Stalingrad Day 4 - more meat in the grinder

After the last game my Pioneers had successfully got the better of Mark's Russians in Fallen Heroes Square, so I handed the baton back to Paul for the next mission - a German probe into the Russian defences.

As we had switched venues to Hartlepool Wargames Club we had an issue with the terrain for Fallen Heroes Square in that some of it came from Asgard Wargames. Additionally the Probe mission really needs a 6x4 table and our FHS layout was only 4x4. So we decided to move the location of the scenario a little closer to the Volga and into the Housing area. Paul and Mark set up the terrain. Paul as the attacker had 3 support points, Mark also had 3 due to his lower force rating. Neither thought they had enough.

They were probably right.

Probe is in my mind probably the most dangerous CoC campaign missions to play because it encourages recklessness. All you have to do to win as the attacker is get one team off the opposition baseline. It's hard to resist the idea of taking a risk in rushing forward to get a cheap and easy win, but if it goes wrong your arse can be flapping in the wind, but even then the temptation to give it one more go is very strong. See later..............

So the Patrol Phase went well for the Germans - in fact due to some Soviet inattentiveness they got a Jump Off Point (JOP) within about 15" of the Soviet table edge, and given they could deploy 6" further on this looked like it was going to be a quick win - after all it was only 9" to the table edge and victory, so what could go wrong?

Jump Off Points after the Patrol Phase - the Germans need to exit one team at any point on the right edge

Rolling for Force Morale saw the Russians just squeeze it with 9 points to the German 8, which gave them a slim possibility of closing the door on the Germans before it was too late.

Turn 1
A breathless sentry rushes into the Soviet Command Post - "Comrade Leytanant he pants - the Germans are outflanking our position!!" Cursing his sleeping sentries, the Leytenant grabs his Tokarev and rouses his men. He quickly gets two squads "on the line" along with his flamethrower team, and ready to move to intercept the Germans. Is it too late?

Not quite. The German deploys one Squad from his advanced JOP and a second behind the wing of a crashed He111 (little known fact, but Stalingrad is littered with crashed He111s).

As it is the turn they deploy neither can move, but the second squad can bring some fire down on the Soviets as they deploy to try and stop the lead squad, killing three Comrades, including an NCO.

Back with the Russians, and there is nothing that can be done but shout Urrah!! and charge before the Germans have slipped past. Sadly none of the squads committed manage to get close enough to the Germans - it looks like this could be over quickly.

Caught in the flank the charging squad takes two more KIA in quick succession. At this point the German commander has an option to change plan and punish the Soviets caught in the open, or push on towards his objective hoping to get the mission completed with minimum casualties. The lead German team decides to go for it - needing 6 or better on three dice - and......the Dice Gods say No

The Soviets cannot believe their luck, and with a bellowed Urragh! charge again - this time reaching the Germans who are almost in touching distance of the table edge and victory, and coincidentally overrunning a German JOP.

The fight is bloody and brutal, with men killing with guns, knives and anything they can lay to hands. As the smoke clears the Germans have lost six, only one NCO and a Landser left alive, but they have inflicted nine casualties on their Soviet opponents to win the melee.

The remaining Soviets fall back, only two soldiers plus their officer holding their nerve slipping into a nearby building, the rest have broken and ran. Their sacrifice has not been in vane however, because the German team is now pinned and unable to advance further, nor can the German use either of the JOPs for the next activation.

Back on the German side things are not as hoped but there is plenty to be happy about. The frantic Soviet charge was repelled with heavy losses. Now the Soviets are reduced to only one effective squad it should be just a matter of brushing them aside.

By this point due to losses the Soviets are down to 3 command dice, but prove that there is no such thing as a lost cause by rolling three 6s, ending the turn, and crucially removing the overrun German JOP. That costs the Germans deary in Force Morale. Then, in a demonstration of just how difficult and dangerous street fighting can be, the two surviving infantrymen (clutching their squad DP LMG) and bolstered by their heroic Leytenant move up a floor and drop a grenade onto the two surviving Germans below - killing the Landser and causing another loss of German Morale. Both sides are down to 3 command dice.

The Germans then deploy their reserve, along with their second Senior Leader, from the remaining JOP - they have 13" of table to cover to reach the table edge. They immediately take casualties as Mark uses his Chain of Command Dice to interrupt the turn and hit them with his DP.

The leader shouts "Run Like Hell" - and again they fall short by an inch or so. Back around the Heinkel, a firefight is raging, but the remaining Soviet squad is never going to out shoot almost twice as many Germans.

The surviving DP team and their Leytenant take a moment to hug, then with a great cry of "For the Motherland" they throw their last grenade and empty their "record player" into the Germans sheltering below. It's not quite enough - but only by the narrowest of margins.

