The Road to Stalingrad – Turns 1 & 2

Game One. (Map 1, morning 17th August 1942)

Germans advancing from the left map edge. Small circles show Jump Off Points.

The Russians decided to defend the first campaign map with a token force consisting of a Worker’s platoon. This comprised a mere 2 rifle sections plus a senior leader. As the objective was to simply slow down the German advance we allocated them minimal support in the form of a wire section and an anti-tank rifle team.

In the patrol phase, the Russians were on the back foot straight off as the Germans rolled high resulting in 6 moves before the Russians could move a single patrol marker. Taking advantage of this, the Germans aggressively thrust straight up the middle road, almost to the table centre line, and looked set to seize a good amount of ground. The Russians countered this by advancing a central marker to immediately lock down the lead German marker, thereby anchoring their chain of patrol markers and limiting a further advance. At the end of the patrol phase the Germans had a foothold in an outlying barn which looked like a potential good approach into the Russian position, which was based on a line across the rear of the village. In fact this was such an obvious approach route that the Russians laid down their single wire section to block such an advance.

The Table layout - Jump Off Points circled

The Germans began their deployment by bringing on a half-track from the rear table edge.

As expected they then deployed a Panzergrenadier section into the barn.

Seemingly fixated by the idea of an advance from the barn, the Germans advanced two sections up to the barbed wire. So far the Russians had remained hidden but the Germans seemed unsure of how to deal with the wire.

To limit any further advance, by the Germans, the Russians deployed a rifle section into the village.

The Germans attempted to move around the wire and deploy in to the fields - where they were hit by the fire from a single Russian LMG. Only one hit but it turned out to be a ‘kill’ and the Junior Leader dropped to the ground wounded. A roll on the ‘Bad Things Happen’ table and the Germans dropped two in Force Morale.

The Russians followed this by deploying their final rifle section into the village. Once again only a single LMG is able to get into position but they were laying down crossfire on to the advancing Germans.

At this point German morale collapsed (that's player morale not Force Morale) and they decided they were in a no win situation and retreated!

So an unexpected win for the Russians and the Germans must try again in game two.

Game Two. (Map 1, afternoon 17th August 1942)

This time around, the Germans only had a three move advantage at the start of the patrol phase. As a consequence the Russians were able to keep them out of the village and the German Jump Off Points were all on the table edge.

This time the German advance would be led by a tank. We let this advance until we could get a flank shot from our anti-tank rifle team, deploying from our leftmost Jump Off Point. A great shot from Ivan, on the anti-tank rifle, disabled the tank’s main gun. Good news for the Russians – if not for Ivan, as the Germans retaliated by deploying a whole panzergrenadier section to fire upon the unfortunate ATR team. No more Ivan (hence no photo!).

The Germans continued the previous game’s wire fixation by advancing the tank into the field with the wire. The Russians responded by deploying a rifle section into the farmhouse. Unfortunately, the rear of the house had no windows but we were able to position a LMG in the back doorway. There then commenced a duel, lasting multiple phases, in which the heroic LMG gunner attempted to scare off the tank which could only reply with its bow machine gun.

Eventually, the Germans brought up two panzergrenadier sections (one in a half track) to concentrate machine gun fire on poor Boris the LMG gunner.

Not surprisingly, the heroic Russian rifle section, now down to a junior leader and the LMG team, broke and fled to the rear of the village. With the Jump Off point under threat, the Russians used a Chain of Command dice to relocate it to the rear. However, with this flank now under threat we were forced to deploy our last section into the rightmost barn. 

This last section did sterling work holding up the German advance but ultimately was essentially surrounded. In desperation, the Russian senior leader led a charge against the nearest panzergrenadier squad but was shot down in the attempt. The remnants of the squad, namely the junior leader and the LMG gunner, also broke and fled to the rear.

With only for men left on the table, and all of those broken, the Russians conceded defeat.