Panzer Battles with Panzerblitz

 My good gaming pal Russell has a thing about playing old SPI games, including such gems as 'Dallas'. Recently he's been on a bit of a kick with Panzer Battles, published in Strategy and Tactics in 1979. Like many of the SPI tactical games like Firefight, Mechwar 77 etc, it rather passed me by at the time as I was very happy with Panzerblitz, Panzer Leader and Squad Leader (although I still have a copy of Sniper). Panzer Battles is a similar level as Panzer Leader with 200m hexes, 5 minute turns and platoon sized units, but puts much more of an emphasis on command and control, doctrine etc and has a much more detailed (almost Tobruk level) combat system.

The BGG entry is here: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/7556/panzer-battles-tactical-armored-warfare-in-world-w

Anyway, Russell has been plugging through the scenarios, in particular one covering 4th Armoured Brigade at Gazala (which fitted in nicely with our recent desert outings) and another featuring a battalion of Panthers taking on a Soviet tank brigade in March 1945 on the road to Berlin.

Just for a laugh, I thought I'd set up the 1945 scenario using Panzerblitz and see how it pans out.

The Panzer Battles battlefield is quite empty, with a main road down the centre and a town in the rear corner. There are a few patches of cover though, so the open Panzerblitz board was the obvious choice. In scale terms the Panzer Battles board is quite small compared to Panzerblitz so I'm just using this one as far as the stream at the top (with the lake on it) . The Germans get points for killing Russian units and the Russians for killing German units and getting them off the top edge of the board (or over the stream in this case).

I've no idea which units the real ones are supposed to be, although I'd guess the Germans are from Panzer Division Muncheberg (which had a battalion of Panthers and a Tiger II company) . In the Panzer Battles scenario the Russians have three battalions of T34/85, each with six platoons of three tanks each. Panzerblitz of course famously models the Soviet C3 limitations by modelling each company as a single counter, so the 18 T34 counters in the original become six T34/85 companies in Panzerblitz. 

The Panzerblitz T34s have a slightly worse gun than the Panthers (15 AF vs 16 AF with an inferior range 10 vs 12), weaker armour (10 vs 12) but are slightly faster (11 vs 10). All those differences combine to make the Panther rather more dangerous in armoured combat - at close range in the open one Panther Platoon vs one T34 has a 100% chance of a suppression and a 50% chance of a kill, whereas in the reverse situation, the T34 has an 87% chance of suppression and only a 17% chance of a kill. The Russians need to gang up on the Germans big time and expect to take some losses.

The Germans in the original have two companies of Panthers with 23 vehicles spread over five platoons. Given they already have a 2:1 combat advantage just based on numbers of vehicles per counter, I rounded that down to four platoons of five Panthers each. Panzerblitz has no concept of command and control, units just ramble over the map at random.

The German defensive task looks easy but in fact is unenviable. There is no opportunity fire in Panzerblitz and units in concealing cover (woods, towns) are invisible unless an enemy unit is adjacent. So units dash from one patch of cover to another, trying to gain local fire superiority, and given the open nature of the terrain, the German need to be very careful to avoid the Russians simply dashing from bush to bush and off the edge of the map. 

The defence above blocks the easy road via the town and has outposts in the two patches of woods, which are in range of the Panthers long reaching guns (a ridiculous 3000m, although they are much more effective at 1500m).

I did  consider a hull down position on the hill to the left, but the T34s are so fast they could actually mount an overrun attack against it on their opening move - hilltops count as open terrain against overruns. The whole 'chess with tanks' thing is what I used to love about Panzerblitz. It does involve an awful lot of counting hexes and movement points to optimise unit placement though.

The Russians swarm the Panthers on the left anyway. Four of them are in the cover of the woods and two of them are on the slope below the hill - it doesn't provide protection against the adjacent Panthers but provides hull down cover against fire from further away.

Oops.I forgot quite how deadly tank combat at short range is. The Panthers in the town are within 1500m of the wood so pour a devastating fire into the T34s. Panzerblitz has quite eccentric target priority rules when firing at a stack so this is a simple 4:1 attack by all the three Panther platoons in range and a whole battalion of T34s go up in flames.

