Tatsinskaya Raid - from singleman publishing

bo_siemsen

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I found the link to this mini-campaign thingy "Tatsinskaya Raid" using a link I found on these boards. So, I started playing this Platoon Leader mini-campaign last night with a friend. Never in my 3 years of ASL have I seen such incompetence, lack of courage, malfunctions and other entertaining stuff in such a short time.

Basically, this is a mini-campaign taking place in December 42 during the Russian offensive that encircled Stalingrad. The Russian have captured a railway station and an airport the Germans wanted to use in the re-supply attempt of Stalingrad. Now the Germans want to recapture them. It’s winter – and the Russians are starting to run out of both ammo and gas for the tanks.

I set up as the Russians. I have 6 dug in tanks and about 14 squads on board with reinforcements coming in too.

Anyway, short on onboard leaders I deploy one back at the railway station on lvl 2 where he can see most of the battlefield. he’s my OBA observer. I decide not to fight too intensely over the airfield. I deploy a platoon or so up there – just to slow the germans down a bit. The dug-in tanks (T-34’s and T-70’s) were spread out across the board designed to be annoying stumpling blocks for the Germans preventing them from advancing too quickly across open ground.

Anyway
German Turn 1. He sets up a mmg/mmg/hmg firegroup on his left flank on level 2 with a good view of the battlefield. I would have done the same thing. At center the Germans advance slowly, mostly using assault movement. On his right flank there’s a bit more movement with a couple of halfsquads and even a full squad doubletiming to recon my dummy tank. I decide to shoot at these targets, the first shots are MG-fire from the dug-in tanks. Both MG’s malfunctions, and the main armament breaks too, the T-34 shoots and misses. Defensive fire, I call down my 82 mm OBA, preregistered in the hex with his big-ass firegroup. He has a total of 4 or 5 squads in my blast area if it hits. It doesn’t – scatters off the board and makes a hole in the world to no effect. At center I also manage to have 2 458’s replaced by 447’s due to low ammo. In Adv. fire he pops out 2 50L at-guns and starts firing. Stuns one of the tanks. Russian turn 1. no repair on the radio, disable ma on dug-in tank, stun-tank recovers. In prep fire I want to adjust the OBA back to the enemy’s gun position. it’s still a juicy target. Malfunctions the radio while trying to maintain radio contact. (you get the idea, yet ? it’ll get much worse). My movement is basic skulking, trying to sneak away from the fire from the enemy. My reinforcements race in, the best they know. 3 T-34’s in platoon movement with riders and a stack of infantry. Uneventful turn except he cracks one of my few leaders with an oba attack on the left flank. Otherwise uneventful with no notable losses on either side.

German Turn 2. No fixing the radio, yet. He rolls for reinforcements - gets his fighterbombers on a roll of 1 - and gets 3 of them. Dodging/sneaking through a couple of -1 shots the germans start to take over the airfield station. He clears out a few dummies, breaks a squad, shock the tank again and generally advance slowly … I break a couple of his squads on my fight flank as he tries to come through the woods. Russian turn 2. fix the radio, unshock for the 2nd time with my dug in right flank tank. Re-establish radio contact, call down the thunder on his machinegun-nest. Hits it. Pins a couple of them, but nothing huge. But at least I have him targeted now.

I want to get my reinforcements to join in the fighting, so I try to call out those 3 nasty fighterbombers of his. First I run a squad across the runway – first fighterbomber called in … spots the squad, lines him up, and disables the machinegun with a 12-roll. No luck drawing out the other ones. Now we’re heating up. Next thing he shoots at is my tankplatoon – next fighterbomber, spots them, lines up a strafing run, shoots on the first one, disables the machinegun with a 12-roll. Drops the 120mm bomb, near miss. Roll of 11, no effect on the tank, NMC for the 447 rider … he then rolls a 12, bails off the tank and dies. oh well – the 3 tanks will give me a mobile strikeforce that he can’t really hurt. All he has are those 50L’s, but I can stay clear of those bad boys firing area. Finally I move the infantry, first a halfsquad with dm mtr. strafing run, breaks it and follows up on the huge stack behind it (3 237’s with 2 ATR’s and a DM mtr, 447 lmg, 9-2) Breaks the leader … everybody else makes the morale-check but pins because of the leader. So they are stuck way behind the front line for a while yet. In defensive fire he breaks my other 9-2 leader who was directing an HMG (not very well though, it’s broken too) and finally destroys the dug in tank on my right flank.

All in all – very entertaining so far. Oh, and I even forgot to mention the multitudes of snowdrifts all over the map. The EC is gusty with ground snow, twice we rolled for gusts. fun fun. Also, twice he tried to direct his OBA to a hex that he couldn't actually see with his Off board observer - and finally when he found a good target he drew a red chit. Nice. Nice.
 

bo_siemsen

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We finished the first firefight last week – and will start playing the second firefight later today.

Those who bothered to read the first report noticed that a lot of supportweapons, main armaments, radios etc. went bust … mainly due to the low ammo … the rest of the firefight was no different.

The brave Russians managed to break:
- 4 main armaments
- 2 Coax MG’s
- 1 LMG
- 2 MMG’s
- 1 HMG

The not so brave Germermans busted:
- 2 LMG’s
- 1 MMG
- 1 HMG

On the battlefield the Germans were allowed slow advances across the board. As expected he captured the airstrip and the surrounding buildings while … and he had a decent chance to capture another one of the victory location buildings in his 5th turn (which would turn out to be the last turn) but back-to-back snakeeyes from me took care of that in a hurry 8) . So, as it ended we both got pretty much what we wanted from the first scenario, I picked up 13 VP (need 30 to win over the 4 firefights).

For the second firefight I’ve decided to stock up on squads adding 2 platoons in reserve to my forces aswell as 2 82mm Mortars and a couple of 37mm AA Guns. Looking forward to the next installation of “Let’s malfunction our guns”
 
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