The Soviet Village-Scenario 5 Part 1

 Operation Barbarossa would fail. Its failure would have devastating results  for the German war effort  and would allow the Soviet Union to gain its footing.  That was in the future.    In Autumn 1941 the fight for the Southern front was still in the balance.   The Germans continued to push the Soviets back and cause heavy casualties and destruction of many Soviet tanks and other valuable equipment.  Kiev had fallen and Kirponos was dead.  The Soviets knew they had help arriving in troops from the east, and just as importantly from Russia’s mud and winter.    If they could slow the Axis advance, they could stop the German wave.  

So it was that each village would become a place of contention.  Holding out to slow down the German and Hungarian armies would  buy time.  

The last of five fights of the (real world) three month Barbarossa campaign would be a climactic fight over a small Soviet village somewhere near Kiev. 

Notes

The last fight would be for possession of a Soviet village.  Each side would have three Patrol Markers.  These would maneuver until “locked” and exchanged for Jump Off Points (JOP) per Chain of Command rules.  

Once the JOPs were placed, a line would be drawn connecting the JOPs  to designate which buildings each side would control at the start of the fight. (See below for how it turned out.)

Any buildings that fell behind the front line of the respective armies’ line was controlled by that army, with the additional caveat that in situations in which there is a fenced in “yard” all buildings in that yard count as being controlled by the side whose line crosses the yard.  Due to an uneven distribution of buildings, the church, large Railroad building and blue house count as two buildings each. 

When the battle started the Axis forces controlled all but the blue building on their side of the road for 15 points while the Soviets controlled all but the yard on their far left for 14 points.  

The conditions for control and ultimate victory were as follows:

1. A yard or yardless building is controlled by the side that last gained control whether they have models present or not.  

2. For control to change, the enemy must have at least one model in the yard while no models from the previous controlling force has any models in the yard.  This also applies to yardless buildings.  It is not enough to take a building  in a yard to gain control, but the controlling force must be driven out of all buildings in the yard for control to change.   

3. Every time control changes, the value of the yard or yardless building is added to an ongoing count.  When this count reaches 50, the scenario ends and whoever holds more points worth of buildings at that time wins.  A single yard or yardless building could change hands several times.  Each time, the value is added to the ongoing count.  

The Fight is On. 

The early maneuvering in the battle for the small village was cautious as the two sides moved up to the road to gain possession of those few building that didn’t fall within friendly lines.  The exception was a sortie by a Soviet rifle squad that crossed the road and hurdled a rickety fence to take a muddy farm on the Soviet far right.  

Axis forces were not present in the yard, so this was an immediate change in control.  First blood!

Soviets:19.  Axis 15    Ongoing Count 2

The Soviets didn’t stay long.   The spindly fence provided little cover and a Nimrod Self Propelled Gun arrived and promptly sent the Soviets scampering back across the road, dragging a wounded Serzhant with them. 

Axis forces were not yet able to re-enter the farmyard so the Soviets retained control for now.  

All along the road bisecting the town, small arms fire erupted as squads of infantry ducked behind fences and smashed the glass out of building windows to take up the fight.  

The distances were short and the fire was intense  Reinforcements picked their way through narrow spaces between fences and buildings to bring up ammo and fresh bodies.  

Two Panzer II tanks rolled up behind the Axis line to give support at the same time a T26 and Ba10 did the same for the Soviets. 

The Soviets were taking advantage of a thickly walled Party building across the road from the muddy farm  where they set up a Maxim machine gun.  The gun blasted away at some Hungarians on the ground floor of the large Railroad building. 

All along the front the two sides were engaged. 

Near the muddy farm, the BA-10 avenged the wounded infantry squad leader by firing its 45mm gun at the Nimrod.  A shell pierced the front of the thin skinned Hungarian SPAA and killed the driver.  A nearby Panzer IIB retaliated and forced the BA-10 to reverse undamaged but shaken.   

Near the churchyard, a new threat entered the villlage.  A Panzer 4F rolled up a narrow side street to add its fire.  It had an immediate effect.   An HE shell from its main gun struck home (literally someone’s home) and hit with so much force that the building it targeted caught fire and faced collapse.  (In COC a roll of  three sixes to hit with an HE shell starts to bring down a building.  Four sixes and it immediately collapses.). The Soviet infantry inside, already battered by small anrms  and Autocannon fire, were  now in a bad way. 