The Germans have manage to break the squad in the firefight and that loss breaks the Soviet force. What is worse the brave Leytenant and his pair of heroic gunners is so far away from a friendly JOP that he and his men are captured due to some appalling dice rolling. He was proposed for an Order of Alexander Nevski, but this will probably never be awarded as he is currently in a POW cage and we know how that ends on the Ost Front. His opposite number has also been put forward for an Iron Cross 2nd Class, but again that has not been confirmed.

As the sound of battle dies both sides lick their wounds. The Germans have succeeded in finding the week spot in the Soviet defences, but at a heavy cost. The Soviet Platoon is now leaderless and down to less than a dozen men.

Something that has now been driven home to me is just how brutal street  fighting can be (Doh! - yes I know, it should be obvious, it is Stalingrad and there are not many happy endings there) It's one thing reading about it, but it's another actually seeing it (in a game of course). It is looking like we may have to rethink our campaign simply because we will very soon run out of troops!

Next time, just in case there has not been enough bloodshed, it will be an assault on the main Soviet defence line. In theory it will be me against Andy, but we may just say "to Hell with it and try playing it as a Big CoC game with all 4 players. After all, the gloves really are off now.

Show report - Border Reiver, Gateshead

There has been a couple of wargames shows cancelled over the last year - Derby being the latest, although given how piss poor it was in 2017 that's no surprise. Triples also seems to have breathed its last. That means in the North we are losing opportunities to wander around and look at the toys in person rather than on line. I'm a bit saddened by this.

With that in mind I decided it may be worth while to have a run up to Gateshead for the Border Reiver show held at the Gateshead International Stadium yesterday.

Border Reiver this year was not bad at all. There was a fairly upbeat feeling in the room, and footfall on the morning seemed quite reasonable. There were some traders - Warlord being the most noteworthy, but most of the rest were fairly local rather than "national" and as a result at least for me the choice was not great - in fact I only had 2 definite items on my shopping list, and I managed to find neither - though one trader has kindly agreed to forward one item post free - which was very welcome. The two biggest "misses" on the trade side were Old Glory, and Dave Thomas. I think OG had decided to stay away due to previous poor customer turn out. Dave Thomas has decided that after years of trading at just about every show in the land, it was time to put up his feet and enjoy the weekends. Gateshead was the first show I have attended where he was a regular, and I have to say he was missed. I doubt he will read this, but just in case can I say "Thanks" for the years of service and chats up and down the country - first rate gang and I suspect a big set of boots to fill.

DTs stall at a previous show

I would stress the show overall was quite good - well organised and a good venue, so hopefully they can grow and maybe attract more gamers and traders next year.  

Medic!! A quick support option in Chain of Command

Pretty self explanatory really. Medics are used in Chain of Command to get your wounded leaders back in the fight - no-one cares about the other guys apparently. They are List 1 options so cost only 1 support point, and are damned useful to have around. Bolt Action also has a Medic option for your Platoon Command so its useful thing to have for both games.

The problem is finding suitable figures. That's not to say there are none, because there are quite a few available, but they tend to be full stretcher teams and the like, or available as part of a bigger pack with other figures I don't have much use for. What I wanted was just one guy.

Fortunately making \ converting a Medic for my Germans at Stalingrad is not a massive challenge. The German combat medic had a couple of easy identification points - mainly a white tabard and arm bands with red crosses and a bag to haul around his wares.

The tabard is beyond me - but then again was not always worn, particularly on the Ost Front where shooting at Medics was something of a sport. They also wore helmets either in white with different styles of red cross, or a standard helmet with more discrete markings - again because wearing a white helmet with a red cross on it is probably asking for trouble on some battlefields.

I put together a kneeling figure from the spare bits from my Warlord plastic Pioneers \ Early War infantry. The satchel came from the bits box - I think it was in the old Wargames Factory Zombie Hunters set, with a sling made from paper soaked in pva, the armbands are the same.

Painting was in my now standard quick and dirty early \ mid war scheme I have used for all my Stalingrad figures. I couldn't resist the white helmet option as it makes him stand out on the table a bit, which is nice for me visually but probably a bit of an issue for him - ah well, if the Russian snipers are shooting at him, they're not shooting at the Leaders I suppose.

I need to do a bit of touching up and dirty up the base to match the rest of the platoon, but I quite like him.

"Where the Iron Crosses Grow" Stalingrad Reinforcements

I saw the Empress Miniatures "Veteran Wehrmacht Infantry" set a couple of months ago, and weakened. It has to be said they are pretty damned good, and easily recognisable as their silver screen counterparts - my only peeve is Kruger would look so much better with a knife or bayonet in his hand IMHO. Cant have everything.

