Yet Another Silly After Action Report

Imagine a fisherman out on a boat.  He has hooked what he knows is something huge.  The excitement is immense, the struggle terrific, all his friends are watching agog and he has already started boasting about his magnificent catch.  Then at some point comes the nagging suspicion that the fish is too big.  That his line, rod and possibly the entire boat are going to wind up at the bottom of the ocean but its far too late now because while he has the fish, the fish also has him.

This is pretty much the situation the Germans found themselves in in 1943 on the third anniversary of their invasion of the Soviet Union.  In the first year they had stormed forwards, crushing all in their path but the offensive had petered out in the snow at the gates of Moscow.  The next year they tried again smashing through to the south and again savaging all the lay before them but then there was that awkward Stalingrad situation which coupled with a major Soviet offensive had hurled them back in definite defeat.  Now in year three they were wondering exactly what they had to do to land this particular fish.

One thing was certain; their resources wouldn't stretch to another theatre wide offensive.  They would have to think a little smaller.  Perhaps an offensive with more modest objectives but delivered with all the power they still possessed would do the trick.  With this in mind the Germans dialled in their most brilliant strategist, a bloke named Erich von Manstein, to pick the target.  von Manstein's bright idea was to pick the most obvious target imaginable.

In the region around Kursk there was a large Soviet bulge into the German lines.  The Germans surrounded it on three sides.  An offensive from the north and south to cut off that bulge was the obvious solution.  A very obvious solution.  Really, really obvious.  The Germans busied themselves getting the troops in order and when the Soviets indicated they were ready the Germans duly launched the offensive.  It got nowhere fast.  Strangely the Soviets had thought such an offensive was really obvious too and had prepared literally miles of defenses.  The attack in the north barely got past its start line.  In the south, under von Manstein's watchful eye and spearheaded by SS troops things went a bit better.  Which is to say the Germans managed to fight their head all the way into the trap before the jaws closed.

By the 12th July the SS panzer troops were battered, exhausted and nowhere near their objectives.  They had one last effort left in them.  This is ASL scenario AP47, Insult to Injury.  Here I shall command the heroic Soviets grimly defending the motherland while Mark McGilchrist will shepherd the wretched, thrice cursed, Germans to inevitable defeat.

The objectives for this mission are rather important for understanding the ending so here they are.  Across three boards made up largely of open ground dotted with brush and wheatfields and cut by a pair of wandering streams are a handful of buildings.  Five of them are multilocation stone buildings.  Possession of these is worth five victory points per building.  There are also two road locations,  Every armoured vehicle within five hexes of one of those two road locations that is still mobile and possesses functioning main armament garners the player another two victory points.  The person with the most victory points at the end wins.  As defender all the locations begin the game in my possession.  Mark's SS must push me out of them.

Now for the bad news.  Two of the buildings and one of the road locations are positioned near the eastern edge of the playing area.  The other three buildings and the remaining road location are near the western edge.  The streams flow between them thus making it very difficult for any troops committed to one area to get across to the other in time to be of any use.  Also as defender my initial force is just about adequate to defend one of those areas.

My initial defence force consisted of six squads of elite troops and a trio of guns.  Two modestly effective anti tank guns and a short barrelled 76mm artillery piece.  An anti tank rifle, a heavy machine gun and a pair of officers (including a 9-1) completed the on board force.  On turn one I would get reinforcements from the east in the shape of eight tanks.  Five impressive T34 M43s and three very unimpressive T-70s.  Clinging to their hulls would be seven first line squads with another pair of officers a light machine gun and another anti tank rifle.  On turn two my final batch of reinforcements came in from the north, four KV-1S tanks carrying another four squads of infantry.

Mark's attacking force consisted of eight squads of elite SS panzergrenadiers with three officers (including a mighty 9-2) and a heavy machine gun.  Reinforcing this modest assault group on the first turn were ten armoured vehicles.  A trio of StuG IIIG self propelled guns, three PzIIIJ tanks, a pair of armoured halftracks carrying 81mm mortars and two monstrous Tiger tanks.  As if this wasn't enough he gained another six squads of panzergrenadiers on turn two and three more AFVs on turn three.

I decided from the get go that the two buildings in the east were sacrificial.  I put one squad and a mess of dummies in the building clutch there.  If they were still alive when my first reinforcements came in they could be supported.  The other five on board squads went to cover the buildings in the west.  The 9-1 and the hmg of course set up upstairs in one of the target buildings.  Some more dummies and the rest of the troops covered what I thought were likely approaches.  Which just leaves the guns.  Man did I screw those up.  Uneasily aware that none of my guns had much chance of penetrating a tiger's frontal armour I set the guns up where I thought they might get side and rear shots which necessitated leaving them out in the open a long way from infantry support.  It will come as no surprise to learn that not one of those guns remained in my hands for long.

