Panzerblitz with Gridded WW2 again - Relief of Kiev 1943

 Another tryout for the Grid Based WW2 Rules with a Panzerblitz scenario. Having reflected on the last game I've made a few mods to more reflect how Panzerblitz played, rather than having the One Hour Wargames elements in it. These comprise:

Road move bonus for all units (+1 hex for most +2 for wheeled). In PB, a truck could actually do 5km down a road and a PzIV could do 4km, so these are conservative.

Stacking limits of 3 in open hexes, two otherwise, but only one per hex on a road or inside a gully.

Having Open Woods and Dense Woods.  Any unit can enter the former, but only infantry the latter. Only infantry get cover benefits though. This better represents the ability on the PB boards to weave  through some of the dense terrain. Dense woods are those clusters of hexes with loads of 'impassable' hexsides.

Introduce gullies, pretty much as written in PB. Enter/leave as terrain, units can only see in/out at one hex at ground level, and can move along through otherwise impassable terrain apart from marshes.

All units can enter town hexes, but only infantry get the cover benefit. The villages on the PB boards are tiny (a couple of 250m hexes), in a 1km x 1km hex they don't take up enough space to justify banning vehicles. 

I did toy with the idea of using Panzerblitz spotting, so units in cover can only be seen be adjacent units. Given the less granular terrain, I don't think this is going to work. I also thought about increasing the ranges e.g. Panthers and Tigers have a range of 3km in PB, towed 88s, 5km! But I'll stick with the existing ranges as they are more in line with actual combat ranges. The only change (which I forgot in the game) is to limit 120mm mortars and infantry guns to 5 hex range. I also decided to ignore the advance after combat rule, it makes tanks too good and isn't very PB.

Panzerblitz (PB) Situation 7, Relief of Kiev. 19th Panzer and 6th Guards Tank Army clash near Kiev in November 1943. The winner is the side with the most units on Board 2 (ie the centre board) at the end of the game. Differing ratios give greater levels of victory and the Germans win if it is a draw as there are a LOT of Russians.

The wrinkle is that both sides enter the game in road column, proceeding at a stately 3km per turn until they bump into each other in the middle. Neil Thomas adapted this as one of his OHW scenarios, but I played it several times in its PB incarnation.

Here is the PB board, Board 2 is the one in the middle with the big hill. The German enter through the wooded, hilly, marshy board and the Russians via the Steppe board. There are lots and lots of gullies to constrain north-south movement.

In PB it usually degenerates into a huge slaughterfest all over that big hill with its deadly open ground hexes, but there are no armoured overrun rules in this variant, so we shall see.

My attempt to model it on a 9x8 hex grid. I've tried to keep the relationships between the key features (hills, woods, gullies and roads) even if it isn't a precise mapping. I'm going to treat 'Board 2' as the middle three hexes, measured 3 hexes from the German side and 2 hexes from the Russian. I gave the Russians the advantage as the Steppe board is so open. Think of it as variable size area movement...

I wonder if I need to go to 9x9, so each PB board is 9x3? In any case, I used my desert transition Hexon for this one, as it is Ukraine and not yet really winter. 

The main thing is that unlike that last game, most of the woods are 'open' (with 1 tree), with just a few 'dense'  (2 trees). This is based on my analysis of the impassable hexsides in the PB tree clusters, and is a bit arbitrary but should produce some blocks. 

19th Panzer. I just went with a 1:3 ratio of PB counters to companies, although I did have to do some amalgamations. The Germans end up with 1 x armoured recce, 2 x Panthers, 2 x Pz IV, 1 x Stug, 2 x Mech Infantry, 1 x towed Mortar (120mm), 1 x SP Artillery and 1 x towed AT.

Each unit is a tank company (15 tanks) or a rifle company.

For the Russians I did a similar amalgamation, but I did a 3:1 ratio for tank units, but only 2:1 for Infantry. That is because the Russian infantry counters (companies) are twice as powerful as the German ones, whereas the each PB Sov tank company is only the equivalent of a German platoon. 

Each tank unit represents around 30 AFVs, and each infantry unit, half a battalion. The Russians ended up with 2 x T34/85 (in 1943? really?), 4 x T34, 1 x SU152, 1 x SU85, 1 x towed AT, 1 x towed 76mm artillery, 1 x Armoured recce and 4 x Motorised infantry. That is the equivalent of 240 AFVs and two motor SMG battalions, the thick end of an entire Tank Corps.

Each side has to set a march order, and that is how units arrive, stacked one per road hex. With 11 German units, that is a long column. On turn 1, they just march on and move 3 hexes (which I've just realised that towed guns can't actually do with the written movement rates!). I led with the Stugs, followed by the recce to spot for the artillery, then a Panther. 

With 15 elements, the Russian column is even longer. It goes on for miles! They led with a T34, followed by the recce. I suppose I should lead both columns with the recce, but it is actually too useful as an FOO to lose early on.

Both columns trundle forwards for another turn. They make contact in the original scenario when they are three (250m) hexes apart, ie adjacent with 1km hexes. Now, on my table, that would mean the Russians spot first, but counting hexes on the original boards, it is clear the scenario intention is that the Germans spot first. So I tweaked the 'contact' criteria to first spot - so the Germans get to react first, having seen the lead T34 battalion. 

