More Tigers at Minsk, and onto the next scenario in the Fireball Forward rule book. This one is titled 'The Guards Counterattack', and is obviously inspired by the classic Squad Leader scenario so many of us cut our teeth on in the late 1970s. There was a Crossfire version of the TGCA, and I'd say that this scenario is largely based on the Crossfire one rather than the SL version. Looking at it, the German OB in this iteration is slightly different but the Russian OB is identical to the Crossfire version.
Battlefield from the east. The Russians are trying to break through to relieve the Tractor Factory which is under siege off the top of the table. The Russians start in the bottom two rows, and the Germans are in the building complexes in the central area bounded by the roads. Each side gets 1VP per enemy unit destroyed, and two VP per building hex in the central area controlled at the end of the game.
This is my best effort to convert the scenario terrain in a TaM hex grid, the original has a lot of multizone building complexes. In the setup above, if there are contiguous model buildings, it is a building complex and units can move (or assault) from one hex to another without being subject to opportunity fire, but if there is a single building or a gap, they can be opportunity fired as they move between building hexes.
I know it wasn't particularly snowy in Stalingrad in October, but I used my snow boards anyway. The buildings are a mixture of my Timecast Russians buildings and I used my wooden block buildings for the complexes. They dont look too bad grouped together, although the red roofs aren't very Russian. I managed to fit the layout onto an 8x7 grid.
The German defenders. Three rifle platoons and a pair of HMGs. The Crossfire scenario has an extra rifle platoon. There are a lot of squads in this scenario and not much space, so I'm using one base per section instead of two.
And the mighty Russian horde! Twelve rifle sections, eight SMG sections and three Maxims. In the original scenario (both Crossfire and Fireball Forward) these are grouped into large four squad platoons which tbh is just silly in late 1942. I'm going to run these as two weak rifle companies with three platoons of two sections each, and a stronger SMG company with two platoons of three sections and one of two sections. That is more like a battalion in 1942 terms.
The rifle sections have poor morale, but the SMG sections are Guards and have average morale (by the time Id factored in leadership etc). The main problem for the SMG sections is that they only have a range of one hex! (120m)
The Germans have to set up in the central BUA. I've got MG posts supported by rifle sections covering the front, and otherwise I just tried to cover all that horrible open ground around the buildings. There are two sections held back who are intended to dash to buildings at the top to cover the streets on either side, just like the city fighting manuals say. If the Russian first move goes badly, they should be able to make it in one bound, I can't risk the getting caught in the open.
The Russians have to set up in the buildings in the south, distributing the rifle sections along the front (there need to be at least one section in every building). The Guards SMG platoons are a hex further back. I'm weighting the Russian right as the long building on the right looks the most vulnerable, but I'm also going to try and get some troops into the row of buildings on the far left to open up the frontage a bit. At the moment everyone is terribly bunched up.
I have to say it doesn't look hugely promising for the Russians, but there an awful lot of them.
Last bit of admin, the German breakpoint is six and the Russian breakpoint is twelve. The game will last 60 minutes.
Russian C2 isn't bad on turn 1, two groups out of command and I push some of the SMG sections further forward. The Russian prep fire is dire though, every single shot misses and in the end I push some rifle sections out in the street to try and draw the German MG fire. Naturally the German MGs don't fail any of their ROF rolls and half the units in the street are pinned or shot down by opportunity fire.
In the German turn, the flank cover sections dash for the buildings in the rear to cover the flanks and everyone else shoots up the Russians. All the surviving sections out in the open are pinned or killed.
At the end of that turn the Russians are down three sections and have not advanced an inch, while the Germans have improved their position. That didn't go very well did it? The Russians have at least managed to get all their Maxims into the front line.
Next turn the Russian C2 is just dire, no less than four groups go out of command, ending any sort of attempt at manouvre. The pinned section left out in the street is able to retire to cover at least. The three MG positions are all in command however, and supported by the rifle sections, open a devastating fire on the Germans. Between them, the three MGs rolled five sixes, two of them ran out of ammunition but combined with the rifle fire, managed to destroy no less than two German MGs and two rifle sections. Ouch!
All the Germans could do in return was open fire and make sure all the approaches in the open were covered.
The Russian commander recovered from his surprise and all groups bar one were in command this turn. Devastating prep fire knocked out two more German sections, forcing morale checks on the rest. On the left an SMG platoon took advantage of gaps in the defensive fire to run across the street and into first building on the left. On the right a rifle platoon supported by an SMG section made it into building complex on the right.
All the Germans could do was either fire or shuffle their sections around to shore the position up. Unhelpfully the section in the top left went out of command. By now the German sections were setting up on the far side of the buildings to avoid the covering fire.
Another command disaster for the Russians as almost every group west of the road went out of command. The two assault platoons (one led by the Commisar) were OK though.
The SMG platoon on the left cautiously moved out into the street, but the German opportunity fire missed. On the right the platoon in the building assaulted the Germans holding the far end, which provided an opportunity for the only other mobile rifle platoon to dash across the open ground.
Outnumbered 3:1, the Germans in the right hand building were overwhelmed although they did pin one of the attackers. That forced another morale check and all the remaining Germans fell back a hex. Amazingly they were still winning on points (11 vs 10), but only because the Russians hadn't occupied all the buildings yet.
One plucky German section reoccupied the four hex building complex.
But the Russians were able to rush forwards from all sides, largely untroubled by defensive fire.
A random event produced a minefield in one open hex (those three green blobs) but it was all too late as the Russians overran the last German section in the buildings. There wasn't any hope of the Germans retaking them, so a crushing Russian victory!
tbh after turn three, I don't think the result was in much doubt. Both sides had outrageous dice rolling in the first couple of turns, after which it settled down to more average results. The 'forward defence' is always a bit of a problem for the Germans though - it covers all that open ground but leaves them open to crushing prep fire once the Russians get rolling. Perhaps defending the line of building hexes further back is the way to go, but then it allows to Russians to get in close. Decisions, decisons.
Anyway, that was good fun and captured the flavour of the original quite well, but I didn't feel any great inclination to replay it.
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