It took a while for them to get to the painting table, but spurred on by our ongoing Stalingrad Chain of Command campaign I finally got them painted.

I'm pretty happy with Steiner, Kern and Schnurrbart but I seem to have given Kruger a massive nose - I#ll have another go.

Not sure if they will be happy transferring from Sevastopol to Stalingrad, but after the last game I need the assistance.

Wish Empress would produce Colonel Brandt and Stransky to complete the set

Stalingrad Campaign - Day 2, into the Kill House and thoughts on Chain of Command

It was my turn this week to try to push the Russian patrols out of Fallen Heroes Square using Chain of Command (CoC).

I won't go into a blow by blow after action report for a couple of reasons. The main one is that we at the Old Codgers Gaming Club (OCGC) have four members and three of us have Blogs, so it seems a good idea to take it in turns to run the battle reports when the others are playing. This division of labour should mean we are free to play and enjoy the game without the constant urge to take photos and make notes. In theory at least. Day 2 s patrol action is covered on Andy's Blog which can be found here

https://rangoruk.blogspot.com/

Mark will also be covering this too - but he is a bit partisan so take what he says with a pinch of salt!

http://exiledfog.blogspot.com/

I can give a quick run down on "the cunning plan" which was to push forward with only 3 patrol markers right up the centre of the table to try and gain some advanced Jump Off Points (JOPS) then just kick the Soviets out by brute force in close assaults with our "HandGranaten!" tactics before their numerical advantage kicked in. It sort of worked. My Pioneers are rated Elite so they can deploy further forward than Regulars, and they're better in close assaults and slightly less likely to be hit by small arms fire. We managed to grab one building but the fighting in and around it was fierce and casualties were very heavy on both sides. The Soviets withdrew, handing a somewhat Pyrrhic victory to the Germans. It was an interesting game but it showed up our "ring rustiness" with the CoC rules - we made several slips, but they probably evened out so no real damage done.

What it also did was make me think of why I like Chain so much (see - I nearly typed something else there). I think it comes down to something I had not really thought about before - pressure to be competent. Unlike any other set of WW2 rules I have played CoC rewards competence and punishes incompetence with usually equal measure. Because the games are brutal and unforgiving if you screw up you only have yourself to blame. In a campaign setting that is even more apparent. I'm really enjoying our campaign, but the pressure really is on.

Obergefreiter Michael Baumbach will not be returning to Ausburg

Day 3 will be a German attempt to probe the Soviet lines in preparation for the main assault.

Stalingrad Campaign Day 1 part 2

So back in Fallen Heroes Square...

Facing each other across the quiet of the Square are a platoon of Panzer Pioneers from PzPio Abt 50 lead by Feldwebel Karl Trost (AKA Paul D), and on the Soviet side an Infantry Platoon from the 339th Infantry Regiment of 308th Rifle Division under Jnr Leytenant Mikhail Saburov (Andy P).

Both platoons are already under strength - as a side note we (possibly foolishly) decided to start the campaign with some randomly determined losses so we rolled a D6 per squad to determine how many short we were from full strength. This is following the historical example - I had always assumed the Pioneers at Stalingrad were at full strength when they started, which had caused me some problems when I was writing a scenario for Battlefront WW2 battalion level games some years ago as we couldnt get everyone on the table! Since then many new sources of information have become available from authors such as Glantz and Mark and it is clear that those "fresh" units were already close to half strength BEFORE being sent to Stalingrad, and the Soviets had to survive a crossing of the Volga under fire to reach the city.  In this case Trost was short 8 men from his book strength of 40, Saburov was short 15 men from his book strength of 41. We took this into account and recalculated Force Ratings at the campaign start. Andy P running the Sovs also decided to scrap one Squad from his orbat to boost numbers in other squads, Paul D had fewer missing so kept his "book" ORBAT for now.

Soviets deploy their 50mm mortar team and a rifle squad under Sgt Belik in the trenches on the East of the Square, taking up  overwatch positions. A second Squad under Sgr Zelenko is holding the building on the North West corner of the Square known as Dom 1

Immediately the Germans deploy 1 Squad under in the buildings West of the Square (Haus 4) , the other an LMG team with Trost in the centre of their positions at Haus 2. Their fire kills a Soviet infantryman in Dom 1.

The Soviets return fire with their light mortar and place suppressible fire on the German positions, but in return the light mortar is hit again and the crew retires, costing the Soviets a Force Morale point.

More Soviets mass on the East of the square and consolidate their positions in Dom 4. They have a small but potent squad under Sgt Rashkova with a pair of DP "Record Players". 

This position allows them to shoot up the German squad in Haus 4 across the Square. Obergefreiter Winkler is hit and wounded in Haus 4

Luckily the Germans have an attached Medic, and he quickly moves to tend the NCO

On the East of the Square the Soviets squad under Sgt Shlepin start to move down the trenches, attempting to outflank the German positions and consolidating around Dom 4.