The first turn was quiet and uneventful.  Mark moved his troops cautiously towards my defenses but finished too far away for either of us to do any shooting.  He sent his entire infantry force towards my defences in the west.  When his tanks rolled on he allocated most of them to the east with a few supporting his infantry.  Again he moved them up a little and stopped settling himself for turn 2.  In my turn I moved in my eastern reinforcements sending the near useless T-70s towards the eastern buildings, the squads they were carrying were dumped in the grain and made their way to the rear of the buildings.  Four of the five T34s (and their troops) I sent on a long and somewhat circuitous journey towards the western buildings to reinforce my troops troops.

With his troops and tanks ready Mark launched his assault and promptly suffered disaster.  His tigers were early model jobs with unreliable engines and in attempting to start one of them up he succeeded solely in destroying the engine.  One of his most formidable tanks was immobilised in a useless position and would take no further part in the game.  Sadly the remainder moved towards my defences in the east, his infantry reinforcements also headed in that direction.  I was quite pleased.  My expendable force was sucking up a lot of attention.  In the west things weren't as rosy.  His panzergrenadiers, bolstered by a few tanks swept forward and in the process stumbled across an anti tank gun.  My shots went wide and his infantry crushed me in response.  One gun down.  The second would follow swiftly as Mark seemed drawn towards my guns by an invisible thread.  As his troops moved towards the western buildings I rapidly learned that I seemed to have placed my troops in poor positions to shoot, not that it mattered because when they did shoot they didn't hit anything.

Fortunately Mark was still being his own worst enemy.  One of his supporting tanks in the west broke its main armament and in attempting to repair it destroyed it completely and slunk off the board in ignominy.  His infantry, however was swiftly grinding through my outer defences and approaching the target buildings.  Over in the east his reinforcing troops panted through brush and grainfields and eventually struggled up to the buildings under the cover of barrages of smoke from his tanks.  I declined to shoot mainly because most of my troops were still dummies.  The handful of reinforcements I had given were coming in the back door while the few real troops at the front hid beneath the window sills and tried to think themselves small.

Increasingly concerned about the position in the west I brought my second set of reinforcements on in the north and roared directly towards the target buildings.  Sadly I had forgotten that driving through orchards tends to have a bad effect on people riding on tanks.  Shedding their human cargo with gay abandon my tanks nosed their way forward and stopped.  This was sheer nervousness on my part.  I'm not particularly experienced with armour and I hesitated when I should have surged forward.  Instead I created an almighty traffic jam in the rear area.  Things weren't helped when a burst of fire from one of his units sent one of my few remaining defenders berserk.  They promptly charged into a stream in an attempt to get at their tormentors.

Neither of us were shooting particularly well but Mark made up for it by being brutally effective in close combat.  By turn four only one of the three victory buildings in the west was still in my hands and the two in the east were about to fall.  Things looked bad but they were about to turn.  Not in the east, that place was doomed.  Mark finally completed the conquest in turn six, destroying my helpless little T-70s into the bargain.  In the west however my reinforcements (having recovered from their orchard debacle) had come up to support my almost non existent defenders and I finally started to do something with my tanks.  Swinging three of them around to the extreme west I approached his supporting armour from one side while a pair of tanks rolled up the roads to add firepower to my defenders.  The T-34s I had sent across from the east finally arrived and dispossessed Mark of one of the antitank guns he had captured.  This done they started to press his tanks from the other side.

I permitted myself a little optimism in the next couple of turns.  My tanks in the street minced some defenders and allowed me to recapture a victory building.  A sniper hit on a mortar half track scared the crew so much that they drove rapidly for the rear.  Having gained boldness my tanks pressed forward (which was almost awkward when he recaptured my newly seized antitank gun).  We traded blows and lost a tank apiece but I had the numbers over in the west and turn six ended with my manoeuvring tanks (quite cunningly I thought) into positions where I could kill a couple more.  Turn six was my last movement turn and when it was done Mark calmly pointed out that while I had manoeuvred myself into good killing positions I had manoeuvred myself away from the road victory location.  The end result was that with Mark's gains in the east even my resurgence in the west wasn't sufficient to win the game.  I was having so much fun bearing down on his tanks I had completely lost track of time.  It would always have been close and I would have needed to be lucky but if I had paid a little more attention I might have won.  As it was my outer self smiled and shook Mark's hand while my inner self collapsed into a small weeping ball.  Historically this was the end of the road for the German's offensive at Kursk, naturally I have managed to change history in a way detrimental to myself.