regiment with two battalions of infantry, so it was pretty tank heavy.

For the tank mix I used five Panzer Is and four Panzer IIs, all the stuff I've been painting recently. These guys in the centre have the Poland era solid markings on the Panzer Is. Most of them are grey and brown camo but there are plain grey ones too to make up the numbers.

The infantry battalions have a couple of infantry bases each and a Horch heavy car.  

The action opened with a Stuka raid on the right. I want to blast a path for the elite panzers to make an outflanking attack. Naturally the Germans failed their reliability roll so the attack failed and the Stukas were removed. They will still count towards air interdiction of Polish reserve movement in future turns as they were present at the start of the game,despite being removed now. 

The Poles got to choose the combat sector on turn 1, and went for the AT guns in the centre. Both sides missed.

The Germans then attacked on the right again with their elite amour. I remembered to fire the armoured train this time (I should have done that on the first turn) but very luckily for the Germans it missed (3+ needed to hit). With the barrage ineffective, both sides fought another round of combat which the Germans won. The Poles were able to bring up their reserve cavalry to fill the gap though.

The Poless attacked in the centre and the train guns roared out once more...

And this time they hit something! The panzers were destroyed and their place taken by a reserve infantry unit. It seemed silly to put tanks up against entrenched AT guns.

Quite a  busy next turn. The Germans attacked on the right and finally routed the Polish cavalry on the flank. Due to the Stuka/tank combo the Poles were unable to fill the gap so the panzers were in a position to conduct outflanking attacks on future turns.

The Poles were forced to fight in the centre and the German infantry overran the AT guns. Things not looking so good for the Poles now.

The train failed to move up and plug the gap due to interdiction , so both the centre and right flank are open now.

Good news for the Poles on the left. The German infantry attacked and were defeated by the Polish infantry.

The last Panzer reserve moved into the gap.

The Panzers made an unsuccessful flank attack on the right, which allowed the train to make another reserve roll and it moved over to the right flank.

Sadly the German infantry in the centre made an outflanking attack on the train and destroyed it.

So at game end a very battered 4th Panzer has finally made a breakthrough. There was some pretty extreme dice rolling in that which perhaps skewed the result, but it was a fun ride. I ran it a few more times to check the play balance.

It looks a bit better with a lower camera angle.

In this iteration the Polish train starting shelling on the first turn, spreading death and destruction among the massed German armour.

In short order all the German tanks were routed! The Luftwaffe naturally failed to turn up too. German infantry was more successful and the train ended up having to hold the left flank on its own.

It looked like the Poles were onto a winner but it wasn't to be as the Germans on the left overran the train.

But the Poles snatched victory from the jaws of defeat as the cavalry on the right outflanked and destroyed the German centre. A Polish win.

In this next iteration the Luftwaffe actually passed their reliability roll, and I remembered that bombers can attack ANY unit, so naturally it bombed the train. The train promptly blew up and it was pretty much game over at that point.

The Stukas could range at will and the panzer/stuka combo proved as deadly as ever in the absence of any Polish artillery fire.

Pretty soon their were panzers rampaging all over the Polish rear and it was game over with no German losses at all.

However in this last run, the Luftwaffe didn't turn up at all and the armoured train destroyed all three German front line units in quick succession. The Germans never really recovered and the Poles ended up winning with no losses. A complete wipeout.

That was a fun scenario, but although it ended up being honours even, I think the outcome very much rests on the performance of two key units - the Stuka and the train. If the Stuka makes its reliability roll, that is an advanatge to the Germans, and if it manages to knock the train out before it has fired of all its ammo, that will virtually guarantee a German win. Conversely, the train can win the game on its own, as long as it manages to roll a 3 or more on its three fire missions. It was great to get the new tanks out though, and I think it was a decent outing for them.

Berlin Nocturne, May 1954

 Another trip to the good old days of the Cold War with John B, this time something of a Berlin Noir theme with a Le Carre-ish plot in 1954 Berlin. The twist being that we were all the baddies - KGB, GRU and STASI.

As ever the session was enhanced by Johns provision of lovely maps. I found this one particularly helpful as is shows all the Allied and Soviet sectors and their respective HQs. 

