Fire In The Steppe, Scenario Thirteen: Tank Battle at Leshniv

This scenario looked good on paper and in fact played well also but it was a bloodbath. The Germans are sitting pretty however in dug-in positions or setup in the safety of town hexes, with more off-board artillery than the Soviets and a lot of armor reinforcements coming in on turn three. Both sides alternate getting airpower. Those German StuGIIIBs are pretty tough sitting in positions within the town hexes.

The Soviet decide not to mess around and want to rush the German positions before there reinforcements arrive and have nice KV-1s, T-34As and a ton of BT-7s and 5s but not very many Tank leaders, so all the armor stack 3 per hex and this is also the problem with their infantry, not very many leaders so they also stack three per hex, which hurt them with German artillery and air-strikes.

I am not sure my Soviet tactical strategy was very good in this game play or not! In this bloodbath, The Germans lost 42 steps and the Soviets lost 53 steps, with all tank steps counting double. However the Soviet achieve none of the objectives. They only contest two town hexes, let some German units slip south of the east-west road and lost more steps than the Germans. I should have pulled what Soviet armor I had left and tried to control more of the town hexes than the Germans to at least get a Draw but I thought of this too late. This ended in a Minor German victory.

Good fun scenario and kind of cool to try and manage the different armor engagements but the lack of Soviet leaders was telling in this scenario and gave the Germans an advantage.

Ii headed to FITS for some early war tank action and this scenario has lots of tanks. After getting in to it it became fairly obvious this was going to be a route in favor of the Germans. The Russians are on the counter attack in this one with a strong tank focus including six T-34 and a couple of KV-1's with some light tanks. All are inefficient and that is a huge problem in these early war Russian front scenarios. FITS has a special "Red Tread Head" rule that allows some extra freedom of movement of armor so that helps. Not having double AT shots is the killer.

In this case, the Germans have three each of Stug's, Pz IVE and Pz IIIG's that are efficient. The Germans have to hold a town and can begin dug in. This town is mostly approachable in open terrain. They Germans have liberal HMG units and with 2+ firepower leaders can form some giant fire teams which the Russians have little hope of grinding down as they have weak artillery and not overwhelming infantry.

I had somewhat forgotten about how bad it is fighting an efficient armor opponent who has equivalent firepower and equal numbers. After five turns it was obvious the Russians were going to be routed as they had lost 25 steps to seven for the Germans and had many disruptions on their infantry and only one leader and a commisarr to help in recovery.

Gave this one a 3 because the brief tank battles with crossfires and swirling action was fun.