Philippe D.
Elder Member
In a rather rare (for me) FtF opportunity, I played FrF 89 Red Tears shed on Gray. Attacker (Rumanian) win.
Attacking with Axis Minor troops is always tough, with the lowered broken morale. But defending with mostly Soviet conscripts, with an ELR of 2, is even tougher.
In this scenario, the Soviets have to defend a number of factories from an assault by Rumanians, supported by light tanks (LT vz 35). They have some decent AT capability in the form of two guns (one 37L AT, and one 76* ART), but their initial onboard infantry force is almost completely made up of conscripts (9x426, 2x447) with only 2 leaders. They have some reinforcements coming with some more infantry and a little armor, but it appears late (turn 4 out of 6), so they have to hang out for 4 long turns. To make matters worse, there are 20 factory hexes and the Rumanians only need to control half to win, and this means they can decide to push on only one half of the board.
As the Soviet defender, Xavier (not the one of FLT fame) chose to really split his visible force, and I ended up attacking on a rather wide front, threatening both sides while trying to make back movement of Soviet infantry difficult. This was initially quite successful, and Soviet conscripts quickly melted away (Disruption; at least they have No Quarter by SSR, so they have some routing away capacity).
I did suffer some setbacks though, notably 2 squads died in CC against a single Soviet conscript (and there was a series of other CC mishaps in the rowhouses, where a Soviet squad managed to Ambush attackers and slip away, then on the next turn he didn't Ambush me, but I rolled boxcars and he slipped away again). All in all, by the time the Soviet reinforcements appeared I was holding enough Factories for the win, but the counterattack worked pretty well and pushed me back.
In the end, the scenario went to the last turn - it would have taken a lot of luck on the Soviet part to turn the tables in the end, but it was much closer than the first two turns let us think.
Overall, a very enjoyable game, and a very nice scenario.
Attacking with Axis Minor troops is always tough, with the lowered broken morale. But defending with mostly Soviet conscripts, with an ELR of 2, is even tougher.
In this scenario, the Soviets have to defend a number of factories from an assault by Rumanians, supported by light tanks (LT vz 35). They have some decent AT capability in the form of two guns (one 37L AT, and one 76* ART), but their initial onboard infantry force is almost completely made up of conscripts (9x426, 2x447) with only 2 leaders. They have some reinforcements coming with some more infantry and a little armor, but it appears late (turn 4 out of 6), so they have to hang out for 4 long turns. To make matters worse, there are 20 factory hexes and the Rumanians only need to control half to win, and this means they can decide to push on only one half of the board.
As the Soviet defender, Xavier (not the one of FLT fame) chose to really split his visible force, and I ended up attacking on a rather wide front, threatening both sides while trying to make back movement of Soviet infantry difficult. This was initially quite successful, and Soviet conscripts quickly melted away (Disruption; at least they have No Quarter by SSR, so they have some routing away capacity).
I did suffer some setbacks though, notably 2 squads died in CC against a single Soviet conscript (and there was a series of other CC mishaps in the rowhouses, where a Soviet squad managed to Ambush attackers and slip away, then on the next turn he didn't Ambush me, but I rolled boxcars and he slipped away again). All in all, by the time the Soviet reinforcements appeared I was holding enough Factories for the win, but the counterattack worked pretty well and pushed me back.
In the end, the scenario went to the last turn - it would have taken a lot of luck on the Soviet part to turn the tables in the end, but it was much closer than the first two turns let us think.
Overall, a very enjoyable game, and a very nice scenario.