KBR 2 - To the Yard

CTKnudsen

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David Garvin was nice enough to bring his new copy of LC's Konigsberg: The Bear's Revenge to our club meeting yesterday, so we played this interesting little scenario. It pits 11 or 12 Elite/First Line Russian squads with 2 Leaders, an MMG, 2 LMG, and an ATR against 3 German squads, a German MG bunker (HMG, Fanatic 1-2-7 that cannot cower, however if the crew leaves the bunker the HMG transforms to an MMG), 2 Leaders, and a hockey sock of fortifications, including 8 wire and 24 mine factors. The Russians have 4.5 turns to get 3 squad-equivalents across a roadway 10 hexes up-board, navigating the German obstacles and mostly open ground, with no AFVs or smoke. RR are GLRR, so no cover there, either.

Here is my setup showing where my mines and obstacles are. The wired bunker is in N58 (M58/M57 CA). My plan is to get the Russians hung up on the obstacles and shoot the crap out of them. If I had it to do again I would change where I put the pillbox, a much better place would have been M52, but I got confused with PTO and thought I might retain HIP until I fired if I set up in concealment terrain.
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Positions at the end of Turn 1. I've learned in other scenarios that sometime's it's better to not shoot and retain concealment, so I didn't fire at the advancing Russians. This is not the scenario for that, as the German you need the Russians to be failing every MC you can throw at them. To be fair, David did a good job of moving crappy stuff first, leaving incentive to wait. Luckily for me, a Russian squad discovered my minefield, and I managed to casualty reduce and break them on a lucky roll. They would hang out there broken for the remainder of the game.
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Here are the positions at the end of the Russian T2. In my T1 I realized that holding fire with the MG Bunker was a fools game, and let rip, breaking two squads on my left. In his turn 2, his center force got to and then hung on the wire. On my left, one of his squads got into my mined wire hex ok, but then hung on the wire. David had some horrible wire rolls in turns 2 and 3. On my right, his MMG firebase abandoned their MMG and ran forward to try and overwhelm my thin line, but my squad in N53 rolled a 4 on a 4 -2 shot, killing the leader and breaking the squad. Four down!
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Postions at end of German T3. I wasn't bothering to skulk at all, I needed every barrel blazing to try and break Russians. David now has three squads through the wire, which is all he needs to win! My defensive T3 defensive fire had been pretty weak up front, but I did manage to bust up the rallied squads and their leader that were rejoining the assault from the rear. Also, my amazing 7-0 with squad and LMG managed to break the squad trying to penetrate the wire on my left. Unfortunately, David managed to break my squad in N55, which managed to casualty reduce itself. It would go on to roll boxcars again in the ensuing rally phase. This left a gaping hole in my lines - When you only have 3.5 squads, losing one is a big deal!
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Positions at the end of Russian T4. David's remaining squads are have assault moved forward, having another turn to get onto and then over the road. My squad defensive fire was ineffective, but the HMG smashed up the two last squads around the wire obstacle in the centre.
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Positions at end game. I had advanced the now-MMG out of the pillbox in my turn to be able to shoot at stuff out of covered arc. David's squads on the right and center survived defensive fire, and I managed to pin the 9-1 and therefore stop the CXing squads with him that had run up from the rear, and waltz through the mines in M58. To win, David had to survive a 4 -1 shot in O59, but I got another fantastic roll and casualty reduced his squad. David conceded at that point, as he only could get 2.5 of the three required squads over the road.
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This is a fun little scenario, although it's outcome is very dice dependent - there's not much strategy for the Germans once setup is complete, you are outnumbered 3 to one, and the Russians don't even need to be in good order to count in the victory area, so you just have to blast. To do it again, I would have moved my obstacles one hex further away from the road, and would have definitely put the bunker somewhere different where it had no exposed flank and could cover more of the playing area. I think David had basically the right approach, a broad attack that tried to power through the obstacles, hope for lousy German dice (or good Russian MC dice), and just overwhelm the defenders. I think that this one will prove to be a bit pro-Russian - I had great dice at the right times, David had horrible dice on key MCs and wire rolls, and even then I barely pulled it off. Still, a great time, and I am interested to see what people think of the CG once they get their hooks into it.

As an aside, this looks like a fantastic product. The map is on good paper and is very well done, the counters (which we didn't use, for some reason), looked great, and overall it compared very favourably in terms of component quality with LFT's Fight for Seoul, which David also had brought along. This scenario was interesting and fun, and I hope the rest are as good!
 

CTKnudsen

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An imperial buttload is bigger, at 83/47ths of a metric buttload, but not a lot of people like thinking in terms of a hockey sock being 94/249ths of a buttload, so usually we stick with the metric, despite the storied majesty of the royal butt.
 
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Gunner Scott

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Are all the scenarios in KBR like this? IE have a small amount of defenders and a large attacking force?
 

william.stoppel

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Are all the scenarios in KBR like this? IE have a small amount of defenders and a large attacking force?
No Scott. There is a variety of sizes. For the scenario. For this small one up to the one on the whole map. But as a play tester I always felt I didn’t have enough German defenders. Particularly quality defenders. The 3-3-6 Volksturm are a challenge to defend with
 

Vinnie

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Its late war so the soviets do outnumber and outclass the defenders. However, the defenders are well supplied with SW and fortifications. There is a reasonable variety of sizes innscenarios.
 

tripvm

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Nice write-up! I ordered Konigsberg a couple of weeks ago. Now I am even more anxious to get my hands on it.
 
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