AAR Kradbishche woods 16th July 1941 pm

With the beginning of our next campaign turn in the Luga River battles the Soviets had a good turn with reinforcements giving them lots of extra infantry and reconnaissance forces attacking from both the north West and the East. So the Soviets widened their attacks. This gave the German defenders some problems as forces were rushed South into the woods to block the advance from roving Soviet cavalry supported by armored cars.

The Germans would have only one platoon of infantry with some supporting infantry guns and mortars of which only about 1 squad would begin on the table the rest not arriving until turn 6. It was therefore clear that to hold up the Soviet reconnaissance probe until the remainder of the platoon arrived and hope that we could then conduct a desperate defense.

The attacking Soviet will have a platoon of infantry presumably dismounted from their horses supported by a BA-10 armored car and infantry gun. We began with a reconnaissance phase single German sniper facing off against Russian foot patrol and the armored car. I had hoped that this delicate duel might last sometime as it can be up to a d6 turns before main forces arrived but the dice weren't kind and only a single turn would pass before the bulk of the forces beyond the table arrived. The single German sniper seized an objective in the woods and moved just in time to avoid the first barrage of the game. Meanwhile the BA-10 car seized the central objective and settle down to hold it. The main German force arrived with a good reinforcing role which meant that would be able deploy all of my small force together guessing correctly that the Soviets would be targeting my deployment zone with off table artillery. The main force a 9 infantry with and MG-34, a light mortar, the platoon HQ and a medium mortar , an infantry gun and an Forward Artillery observer move swiftly to try and avoid the the radius of the 152 millimeter howitzers firing from miles away and this was largely successful however as the Russian infantry beyond to deploy about about large of 152mm artillery barrage would catch my observers killing them outright a leaving my 75mm infantry gun unable to target the battlefield. One of the MG34 machine guns was also knocked out leaving me as an initial disadvantage

As the Soviet infantry began to advance supported by their own infantry gun dragged onto the board by a whole slimmer and firing over open sights my heavy machine gun pinned down some of the infantry in the fields with the aid of a light mortar I was even able to call some casualties toward the infantry sections.

However a disastrous series sequence of events would now leave the German player in a great deal of trouble As the MG-34 caused casualties to the Soviet infantry the attacking Soviet rolled a successful morale check and then passed their Beyond the Call of Duty test leading them to a successful heroic action. Leaping up they targeted the German the machine gun pinning it and causing casualties the infantry by wiping out the light mortar. The Soviet infantry gun with them rapidly followed this up with accurate piece of shooting next turn that would target and kill the crew of the machine gun with the rest of the squad still not yet on the table and in still reserve. The German Leutnant thought the better of trying to oppose the Soviets here and chose to withdraw. My BR total of 15 was reached and I had caused only 3BR loss to the Soviets.