A pretty motley bunch of spooks in dodgy hats assembled, naturally on the hottest day of the year so far, but at least it was set in May so we didn't have to wear coats as well. I was on the KGB team along with Mark and John A. Tim G, Russell and Micheal were GRU while Terry and Pete were Stasi. We all had team and individual briefings, and to add to the general paranoia, Stalin had recently died with Malenkov taking over and a purge currently underway of Berias adherents. 

The main issue confronting us was an apparent breach in security with various top secret items appearing in the hands of western intelligence. The KGB actually knew that it was because MI6 and the CIA had penetrated the comms infrastructure, but hadn't told the other agencies as we needed to protect our source, BLACKBIRD, at all costs on the orders of Moscow Central.

So, we needed to gently point the others in the right direction while protecting BLACKBIRD, and making sure to deflect any blame on us for leaks by pointing out moles. I was personally responsible for running BLACKBIRD and had to make daily trips to the western zone to liaise with him.

A few of us realised that this was based on Operation Gold, a brilliant intelligence coup whereby western intelligence constructed a tunnel to directly intercept Soviet communications. Here is a period map of the U-Bahn and S-Bahn - lots of tunnels in Berlin.

This knowledge didn't help much in the game as we could only work on the information we had available. In the end we came up with a cunning scheme to insert false information at various points in the system and try to determine the location of the leaks(s).

Things became rather fraught when my personal assistant was murdered via a staged suicide - she had access to BLACKBIRD material, and later major Popov of the GRU was actually killed in a shootout with French security forces while meeting a contact. Clearly the leak was getting out of hand.

Despite various technical measures, nothing really helped, and following Major Popovs demise, I was called to an urgent meeting with BLACKBIRD, who had been compromised. Moscow Centre approved his extraction, and my team devised an operational plan which may have borne a distinct resemblance to that in 'Funeral in Berlin'. It went rather better than the GRU mission had done. I rolled and 11 on 2D6 which helped, so BLACKBIRD aka George Blake was successfully evacuated to Moscow.

Following that we were able to inform the other agencies of the security breach and we were able to reroute our comms securely. irl the KGB sat on the knowledge of Operation for Gold for 18 months (!) to protect Blake.

The one thing we didn't managed to do was identify the mole in our midst, Major Burkhardt of the Stasi who was a double agent. We had our suspicions but could never get enough proof, but overall a good outcome for the KGB as we got Blake out. We even managed to purge a Beria traitor in our midst (Mark) who ended up in the gulag after unilaterally jamming the GRU wireless network. Less good for the GRU as they lost their main asset (GOLDFINCH) and Major Popov into the bargain. It transpired in the Kripo debrief that my PA had been murdered by neo nazis, but that will be another thread in a later game.

That was an excellent game, greatly aided by team breakout rooms and extensive use of private messaging which meant lots of secret stuff going on.

The Red Cavalry - Ukraine 1941

 Time for another trip to Tigers at Minsk, slowly playing my way through the scenarios in the Fireball Forward rulebook. I've had  a bit of gap from TaM, partly due to focussing on the ACW and Unconditional Surrender, and partly because the next scenario in sequence wasn't very appealing - yet another mass infantry night assault against dug in defenders, albeit Japanese vs US Marines. I'd had enough of that with the Volkhov Crossing.

Anyway, I skipped ahead to this one, set in late June 1941 in Ukraine, near the town of Sitmoye. A Russian counterattack by 8th Mechanised Corps had been repulsed but a gap had opened up between the panzer divisions and their supporting infantry divisions. Into the gap went the Soviet 14th Cavalry Division, while the German 75th infantry division also tried to make contact with the panzers.

Battlefield from the west. There is a marsh and gully in the top left, various corn and sunflower fields (the latter being the first outing for my recently made cornfields), a low hill and some scattered open woods. The sunflower fields block LOS and all fields are boggy going for vehicles.

Victory goes to whoever controls all three of the small buildings scattered above the road. The Russians come on from the right (south) with flank marchers on the bottom (west). The Germans come on from the left (north) with flank marchers on the top (east). This is a 70 minute game and the table is a bit bigger than usual to accommodate the quite complex terrain.