In response to this outflanking move the Germans deploy their Senior Leader to rally the forces in Haus 2 - what is rapidly turning into a strongpoint. Their fire wounds a Soviet NCO.

The Soviets now have accumulated enough Chain Of Command points to have a CoC dice – and after pushing forward to further outflank the German strongpoint they use their CoC dice to move their Jump Off Point on the East side of the Square behind Haus 1.

Meanwhile on the West side German fire is starting to tell – three Soviets are now dead in Dom 1. 

Back in the strongpoint the Trost deploys some troops to cover the threatened flank. All three Squads are committed.

The Soviet Senior Leader Lt Mikhail Saburov now bravely moves to join his flanking Squad – under heavy fire from Haus 2. Totally ignoring enemy fire he stands on the parapet of the trench and fires his pistol at the Fascists, who respond with a huge volume of MG fire – and miss!

In the strongpoint two Germans on the ground floor are killed by Soviet fire.

Saburov, still exposed, orders his men forward with a Urragh!!, Shlepin and his men surge forward  and at the same time behind the attacking Squad a small group of pioneers with a ROKS2 Flamethrower deploys from Ambush using a CoC dice. Although their fire and that of the attacking infantry causes a kill and 2 shock, they fail to get close enough to close assault the German position.

The Germans respond with a hail of fire on the now exposed Soviets – cutting down the squad with the exception of Shlepin who is wounded, and two of the ROKs crew. The rest are forced to withdraw.

Shlepin calls out “Do svidaniya Rodina!” and throws a grenade into the building before attempting to assault – but his bravery is not rewarded and he slumps against the outside of the building hit again.

An eerie quiet descends, broken only by the cries of the wounded. Both sides have suffered heavy casualties, and both are now at Force Morale 4. Neither side has achieved their objective, and much blood has been spent.

Losses on both sides were heavy, particularly the Soviets. Had the assault on Haus 2 been more successful they would have almost certainly forced a German withdrawal, but it failed, leading to a mutually agreed draw.

The wounded Shlepin manages to crawl back to his lines under cover of darkness

As both sides withdraw, their positions are already being taken by fresh platoons who will try again to take control of Fallen Heroes Square!

So a rather good game - we still have some homework to do - decide on post game results, possible medals etc. I was lucky enough that my platoon from Pio Abt 305 was not involved, but orders have just arrived, and it looks like were off to Fallen Heroes Square to see if we can succeed where the Panzer Pioneers failed.

  

Stalingrad Campaign Phase 1 Day 1 Part 1 - Ok not THE Fallen Heroes Square - A Fallen Heroes Square

We finally kicked off our Chain of Command Stalingrad Campaign last week. It has been about 8 months in the preparation, building forces and terrain - and we are probably 4 months behind schedule and still not ready - which is not bad going considering the OCGCs (Old Codgers Gaming Club) previous efforts.

First crack went to Paul D commanding a German Panzer Pioneer Platoon, opposed by Andy P with his Soviet infantry.

We were playing the initial Patrol \ Encounter scenario, which will determine for now who has the campaign initiative.

The table was set us as a 4x4 at Asgard Wargames, which is convenient for us all and has plenty of space.

So here is the table after the Patrol Phase. As you can see, the front line has skewed slightly, running roughly across the diagonal of the table.

Before we go further I should explain a couple of points.

Firstly the pics are in monochrome. This is because my photography skills are challenged and I was using my phone rather than my proper camera. This helps disguise my pathetic lack of understanding of such things as lighting and exposure. I also like the effect, which looks "cool". Lastly it helps hide the fact we still have not finished all the terrain......

Secondly we are using the Haus \ Dom system to identify buildings. This is pretty authentic. Both sides in the battle adopted a quick code to identify buildings on maps of Stalingrad. On the Soviet side few of the defenders had local knowledge, so saying "the enemy is massing near 15 Lenin Prospect" was not going to help, and the Germans were resorting to trying to identify landmarks by interrogating prisoners in a foreign language, which lead to all sorts of confusion. Both sides therefore settled on a system of numbering buildings sequentially - the Germans using "Haus", the Soviets "Dom" (both meaning house) followed by a number. There is a great diagram of this in Jason D Mark's epic history of the battle in the Barrikady "Island of Fire" if you can get a copy - brilliant book, highly recommended!

This resulted in the Sovs placing their Jump Off Points (JOPs) in the trenches between Dom 3 & 4 and the corner house Dom 1.

The Germans had pushed forward with their JOPs in Haus 2 & 4 and the trenches next to the downed HE111 between Haus 4 and Dom 1.

  Deployment and first turns next