After the thrilling German victory last time the action moves onto an encounter action on the road to Ploschad. The Russians are strung out marching on the road and the German have a chance to hit them hard early on. The map is as below, the Russians are marching on the left hand road and the Germans hit them from the right hand road.
The German force is well armoured with Panthers and halftracks galore, but the Russians have a couple of the monster JSII (thankfully I just managed to get some PSC ones painted), MMGs and some Mortars.
Right from the off the action was quick. Playing solo I shuffled the Blinds and managed to get it all fine. The first thing the Russians did was to jump off their Blinds and attempt to fix the mix up, but then a Panther section appeared on the road. As you can see the JSIIs were directly in the correct position.
Very quickly the whole forces of both sides were on the field of battle. The Germans had to move outward to extend the weaker Russians and the Russians had to get their powerful weapons to the front as quickly as possible. As you can see the Panthers and JSII were fighting it out toe to toe and so far were at one each. Bad tactics by the Germans here, but it was hard to get them moving.
Suddenly all hell broke loose as one rogue German section madly charged the Russian in front of them and guarding the western approaches to the all important road junction (don’t throw 18 on three dice to sneak forward). Surprisingly they not only beat the forces in front of them but then also the Human Wave that came after it. In the end this unit took out two whole Russian sections before succumbing to the AA guns. A great piece of to and fro action.
The next section in this Platoon then decided to attack the remaining JSII with a Panzerfaust attack. This did not work as they first missed and were then hit by flanking fire by the MMG at the crossroad.
This small area of the field was taken all the attention of both sides. To both the north and south though the Germans were extending their hold, without doing anything too exciting.
The JSII destroyed the Panther in front of it but turning missed before being immediately hit and destroyed by the flanking Panthers. Incredulously when it looked to be all over a pesky 45mm Russian gun managed to hit and destroy a Panther’s main gun, which meant there was only one fully functioning tank left on the field.
Several turns of long range fire whilst the Germans moved into position. The Germans destroyed the 45mm AT guns as well as the AA trucks whilst tightening the net.
The end is looking close as the Germans infantry get into position and wait to move in, with halftrack supports in tow. The short range fire is now begins to take actions and the Russians are slowly being destroyed
The end comes as a carefully worked Platoon attack wipes out the section and MMG holding the line and now the one remaining section is becoming closely surrounded and decides to escape.
Another really excellent game from this great pack. The Germans seem to be favoured but early tanks loses can upset them. The Russians almost pulled it off.
I am still not too sure how to use onboard Medium mortars as they are not too good, unless they are instant fire like the Germans 80mm ones. The Russians never fired theirs as the fire number needed is a five.
Anyway the Germans are not bothered in the slightest and I next move on to 4D: Near Devyat.