This is doubly unfortunate as it also fills the hex with wrecks, and the larger Russian units can only stack two units in a hex, so they are now barred from the hex. That is a real shame as that hex is just within maximum T34 movement distance of the handy ridge northwest of the town, but that route is now closed off. Someone on Jim Dunnigans team thought really hard about the design of these geomorphic boards.

The remaining T34s fry the Panthers in the woods (the Panthers could have chosen to not shoot and run instead, but that would have reduced the attack from the others to 3:1 and only a 33% chance of a kill against the T34s in woods). The Panther platoon on the right falls back to the town to prevent easy access from the T34 swarm. I do like the high mobility of these units.

Their advance west of the town thwarted, the Russians dash over to the ridge on the right. They are hull down here so a harder prospect for the Panthers. They also just have enough movement from here to make it into the gully east of the pond, but not cross it. Units in gullies are invisible at ground level.

Aware of the threat, two of the Panthers in the town take a 3:1 shot against one of the hull down T34s (the Panther are doubled for close range but halved for fire vs hull down armour).

The third Panther platoon moves back to the ridge northwest of the town. From here it can see down into the gully behind the town.

One company of T34s are suppressed by the Panthers, the other three dash for the gully and spread out. I cant risk the Panthers on the ridge suppressing a whole battalion as it leaves them vulnerable to the other Panthers ganging up them on subsequent turns.

The Panthers on the ridge manage to knock out one of the T34s in the gully. They are joined by another Panther platoon to discourage the Russians from hanging around. If those two companies cross the stream, that will be even VPs (Germans 3 for kills, Russians 2 for units exited and 1 for kills).

With the gully locked down, the lead T34s cross the gully and hide in the woods on the far side. The lagging T34 company heads into the village, shielded from the hill. Mano a mano with the Panthers in the streets of the village! it can spot for the T34s up north if needs be.

With hindsight, that was a really stupid move as of course the Panthers in the town blow the T34s apart at point blank range, while the other Panthers scurry off the hill and back into the town. What I should have done  was try to suppress the Panthers on the hill with the T34s north of the gully and THEN think about moving. But I didn't, so that is four German VP to three Russian and a well earned German victory. One battalion of Russians has broken through, but there are lots of German over their LOC, so that seems fair enough.

I didn't feel any great inclination to do that again, but it was a fun little game with lots and lots to think about, a real Panzerblitz knife fight with lots of hard decisions and rapid manouvre. I made a couple of stupid mistakes, which I wouldn't have done if I'd played it again. I cant believe I used to confidently play all the supplied Panzerblitz scenarios which have scores of units in them, my brain was obviously a lot bigger then.

I did vaguely think of setting up the same battle with Command Decision and Spearhead, but then realised I couldn't be bothered.

Panzerblitz Lite 4 - Stalino (twice)

So, this one was intended to be the 800th blog post, but I miscounted. Hey ho. 

After the Vyazma game I had a bit of a think and made some more revisions. I wanted to open the game up a bit so it had those bursts of mobility which characterised the original Panzerblitz , so road movement changed radically - horse and tracked units got one free hex on a road and motorised units got two free hexes. This is a subtle difference from my original 3 hex/4 hex on road as it allowed a unit to move cross country THEN use its road bonus, and even move off again. It accounts for the some of the movement rate mapping anomalies eg in PB trucks have 10 MP, roads cost 1/2 and MP, so in theory can can move 20 road hexes (or 5km).

The other big change is to loosen up artillery spotting for the Germans. Infantry and armour can act as spotters for IF units within 2 hexes, but infantry can also act as FOs for Regimental and Div artillery units with no distance limits. I kept the RAW limits for the Russians, as they seem more appropriate.

I went for a more PB like spotting - spotting range is 2 hexes except vehicles in the open can be spotted at 3 hexes, and infantry/guns in cover can only be spotted at 1 hex. If one unit can spot a target though, all units within 3 hexes and LOS can spot it. So you need to put spotters adjacent to units in cover, like the original game.