The opening phase of the fight was ending and the battle was intensifying.  

Soviets 19.       Axis 15.     Ongoing Count 2

Into Darkness-Scenario 4 Part 3- End Among the Trees

 The battle in deep forest on the Southern front was coming to its conclusion. The German and Hungarian troops had smashed in the Soviet right flank and had swept up supplies and equipment.  All was not lost for the Soviets, as they still had a chance to save an even greater amount of war material than had been captured.   The Soviet pocket was shrinking, and time was running out. 

Game Note: Heading into the final stage of the fight, the Axis forces has seized one Material token.  Two more remained on the board and both were inside the remaining pocket of Soviet resistance.   The two tokens were moving back, but slowly.

The Soviets were giving a good show of resistance, but cracks were forming. They had lost the railroad bridge and a German rifle squad had crossed a rocky ford in the right rear of the Soviet line. The Soviets were down to one deployment Jump Off Point, the other two being captured.  Their morale was also dropping.  

Near the railroad bridge where fierce hand to hand combat had resulted in the taking of the first Material Token by the Germans, the Soviets shored up the line by deploying an additional rifle squad.   Along with the ever-present KV2, two Soviet rifle squads poured murderous fire into the Germans, and checked their advance. A German Fedlwebel and Obergefreiter were wounded, and another Obergefreiter was killed. One of the German squads was pinned down and the other two, weakened by their recent assault could make no headway. 

Holding 

The roaming German rifle squad that had recently crossed the river at a ford, had flanked this end of the line and pushed deeper into the Soviet right rear.  With a show of Initiative that German Squad leaders were known for, the Obergefreiter “volunteered” two men to form a team, load up with explosives and stalk the KV2 that was blasting the Germans on the bridge. 

The two men creeped forward, played a quick game of Rock, Paper, Certain Death, and chose one of them to race at the tank.   With a spirited yell, the chosen brave Lancer ran up to the rear of the beast and lobbed the explosives on to the deck, just behind the turret.  Turning away, the lad then sprinted for a nice solid thing to hide behind and heard a satisfying “boom” as the bombs found their mark.  The trooper, now back in cover, peeked over a log at his handy work  only to see the KV unharmed and unperturbed.    The damn thing was ubiquitous and impervious.  

The fight near the bridge was now a stalemate, but it forced the Soviets to divert troops that were needed elsewhere.   

The Hungarians, who are usually aggressive during these fights, now did what they always do: they died in droves.   This time it led to results.

Two Soviet rifle squads that were the center-left anchor in the woods to the left of the open bowl had been trading fire with the advancing Hungarians for most of the day.  Casualties were increasing and one of the squads was without a leader, who was killed early on, and down to a squad machine gun team and single rifleman.   The squad to its right was more intact but taking shock and losing effectiveness.  Worse, the Hungarians were reinforced by another squad, increasing their numbers to thirty-some troops in three (two and half with casualties) squads who were now pressuring the Soviets. 

It was time for the final push.   One of the Hungarian squads volleyed into the tired Russians, while the other two charged.    The resulting hand to hand combat wiped the Soviets to a man.  The Hungarians had driven them out, but themselves sustained heavy losses including a wounded Junior and Senior leader.

The Soviet center-left was gone and they had nothing behind in reserves.   The Hungarians were weakened, but couldn’t be stopped.   They pushed into the retreating supply convoy and captured it with gusto.   The Axis had won the day  

Aftermath and Analysis

The German and Hungarian victory was substantial.   They had captured a majority of the supplies and the Soviets hadn’t rescued any out of the forest.  The Soviets were handicapped by having two Jump Off Points on the opposite side of the river, and only one on the same side as all three Material Tokens.  The grouping of the Material Tokens did allow for a more compact defensive perimeter, but two things happened.   

First, the fickle dice. Significantly more double and even triple phases came up for the Germans than the Soviets. This allowed the Germans to blitz the Soviet right, taking two Jump Off Points in the process and hitting the Soviets from the front and side simultaneously.   This allowed for the capture of the first Material Token.  

