This was a great game where I got to meet and play with Xuebo. He’s a very nice fellow with a great turn rate and very good at his game. The results unfortunately were not so great for me. It was a 3000-point Russian attack into a town that rested on very hilly, but relatively open terrain.
Always, you have to reflect on force picks when you play a QB. As usual, I spent considerable points on my armor. I wanted to have a strong mobile anti-tank force to deal with 4500 points of unrestricted angry Russians that Xuebo could bring to bear. I figured he’d have a sizeable tank force; it turns out I figured wrong.
Conceptually, I seek to destroy my enemy’s armor first in a battle. At times this obsession sidetracks me and I lose sight of the big picture…winning the battle. Xuebo had what I’d call a token armored force in light of the points available to him. Instead, he came at me with a horde of Russian infantry, the bulk of them split into half squads. A strategy I vaguely recall being used in BO, but had yet to encounter such in BB. It was like a man trying to smash at a locust swarm with a sledgehammer. Xuebo used paper to cover my rock.
Towards the end of the fight, shaking my head, I opened the quick battle generator to see how he could have so much infantry. It turns out that even at veteran quality you can field 10, yes 10! SMG companies and 2 Motorized rifle companies and still have 1000 points left for other stuff. Looking at the map at battle’s conclusion, I saw that Xuebo had lots of green and some conscripts. LOL. So that means even more companies.
Things did start out ok. I had a plt of panthers, plt of StuGs and a Brumbar. 1 panther was detailed to guard my left flank, while the other 4 panthers and an escorting plt of infantry were to advance along a road on my extreme right flank, hidden by a very hilly map. 2 StuGs watched their backs on my biggest hill. The mission of the panther task force was to take the enemy armor by surprise as it advanced unexpectedly towards me. Didn’t happen. There wasn’t any enemy armor to be seen as the panthers crested a ridgeline into a little valley. Instead they came across a mass of infantry all walking together in a big group. I had the panthers on armored covered arcs, so they didn’t maul the infantry like they could have, though I occasionally worked them over with a few direct HE shells and MG fire.
This was the beginning of my biggest mistake and theme of the whole fight. I dismissed the notion of his infantry but kept looking and hoping for the tank fight. Xuebo made me pay dearly for this narrow minded thinking with his excellent and relentless infantry attacks.
When the enemy tanks didn’t appear, I got a little impatient and pushed farther into the enemy flank. The big enemy infantry group was rushing to seek cover nearby and seemed to be regrouping a little. Finally, I peeked a panther over another ridge deeper into enemy territory and it was promptly one-shot killed by a previously unseen, unheard tank. Judging by the sound it was a 152mm. Sound markers briefly indicated about three or four enemy tanks at the bottom of a steep slope the other side of the ridge.
At this point and position, there was no tactically advantageous way to engage the enemy armor. His dispositions were completely unknown, his strength unknown and the approach was narrow, going over a hill. The mission to find his armor with surprise on my terms had failed. Worse, there was a large group of enemy infantry in nearby woods thinking bad thoughts for my tanks.
Strung out and foiled, the panthers had no option but to retreat back to resume the fight on my turf. The enemy was definitely regrouping on this flank, dropping smoke and darting menacingly towards the panthers. It took about 7 turns to reverse-overwatch my panthers out of harm’s way. All the while the enemy infantry group pressed forward on this flank and grew bigger and bigger.
As this was all happening on my right flank, in the center, the Brumbar began to lob shells at a couple of large infantry groups advancing over some open terrain. The results looked promising. Hindsight here would have told me to replace the StuGs with another Brumbar or two. The firepower of the 150mm hitting directly is devastating and would have improved my chances a tad.
From this point on, the game followed a similar pattern to the end: Dozens and dozens of infantry squads and half squads filling the map, finding my meager infantry positions, overwhelming them and scrambling on. There were over thirty targets alone that kept pressing on the right flank. My panthers would send a shell into their midst, scatter some, only to see many more rushing towards my tanks from numerous other directions.
The paper continued to cover my rocks. I was a little perturbed and should have left that big hill sooner. I kept my tanks too close and watched an assortment of hand held anti-tank weapons take them out, one by one. A few of Xuebo’s tanks started to show up at the end as my tanks dodged enemy infantry and added insult to injury finally deciding to offer a tank fight. Lol!
The Germans auto-surrendered with only one Stug and a Brumbar intact and only a few fleeing German infantry survivors.
Xuebo had a great win. A combination of excellent play on his part and a mismatched force mix on mine. All that said, a few alterations would have made things more interesting. I made a fundamental mistake of envisioning a mobile force to engage the enemy but hamstringing this force down with exposed immobile strong points of infantry. My infantry should have supported the mobile element, rather than forcing my mobile element to protect the infantry. Would a tweak here and there have altered the outcome? I am not sure. The SMG horde is an extreme tactic possible only in a QB. There are some methods to deal with this, but conventional ones would seem to be swept aside by the Red Tide.