I'm still wrestling with gullies though. I know how they work in PB, but trying to map them to 1km hexes... for this iteration they count as 'terrain' to enter but units can move along them at the x country rate and leave them at no penalty. If you are in a gully hex you are in the gully, no popping outside, but two units can be in the gully.

Otherwise I had a think about cavalry - move 2 but no road bonus (apart from horse drawn guns which go 1+1). They do not have to stop in 'terrain' though, apart from the dense woods, which gives them a mobility advantage in close country. 

So, onto Stalino, one of may favourite PB scenarios.

Here is the scenario card and my custom geomorphic map. Boards 1,2 and 3 in order. This scenario is set in the aftermath of Kursk in August 1943, a Sov Mechananised Brigade is exploiting west, past a German infantry Regiment. The Russians have to take a piece out of the Germans (kill 3 for marginal victory, 6 for tactical) AND exit all their units westwards by turn 10. Any units left on table count as destroyed. The Germans get VPs for killing stuff too, whether it is actually killed or just left on table, at a similar rate to the Russians.

So the Russians need to both advance rapidly and stop to kill Germans. The Germans just need to slow them up enough without losing too much stuff.

Here is the battlefield. Germans set up in the centre (which now I've standardised on a 9x8 with side hex extensions is the middle 323232323 hexes). Russians come on from the east. The obvious feature is the big hill in the middle  with the major road junction, and all that horrible terrain in the southwest.

The 'mighty' Germans. Five leg rifle companies, two horse drawn mortar companies, one motorised artillery company (the Regimental guns, so 5km range max) and a motorised AT company. In great excitement, they also have two obstacles and one minefield! Both of them are serious barriers to movement (a full move to cross) plus the minefields attack any units on them before any artillery fire etc.

The mighty Russians, and entire Guards Mechanised Brigade! Three motorised rifle battalions with two rifle companies each, a motorised engineer company, armoured recce company, tank regiment with 2 x T34/76, Heavy Assault Gun Regiment with 1 x SU152, Light Assault Gun Regiment with 1 x SU76, 2 x towed 120mm Mortar Companies, 1 x towed 76mm Artillery company (as usual PB classes these as anti-tank guns, because that is the label on the 76.2mm gun in the Aberdeen Proving Ground), 1 x  towed AT company. 

What an armada! I decided to treat the SU76 as (light) assault guns as that is what they were for, even if PB thinks they were some sort of Soviet Marder.

The optimum PB defence for the German is to cluster their forces on the big hill covered by all the mines and obstacles, move their artillery to the rear on Turn 1 and set it up to block the road and cover the valley with direct fire (no spotting distance limits in PB), and put a few spotters in the various woods and things to call in IF as the Russians go past.

I could almost do this defence in  PB Lite, but I had to put one rifle company out on the hill to the north to spot. I also put a block on the hex between the two villages in the north as I know what the optimum Russian strategy is too... that creates a triple or quadruple deep layer of movement obstructions to any sneaky outflanking moves via the north. Otherwise the roadblocks and mines go on the roads leading up to the big hill where the other German infantry are concentrated. The AT gun company will run mobile interference on the road network, and the mortars are positioned on the reverse slope to be spotted by infantry within 2 hexes.

From repeated playings, and notes in the "Wargamers Guide to Panzerblitz", the optimum strategy for the Russians, is go right flanking ie a dash across the north. But they also need to kill enough stuff for a marginal victory en route (3 German units more than they lose). I know how to do that in PB, lets see how it works in this game.

Turn 1 they pile on in the northeast, taking advantage of the more liberal road movement allowances. You can do all sorts of clever stuff when the road hexes are a bonus move. 

The Germans respond with some mortar fire which disrupts one Russian unit, but the rest of the mobile Germans scatter to their pre-planned positions in the rear. The AT guns are heading off to the northwest up the highway.