Once contact is made, units can deploy off the road, which the leading Soviet elements duly do. The artillery heads off down that side road to get unlimbered. The rest of the column has to still plod on to the table along the road though, so choosing the right march order is vital. For the Russians I alternated tanks and infantry, with the SP guns and towed AT at the rear. This is actually very flexible, and I send mixed tank/infantry teams off to each flank.

As in the original PB scenario, the Russians get a foothold on the big hill first, and the German have to decide what to do about it. In the absence of PBs armour overrun rule, I can basically choose to keep advancing or stop and shoot. The German choose to shoot, and get very lucky and destroy the lead T34s, despite them being 2km away and hull down. The supporting German elements move cross country and close up in support. The 'open woods' terrain type is really coming into its own here, although eagle eyed readers will note two patches of 'dense woods', one at the north end of the big hill, the other at the base of the small hill, with half a battalion of Stugs parked on the only road through it...

The bend in the road around the hill allows lots of Germans to get deployed quickly offroad and up the ridge.

The burning T34s block the road and occupy space in the hex. The rest of the Russians start to deploy on the reverse slope, although some infantry occupy the village and the recce the northern wood, using the road. They call in artillery fire on the visible Germans, which hilariously rolls a '1' and the Russian artillery disrupts itself!

Half the Russian army is still moving up, the road is till the fastest option.

Moving over and around the hill the Germans can form up faster. The leading elements advance towards the Russians as artillery fire suppresses the Russian infantry.

The Russians (ie me!) suddenly realise that as they have more stuff than the Germans, the onus of attack is on the enemy, so they just pile more elements into the defence of the rear of the hill, although infantry are over the crest in the village and wood. The recce heads off north the other side of the gully. If the Russians can just park most of their army on the centre board, they will win by default.

The Germans sneak around the north flank a bit. At this rate the Wespes will be firing over open sights! Sadly tanks and SP guns aren't very good at rooting infantry out of woods.

The Germans put in a mass infantry/armour assault. One of the Soviet infantry is completely destroyed, the other disrupted, but the German 120mm mortars roll a '1' and run out of ammo. Mmm, might change that to a '6', it seems more sensible. I suggested that idea to Chris Kemp and he adopted it for NQM.

There isn't any point exposing themselves to the massed German fire, so the Russians fall back to the reverse slope to reorganise and beef up their defences. The Russians have lost two units and the Germans nothing at all so far, just the odd disruption. 

If the Germans can kill two more Russian units, they will achieve a marginal victory, so in goes another assault, which rolls right up onto the hill. Unfortunately the German armour is stymied by the dense wood at the top end of the hill. German artillery manages to disrupt the Russian recce.

Russian defensive fire scatters disruptions among the Germans, but doesn't kill anything. The hull down German armour in the village is a tough prospect, but so is the Russian reverse slope defence.

The German disrupted units are vulnerable though, and are likely to be destroyed by counterfire if they hang around, so they fall back to reorganise. German artillery finishes off the Russian recce though. The German just need to kill one more Russian unit for parity in numbers and a marginal victory.

The Russians now focus on building up a strong line on the reverse slope. Parking those T34s on the handy hill is very unpleasant as they can fire over their pals below.

In go the Germans again, Panthers, Pz IVs, Mech Infantry.... even the armoured recce get stuck in, while the Stugs and towed AT make their way along the gully north of the hill.

The Russian defensive fire once again disrupts some of the German units, but unfortunately one of the Pz IVs in destroyed.  The Germans are two down now.

The Germans go all in and stick around, hoping for kills. But it isn't to be. In fact they were hideously unlucky rolling a series of '1's. Ouch.

Russian return fire kills more Germans, leaving just seven, and the survivors fall back to rally. The Russians have 12 units, and the Germans need to avoid losing another as that will give the Russians a 2:1 ratio and a Tactical Victory. 

It is the last phase of the last turn, the Russians can't see anyone to engage so they just roll forward to consolidate their gains on and around the hill.

Well, it looks like Kiev isn't going to be liberated by 19th Panzer, but the Germans have held the Russians to 12:7 unit ratio on the centre board, so it is a marginal Russian victory. The Germans just fell apart in the last few turns and were unfortunate in not converting more disrupted Russian units into kills. That is the downside of a relatively low unit density and a coarse 1D6 combat system. A bit like DBA guess. 

I really enjoyed that though, it definitely had a PB 'feel' to it but was much simpler to play and I like the challenge of mapping the very granular PB terrain onto a coarse grid. I've realised I'm basically making a game of a game, but I always enjoyed Panzerblitz, the relationships between ranges, move distances and combat effects just felt right. It is something I tried to do with my adaptations of NBC, but it ended up a bit fiddly.

My mods don't seem to have broken it and the new terrain effects are working well. A few minor tweaks but I need to try a few more of my favourite old scenarios, thinking Vyazma, Nikopol Bridgehead, Stalino, one of the mobile defence ones and I can work up to Prochorovoka. I'm still getting to grips with the game system rather than the scenario strategy, and as each is fiendishly designed, you do need to think about them, quite a lot. I imagine the balance will shift with time, and I played these so much in PB I can generally recall the optimum strategies without digging out 'The Wargamers Guide to Panzerblitz'.

After the game I figured out I need to go with a 9x8 BUT with the 'odd' hexes filled in to make it 9 wide in some places and 8 wide in others. That is the only way I can make the geomorphism work, and have a centre board, which  is a key objective in many PB scenarios. We shall see how that pans out in the next game!