Secondly, the Soviets failed to do anything to stop this blitz.   They did not deploy from the Jump Off Point nearest the river. (They had made a strategic decision-probably a sound one-to ignore the far right JOP as a waste of resources to defend.) They didn’t try to block either the Railroad bridge or the ford.  A single squad (or giant tank) at either location would have bottlenecked the German attack on that flank.  The Soviets were unprepared for the rapidity of the German attack. 

The Axis forces realized early on that the open bowl in the middle was a bad job.  Once they decided to go around, they were able to catch the Soviets at the edges where there was less of a defense. 

The fifth and final fight was now to come. 

Into Darkness-Scenario 4 Part 2-The Rapid Advance

 After the initial tentative push, the Axis forces now increased the pressure.   The hottest fighting continued in the center of the forest in an open depression in the ground, now gaining the sobriquet “The Bloody Bowl.”

The Russians were putting up stiff resistance and German casualties were mounting.  If the Axis forces were going to capture and wreck the withdrawing Soviet army, they were not going to do it here.  

Thus it was that the Axis refined the plan and decided on a left flank wheel that would attempt to cross the river and try to cave in the Soviet right.  

While the Soviets were trying to hold the middle, and had deployed a majority of their forces there, the right flank was less heavily guarded as all three Material Tokens were to the left of the river.  The Germans used this to their advantage.   Quickly, a pair of infantry squads with support from a tripod mounted MG 34 and a 38T grabbed the two Jump Off Points on the near side of the river.  The rapidity of the advance surprised the Russians and left them with only one Jump Off Point on the field and no presence to the right of the river.

The Rapid Advance. 

This wasn’t necessarily a doomed ending for the Reds as all three Material Tokens were opposite the river and still protected but it shrank the defensive pocket and hurt morale due to the lost JOPs.

On the opposite side, the Hungarians had identified the marker in their front as a Material Token and made a push for it, only to run into the Old Beast.   Almost obsolete, but with so many turrets, they were superfluous, the T-28 tank was a lumbering anachronism. Now, it lumbered through the woods and straight at the Huns. 

The Hungarians were shelled.   Adding injury to injury, a nearby Soviet infantry squad poured fire into the hapless Huns.  They couldn’t stay where they were, so the Hungarians ran by the tank and into heavy brush, while trying to draw straws to assemble the tank hunting team.  Before they could charge their satchels, the mighty T-28 pivoted and amputated the Hungarian squad leader’s arm with a tank shell.  The squad was now pinned and could only cower.

Think it sees us?

The Soviets successfully withdrew the  Material Token that was under the tank and pulled it 6” closer to salvation at the friendly table edge. 

Elsewhere, the Hungarians and Soviets battled to a stalemate around a second Material Token. Using the only Jump Off Point left, the Soviets deployed two (!) Maxim Machine Guns to shore up the woods directly to the left of the Bloody Bowl.

The Hungarians tried to match this firepower and advance on the Soviets, but it was not going to be easy.

They’re in where?

Back in the middle, the KV2 sent a shell through the woods and knocked out a 38T that forgot to duck. The formerly Czech formerly tank spewed oily smoke, which darkened the already dark forest further.

It was then that things started to heat up.  The Germans on the Axis left had made their swing.   Two squads rushed across the rail bridge while a third skirted the left of the bowl.  

Game Note: in COC there is the possibility of seizing the initiative by activating in successive phases by rolling sixes.   This could allow a player to act twice in a row, or in rare instances, three times.   Tonight, one particular German player seized the hell out of the initiative , allowing the Germans to race across the (unguarded) rail bridge.  

The force with which the three German Squads slammed into a single Soviet squad, erased the hapless Soviet squad from the field.  The KV2, which was very close by was effectively distracted by a second 38T that has snuck across the river to the rear of the Soviet tank.  

 

The 38T missed the shot and paid dearly when a T-26 arrived on the field behind the Czech tank and one-shotted it by firing a shell through the back of its turret. 

The price paid was worth it.   The assault by the Germans had gained the first Material Token.  One more and the day would be theirs.   

As it stood, the Soviets were being squeezed but still held. 

Could the Soviets hold and get off the field intact?

The Hungarians in the timber