The Russians are slowed up by the gully and woods in front of the 2 hex hill, but they have to advance as  the German company up there is invisible in the woods. The German call down a storm of artillery and mortar fire both from this hill, and from the guys in the dense wood (which can see three hexes now, including over trees and villages).  The AT guns have made it to the ridge in the northwest.

With  the entire Russian army in front, the German infantry fall back after calling in more indirect fire. The German mortars in the centre gully also leg it back to the big hill. Mmm. I've misjudged the north a bit, the German infantry don't have a secure escape route from their gully. but their ZOC is keeping the Russians pinned.

Oops! The tidal wave breaks. The Russians annihilate the German infantry to their front, and a flanking force heads off towards the big hill to get some kills, led by the SU152. Most of the Russians pour westwards, hampered by the block in the north and the gullies. The Germans make a stand on the reverse slope, and close range infantry fire and direct fire from the artillery (I treat DF artillery as AT guns), knocks out some T34s.

Up in the northwest the towed AT is valiantly holding the road exit against a tidal wave of Russian motorised infantry. Hmm, guns seem really hard to hit with anything in the RAW don't they? The Russians are still hung up in the bad terrain, in the original PB, trucks were just a disaster in any sort of broken country. The Russian engineers made a feeble effort to clear the obstacles but gave up after a couple of turns.

The Germans are quite happy to fall back to the reverse slope of the big hill, while the Russians figure out what to do. The German artillery has a ZOC over the critical road junction in the centre left, and the Russian SP guns  in the forest are also trapped on the road by ZOC.

The Russian infantry fail to even disrupt the AT guns on the road junction, while a big traffic jam is building up behind.

They finally manage to clear the pesky AT gunners out of the way, and the first units get off the table. Now the issue is road capacity!

The remaining Russian armour on the hill makes a run for it. The Assault Guns don't have any choice but to advance and get stuck in ZOC on the hill, while the Russians further west end up facing off against the German artillery next to the road junction. 

In the north nearly all the Russians have got off now - all the surviving infantry (the Germans must have killed one at some point), the 120mm mortars, AT guns and recce.

The Russians have now eliminated three German units (AT guns, artillery and a mortar) for a marginal victory, BUT, they have lost two units destroyed and have four remaining on the table, which is a tactical German victory. Net result, German marginal victory. I forgot to count the KO'd T34s when I was working out the Russian exit strategy. What a dope! 

Anyway, that went pretty well, but it was a real struggle for the Russians to move across the table and fight as well. The ZOCs and some of the blocking terrain still make movement glacial at times, although the new road moves helped a lot to make the game more mobile. The obstacle rules worked OK (ie they were mainly avoided) and there wasn't much opportunity for gully movement. The new spotting rules didn't seem to break anything either.

Well, the game is all set up, lets go again. This time, I'm going to bin the ZOC rules AND stop treating villages as obstacles to movement. They aren't in PB, so I imagine this is also a holdover from the OHW conversion. That should free things up even more. There is already plenty of blocking terrain to, make movement difficult.

Right, second session.

Slightly different defence this time. The obstacles and mines are in the same place, as are the rifle companies, but this time I've put the AT guns forward onto the hill in the north with the rifle company. The mortar companies are massed together so they are both within two hexes of infantry on the big hill and can be spotted for by either concentration of infantry, allowing for massed fires. The artillery are set to dash for the rear and set up near the road junction again.

This time the Russians go for a centre/south approach, advancing on a broader front to maximise the use of the roads. They also make use of the lateral gully to advance as far as possible. They've made pretty good progress in one turn, and the more liberal road and village treatment helps a lot. 

Of course what they have actually done is advance right into the German kill sack. Ooops. Faced with such a target rich environment, every German unit in range opens fire, even the artillery stays to fire instead of relocating. The northern Russian column is torn apart, with one company completely destroyed, another disrupted. The AT guns in the woods on the hill are completely invisible as they blaze away - "Panzerbush"!. In fact it could have been even worse, but the Germans rolled some appalling dice for their artillery.

