This is a small battle we modelled taken from the book Летом сорок первого (Summer of the Forty First) by Giorgi Sviridov using IABSM rules.

It's the morning of Sunday 22 June 1941, near the ferry station of modern day’s Niemirow. A Soviet border guard detachment has fallen back in disarray after being attacked by superior numbers of German infantry with machinegun and mortar support, and losing its political officer.

The survivors have withdrawn to an old workshop recently used as a barracks, without communications and without orders, effectively surrounded on all sides by the fast-moving Germans. This was to be a last stand for these poor soldiers. Their opponents were a German company held back and ordered to neutralize this small pocket of resistance. The Germans have the numbers, the firepower and the support.

The Soviet commanding officer and the Maxim MMG were began the game strongly, but peaked too soon: very early and very unfortunately, the Soviet commanding officer was incapacitated and the MMG ran short of ammo.

Great planning from the German side by my good friend Mick Harney. Mick used his firepower to suppress Soviet attempts to see what was going on whilst a third of his force took the difficult route across the river into my blind spot to achieve surprise, suppress even more, and then move to capture the building.

Unfortunately, we did not manage to finish the game due to time restrictions and a slow start (me explaining the game mechanics to Mick) but IABSM worked really well in my opinion and we really enjoyed it.

We were so preoccupied and really into the game presentation and the history around the event that I did not take enough pictures of the game table, but below you'll find a few. 

‎Ioannis Pavlidis‎ 

This was my Soviet Ammo Shortage card followed by card for my MMG, meaning that the gun could only fire at Short Range from this point onwards.