The Germans from 75th Infantry Division. The written scenario has a very odd OB, essentially a motorised infantry company and a mechanised recce platoon in halftracks! Very unlike any 1941 leg infantry division I've ever seen, so I changed the troop types to something more historical but kept the overall balance of forces.

The leg infantry component are two rifle platoons of three sections each, plus a company HQ with a tripod MG team and an anti-tank rifle team. I've rated all the Germans as average, but with good formation cohesion. I also gave the Germans two activation dice re-rolls (as the original FF scenario gives them a single use activation chit).

These guys are all coming on from the north.

The recce element has been modelled rather more on an infantry division. There is a small armoured car platoon with two Sdkfz 222s, and a rifle platoon of three sections riding bicycles (!). The heaviest anti-tank weapons the Germans have are 20mm autocannon and their ATR.

The German breakpoint is 7 units and they will move first. They have the option to send the recce units on a flank march but it could take anything up to six turns for them to arrive, so they will march on with everyone else.

Opposing them is a cavalry squadron from 14th Cavalry Division, supported by armoured cars and tanks. 14th Cav was a pretty good division (it was later uprated to Guards status) so I made the cavalry average and with good force cohesion. The tanks and a/cs I rated as poor due to the all the various well known problems with the 1941 Soviet armoured force, I also gave the Russians poor C3.

The cavalry component is three platoons (troops?) of two cavalry sections each, plus another section in company HQ plus a mule packed Maxim MG section.

One platoon of cavalry elected to flank march and got lucky, arriving on turn 2.

There is a tank platoon of two x BT-7s. These are vastly better than the Sdkfz 222s,  but obviously handicapped by poor quality crews and C3. The lighter German guns can have some effect on them though.

Plus a pair of heavy armoured cars. Like the BTs, these are also armed with scary 45mm guns, but are more lightly armoured than the tanks. The armoured cars elected to support the cavalry flank platoon and also managed to roll 2 for their turn of arrival.

The Germans advanced on a fairly broad front, partly to take advantage of the available cover and avoid over stacking, but also to put lines of sight on as much ground as possible to impede Russian movement. Unopposed all these units could move at maximum speed, although the marsh constrained some movement options.

The Germans main weight was in the centre, as that was where the objective was.

Over on the extreme flank, one 222 supported by a section of cyclists flanked the marsh. This tiny force would prove to be invaluable.

The Russians were largely screened by terrain so made good ground in the centre, occupying one of the buildings in the village with a section and the Maxims, while two more sections headed for the eastern building with a third in reserve.

The BTs supported by a fifth section advanced in the west, but were constrained by LOS from various German units so ended up halting after only two hexes. One of the BTs braved not one but two bogging rolls to move through the sunflower fields.

The Germans aggressively pushed forwards in the centre, occupying the woods line next to the third house, while another section plus the ATR moved on the hill. The section on the right stayed in the field as its LOS seriously constrained Russian movement - that is such a clever mechanism.

The armoured car detachment on the far side of the marsh had only been able to advance one hex due to Russian LOS, but it blazed away with opportunity fire as the Russians moved up to occupy the second house. The Germans had to use one of their one time chits to activate these guys.

The Russians were firmly in control of two of the building snow, despite losing a cavalry section to German fire. The Russian CO stayed here to maintain command. With poor C3, he can only command two hexes.

Predictably the entire Soviet left wing went out of command! They cant do anything this turn except conduct opportunity fire.

However the flank marchers now put in an appearance, the two BAs and two more cavalry sections.

The centre quietened down as both sides spent most of the turn rallying or removing opportunity fire markers. The Germans finally occupied the third building though, covered by fire from a 222.

In the west though, things hotted up, the Germans pushed a section onto the hill which was promptly cut down by massed opp fire from the Russian left wing. Another section and the ATR took up a rather safer position on the reverse slope.

More ineffective firing in the centre. I had to come up with a method to indicate which units had opportunity fired and which had just shot normally, so I put smoke on top of the opp firers and next to the others. Both sides armour was being very, very careful to keep out of LOS of each other.