It is worth considering strategies to deal with this in the future when a battle is played under such parameters. I look forward to trying again sometime when the aspect of facing SMG hordes presents itself.
Always, you have to reflect on force picks when you play a QB. As usual, I spent considerable points on my armor. I wanted to have a strong mobile anti-tank force to deal with 4500 points of unrestricted angry Russians that Xuebo could bring to bear. I figured he’d have a sizeable tank force; it turns out I figured wrong.
Conceptually, I seek to destroy my enemy’s armor first in a battle. At times this obsession sidetracks me and I lose sight of the big picture…winning the battle. Xuebo had what I’d call a token armored force in light of the points available to him. Instead, he came at me with a horde of Russian infantry, the bulk of them split into half squads. A strategy I vaguely recall being used in BO, but had yet to encounter such in BB. It was like a man trying to smash at a locust swarm with a sledgehammer. Xuebo used paper to cover my rock.
Towards the end of the fight, shaking my head, I opened the quick battle generator to see how he could have so much infantry. It turns out that even at veteran quality you can field 10, yes 10! SMG companies and 2 Motorized rifle companies and still have 1000 points left for other stuff. Looking at the map at battle’s conclusion, I saw that Xuebo had lots of green and some conscripts. LOL. So that means even more companies.
Things did start out ok. I had a plt of panthers, plt of StuGs and a Brumbar. 1 panther was detailed to guard my left flank, while the other 4 panthers and an escorting plt of infantry were to advance along a road on my extreme right flank, hidden by a very hilly map. 2 StuGs watched their backs on my biggest hill. The mission of the panther task force was to take the enemy armor by surprise as it advanced unexpectedly towards me. Didn’t happen. There wasn’t any enemy armor to be seen as the panthers crested a ridgeline into a little valley. Instead they came across a mass of infantry all walking together in a big group. I had the panthers on armored covered arcs, so they didn’t maul the infantry like they could have, though I occasionally worked them over with a few direct HE shells and MG fire.
This was the beginning of my biggest mistake and theme of the whole fight. I dismissed the notion of his infantry but kept looking and hoping for the tank fight. Xuebo made me pay dearly for this narrow minded thinking with his excellent and relentless infantry attacks.
When the enemy tanks didn’t appear, I got a little impatient and pushed farther into the enemy flank. The big enemy infantry group was rushing to seek cover nearby and seemed to be regrouping a little. Finally, I peeked a panther over another ridge deeper into enemy territory and it was promptly one-shot killed by a previously unseen, unheard tank. Judging by the sound it was a 152mm. Sound markers briefly indicated about three or four enemy tanks at the bottom of a steep slope the other side of the ridge.
At this point and position, there was no tactically advantageous way to engage the enemy armor. His dispositions were completely unknown, his strength unknown and the approach was narrow, going over a hill. The mission to find his armor with surprise on my terms had failed. Worse, there was a large group of enemy infantry in nearby woods thinking bad thoughts for my tanks.
Strung out and foiled, the panthers had no option but to retreat back to resume the fight on my turf. The enemy was definitely regrouping on this flank, dropping smoke and darting menacingly towards the panthers. It took about 7 turns to reverse-overwatch my panthers out of harm’s way. All the while the enemy infantry group pressed forward on this flank and grew bigger and bigger.
As this was all happening on my right flank, in the center, the Brumbar began to lob shells at a couple of large infantry groups advancing over some open terrain. The results looked promising. Hindsight here would have told me to replace the StuGs with another Brumbar or two. The firepower of the 150mm hitting directly is devastating and would have improved my chances a tad.
From this point on, the game followed a similar pattern to the end: Dozens and dozens of infantry squads and half squads filling the map, finding my meager infantry positions, overwhelming them and scrambling on. There were over thirty targets alone that kept pressing on the right flank. My panthers would send a shell into their midst, scatter some, only to see many more rushing towards my tanks from numerous other directions.
The paper continued to cover my rocks. I was a little perturbed and should have left that big hill sooner. I kept my tanks too close and watched an assortment of hand held anti-tank weapons take them out, one by one. A few of Xuebo’s tanks started to show up at the end as my tanks dodged enemy infantry and added insult to injury finally deciding to offer a tank fight. Lol!
The Germans auto-surrendered with only one Stug and a Brumbar intact and only a few fleeing German infantry survivors.
Xuebo had a great win. A combination of excellent play on his part and a mismatched force mix on mine. All that said, a few alterations would have made things more interesting. I made a fundamental mistake of envisioning a mobile force to engage the enemy but hamstringing this force down with exposed immobile strong points of infantry. My infantry should have supported the mobile element, rather than forcing my mobile element to protect the infantry. Would a tweak here and there have altered the outcome? I am not sure. The SMG horde is an extreme tactic possible only in a QB. There are some methods to deal with this, but conventional ones would seem to be swept aside by the Red Tide.
It is worth considering strategies to deal with this in the future when a battle is played under such parameters. I look forward to trying again sometime when the aspect of facing SMG hordes presents itself.