The Russians in the north stop to return fire and move more elements forward. Each column has an Assault Gun attached, and one German company is disrupted. Rather than hang around to be destroyed, the Germans fall back to the reverse slope. The Russian armour is stuck on the obstacles and can't enter the forest anyway. 

In the south however, the Russians are forging ahead. They bypass the minefields and start to work their way around the south of the big hill over the gully and through the woods. The German defensive fire is ineffective.

The Germans in the north fail to rally, and Russian Mortar and artillery fire disrupts the Germans in the village. The Russian indirect fire is so enthusiastic that the guns and one of the mortars run out of ammo.

The Russian northern column is still hung up on the obstacles, and starts to bypass them via the woods and gully. They should never have tried to force the barrier. The units in the gully can now spot the Germans on the northern hill. The Russian recce sits in the centre of the line calling in fire on the located targets.

The defence of the big hill is becoming disorganised. The Germans reoccupy the forest but faced with massed Russian armour and infantry, abandon the village. One German rifle company heads westwards to start setting up road blocks. The German artillery and mortars are still in position blazing away, but if the Russians break through, they will be dangerously exposed.

The Russians take the village and are now seriously outflanking the hill form the south. The rest of the terrain west from here is dreadful however, a maze of woods, gullies and a huge swamp across two hexes. Amazingly the Germans are still holding out on the hill in the north, but the infantry in the forest are disrupted.

The Germans decide to stand for one more turn. The guns and infantry open fire at point blank range and disrupt the Russians in the village.

But things are coming apart as waves of Russian infantry advance across the fields in the south. A couple of Russian units are disrupted, but one German rifle company is destroyed. It seems easier to destroy infantry than knock out the artillery and mortars, which doesn't seem quite right.

The Russians destroy the rifle company in the north and the Germans bug out along the line, heading westwards into cover and to set up blocking positions to delay the Russians. The German artillery stays behind to hold up the Russians. The Germans have lost three units now, and can only afford to lose two more before the Russians gain a tactical victory.

The German mortars and artillery disappear into the maze of gullies. They are all disrupted by Russian fire, but none are destroyed. In the north the German AT guns have withdrawn as far as the northwest village, but are now faced with slogging across the remaining hills and woods.

The terrain in the southwest is really awful for a rapid exit, so the Russians need to figure out a way to get off table in the centre. The only bright spot is that the centre column has finally broken through and is rapidly advancing via the gully. The surviving German infantry are on or next to the two hex hill in the west.

The Russians in the south pick their way through the gullies, the Russians swarm the central hill to lock down the road and knock out the German guns.

The Russians have now opened up the road, but there are still German infantry in the woods and gullies west of it. The southern wing is still hung up in the difficult terrain.

The Russians get lucky and destroy one of the German infantry. That is five German units down. However the Russians won't be able to exit a number of units as it is just too far to go, so for a win, I need to Russians to be able to knock out one more German unit while avoiding losing more than three more Russians (they already have two destroyed). That of course means leaving more Russian units to fight, which count as destroyed as they fail to exit. My head hurts!

The Russians hold the road corridor open while passing as many motorised units down it as possible (with their +2 hex moves). As there are still Germans adjacent, this would have been impossible with the old ZOC rules.

A great mass of Russian units gather ready to exit. The Russians leave two units behind to take out the last German rifle company, but they fail with poor dice rolls. In fairness I needed too make two rolls of 4+, so only a 25% chance. 

Most of the Russians get off the table, demonstrating advanced traffic management skills, but the last two fail to make it. That leaves the Germans with five units KO (a Russian marginal) vs four Russians KO or left on table (for a German marginal). It is a draw!

Blimey, that was exciting! In retrospect a frontal assault on the fortified position into bad terrain was a really stupid thing to do, and the northern route is still superior for the Russians. The new movement, gully, village, spotting, obstacle, artillery call and (lack of) ZOC rules worked really well though, so I'll keep those.