In the west the opp firers sorted themselves out and the Russian cavalry charged the hill! Well that has put the cat among the pigeons.

Back at the village the Germans managed to rout the cavalry holding the eastern building, and the bicycle section from the bicycle/ac detachment hastened forwards to occupy it. They managed to make their roll to cross the gully but were pinned by Russian defensive fire as they occupied the buildings. I'm so glad I sent that detachment around the marsh!

Back at the hill the great cavalry charge bogged down in an inconclusive firefight. Both sides had units our of command which limited what they could do. The Russians did manage to pin the ATR team, but the BTs and BAs were so busy firing they couldn't take advanatge of it.

The Germans in the village managed to rally but a section of Russian cavalry charged them anyway.

The Russians managed to inflict one hit on the defenders pinning them, but they themselves also suffered a hit and fell back, only to be gunned down by MG34 fire in the sunflower fields.

In an interesting development you may notice that one of the BTs has advanced next to the village, hoping to duel with the armoured car across the stream. With better armour and a considerably better gun, it just has to survive the German defensive fire next turn...

More units going out of command in the west, including BOTH BAs and one of the cavalry on the hill. The other BT changes arc and scores a hit on one of the 222s, and promptly rolls a '1' for effect. The German armoured car survives.

The Germans instead concentrate their small arms fire on the last building and both armoured cars on the leading BT. Both hit it, and one has no effect but the other manages to roll a magnificent 6 for effect, the only score which would be enough to destroy it. BOOM. scratch one BT. My experience of armoured combat in TaM is it fast and lethal.

Naturally on the other flank the other BT goes out of command so can't fire at all. The armoured cars are up and running again, so one advances covered by the other. The Russian cavalry assault the German section in the woods who had been pinned earlier, but both sides manage to annihilate each other. There so many corpses on and around the hill now it is starting to look like a Greek Tragedy.

All the remaining Russian armour goes out of command, and the Germans manage to finish off the last Russian cavalry on the hill. The Russians are at their break point now, but time is ticking down.... a number of Russian units retire as a result of this break test but none leave the table.

The Germans in the far village had moved out into the sunflower fields now, concealed from view. I need someone who can move into or assault that last village hex and everyone else is a bit stuck at the moment.

The Germans push their anti-tank rifle team (and infantry support) into the woods on the forward slope of the hill to threaten the Russian armour. They survive a hail of opp fire from the dithering Russians, and to add insult to injury, the German armoured car behind the gully manages to hit the last BT and roll a 6 for effect, destroying it.

All the other Russian units here have retreated one hex after failing their break test, but the last village defenders are hanging on. Sadly the Maxim team retreated and was cut down as it moved into open ground.

With so few effective units left, the Russian CO joins the BAs to keep them in command. The village goes out of command. 64 minutes on the clock now, only six minutes left....

The Germans managed to stun one of the BAs with the ATR, while one of the 222s (which had sneakily advanced past the wreck of the BT), knocks th other one out. Another break test for the Russians and the last Russian cavalry section in the south retreats off the table.

Massed German fire overcomes the last village defenders, leaving one German unit able to move in just as time runs out! A German victory, but the skin of their teeth.

Historically 14th Cavalry Div repulsed the first German attacks, something which contributed to its elevation to Guards status, but that was a very tough fight for both sides and the Germans only just made it. That was a very enjoyable scenario and has a lot of replay value, I think next time I wouldn't bother with the flank marchers for the Russians and concentrate instead. As it was they were lucky they came on when they did, but the dispersed Russians suffered terrible C3 problems whereas the Germans could afford to spread out a bit more.

I was a bit rusty with TaM after a prolonged break,  but it came back quickly enough. That is probably about the largest engagement I'd be happy doing, and even then I extended to playing area to 8x9, which was perhaps a bit too much but I needed to model the gaps between terrain items as well as the terrain itself. I rather enjoyed the cat and mouse armour combat, but the Russians suffered very much from their armour arriving in piecemeal dribs and drabs, just like real life in 1941 I guess,