The game was largely decided by a few critical combat rolls though, many at relatively low odds. I can see why Disgruntled Fusilier has gone with a 3D6 system instead of the hyper tense 1D6 system. I've also noted some oddities in the CRT, namely that artillery make great blocking units as they are so hard to kill. This is a holdover from the CRT in OHW, where 'guns' are AT guns. 

My next job is to rework the CRT to get the combat results more in line with those in PB. I'm also  inclined to make the decent attacks more of a sure thing. A 2:1 attack in PB was 'anything but a 1', and I'm inclined to go with 2+ for AT fire vs armoured targets in the open, but 4+ if they are hull down. I'll play around with the hit numbers a bit and see how it goes. 

More Panzerblitz Lite 3 - Vyazma 1941

 As these posts seem to be popular, I'll change my usual cycle and post this today rather than next week. I'm away this weekend in any case, so posts/updates will be a bit less frequent. 

Another day, more Panzerblitz Lite. After the Kiev game, I went through all the terrain boards and came up with a standard layout for each board mapped onto my Hexon boards. It is then possible to cut up the template and arrange them just like the original game. Much easier and faster than trying to do it from scratch each time.

I fancied something a bit more low density this time, so I picked Vyazma 1941 as the scenario.

View from the west. It is amazing how the terrain layout changes with each different configuration of the geomorphic map boards. Like Buchach, the Germans are trying to open a corridor from west to east, this time uncovered by Russian units or fire. Well, given the weapon ranges and terrain configuration, that will be interesting...

Here is the scenario card, and my patented mini-geomorphic terrain layout cards. The cards made it much easier to set the terrain up, it only took 25 minutes, which is OK for something so complicated.

Unlike Buchach, this is a very low density scenario! The Russians have a Rifle Regiment (three battalions of two stands each), plus a company each of 76mm Field Guns, 120mm mortars and an AT company. The guns are horse drawn, the only motorised unit being the AT guns, so the Russian defence is going to be quite static.

The German force is miniscule though, two companies of Pz III, one of Mech Infantry, one towed AT company and a company of 'mortars' (which I modelled as 75mm infantry guns). Not much stuff at all.

As in the original scenario, the Russians have to string their troops out to cover the entire width of the board. The obvious spot for the artillery is the wood on the central hill as it can cover five hexes across from there, and observation post in the village at the bottom of the hill is vital. I've put some Russian infantry in gullies - they can only spot and be spotted at one hex range, but it will force the Germans to move adjacent. The 120mm mortars are also in a gully to the rear of the open board. 

The Russians do have some reserves, there is a rifle company with the 76mm guns and the motorised AT is on the road junction in the top right. Once the Germans are committed, they can shuffle to form another line of units/fire across the board. The rough ground on the right is a nightmare, but the bigger hexes make it easier to lock down with continuous fire, there are two units in the foreground, linking with the artillery arc of fire.

As most of the Russian force is slow, you need to put a lot of thought into the setup. I enjoy stuff like that.

Conversely, the Germans don't have much stuff, but it is (mostly) armoured and mobile, so they need to pick a route and concentrate all their fire power to break through and keep it open. I can't actually recall the optimum strategy for this one, and it felt like cheating to read the scenario guide, so the Germans went for the open board on the left. It just seems easier to lock down one board edge, rather than going up the middle, although killing those guns looks very attractive.

The Germans advance up to the edge of the gully, with the mech infantry and guns in the town, tanks in the open. No Russians can see them here (mmm, I really need to think about spotting!)

The Russians respond by moving the AT guns west, a bit. The Germans pile into the gully and set up their guns in the village. Again, they are hidden from view here, even from the spotters on the hill. The Russian AT has made it to the central road by the end of turn 2.

Panzers advance! The Germans rush the village, 75mm guns in the gully in support. Now, in the original game, we could have bypassed as there are no ZOC, however my guys are now stuck adjacent to the Russians.

The Russian infantry in the village can call in the 120mm mortars, and the infantry in the gully can call can the 76mm guns. I had thought quite a lot about this defensive setup beforehand... In fact my wife commented how absorbed and thoughtful I looked. The chess with tanks thing was always something I loved about PB, unlike Squad Leader, which was far more random. 

Blam! Blam! Russian artillery, mortar and small arms fire rings out - resulting in a disrupted mech inf and a disrupted tank. The Russian 76s also rolled a '6', so have disrupted themselves. I prefer units to run out of ammo on a high roll, it seems more logical.

The 75s fire at the village but miss, and the disrupted Germans fall back into the gully to reorganise. The Russian return fire disrupts the AT company but nothing else. The Russian AT company is now on the far road next to the top left village and a rifle company has moved to support the mortars. The mortars are 'in' the gully and the infantry are outside so they can spot. Mmmm, I need to think about that too.

The Germans finally get there act together - the 75s disrupt the village and direct fire from two units finishes off the defenders, and the mech infantry and guns occupy the town. That is more like it!

The Russians have filtered a couple of units into the gully at the bottom, and the rifle company with the mortars has moved east to create a blocking line with the AT guns. The Russian artillery (finally) manages to reorganise, but now the 120mm mortars run out of ammo.

The Russians put an infantry unit on the hill at the top, and another one comes 'out' of the gully to spot for the guns.

That is a mistake. It is disrupted by the 75s and finished off by direct fire while the other Germans reorganise or push forwards. The Russian AT guns are in the village at the top now, but the German 75s rolled a 6 and are disrupted. That is a bit of a problem as hundreds of angry Russian infantrymen are next to them! 

The 75s 'retreat' east to reorganise and the Russians occupy the village at the bottom, re-establishing the line. The AT guns get lucky and disrupt them though.

Somehow (I must have forgotten to take some photos), the rest of the panzers have destroyed the Rifle Company on the hill and are threatening the 120mm mortars, who have retreated back onto another gully. The Germans are now surrounded! But the Russians have lost three units, so are stretched to keep a line.

A big turn for the Germans, the guns manage to knock out the disrupted Russian infantry in the village, which reopens the corridor west, and the rest of the them occupy the hill under a storm of artillery, mortar and AT gun fire. Two German units are disrupted but the 120s run out of ammo, again!

 

Desperate times call for desperate measures. The disrupted German units fire on the 120mm mortars rather than rallying, and destroy them opening a route east. The last good order German panzers advance to pin the AT guns in place in ZOC and stop them moving to re-establish a line.

In the south the 75mm guns move into the gully to block the Russian infantry from moving and re-establishing the line. I later realised I didn't need to do that as the Russians were stuck in a ZOC anyway.

Astonishingly the Germans have pulled it off, with the slenderist of corridors from west to east. Even more astonishing, they haven't lost a single unit, although lots were disrupted en route and in fact the game ended with 80% of the Germans disrupted. In contrast the Russians lost four rifle companies and the 120mm mortars. I guess that is the difference between a large dispersed force vs a small, concentrated one.

If anyone fancies trying this at home, this is my 'geomorphic' map template which converts the PB boards into 1km hexes. Print it out, cut it along the lines and you have three geomorphic maps which replicate the PB layouts. I ignore the half hexes on the outside as I was a bit generous with the width. I've also realised that for the scenarios with the maps end-end they are a bit too long. I guess ignore the top and bottom hex rows and they will be OK?

Another useful game with things to think about. I'm really not sure about ZOC - in the original game units could just zip past each other, whereas the ZOC make it a bit too easy to block units, otoh it compensates for the less granular terrain model. What to do? 

I'm also not sure what to do about spotting or artillery calling. I don't see why armour can't call IF, at least not German armour which was well equipped with radios. Some of the scenarios just won't work with the current rules (eg Positional Defence), so I think I'll free it up a bit on a scenario basis to start with. I also really need to think about how gullies work, in my head they are still the PB ones.

So, a few things to think about before the next game. I'm going to have a crack at one of my absolute favourite scenarios, Stalino, which is as asymmetrical as it gets, and also features fixed defences. I'm afraid you'll have to wait a couple of weeks for that one.