Silly After Action Report - Clash at Ponyri

 The train rattled through the Soviet countryside, outside evidence of soldiers preparing defences was everywhere.  Studiously ignoring the military preparations two passengers on the train were conducting the sort of incredibly cautious conversation two strangers might have when they lived in a murderous dictatorship.  Topics included the weather, football, the brilliance of Stalin, the certainty of victory in the Great Patriotic War and relief that their train carriage was devoid of bourgeois trappings such as windows and seats.  The train screeched and groaned to a halt, interrupting their chat.  One looked up in surprise.

"Are we supposed to be stopping at Ponyri?  I thought this was an express."

In answer to his question the trains conductor appeared.

"Apologies comrades!  There will be a slight delay, there is a Panzer IV on the tracks.  However anyone who wishes to attack the German Ninth Army may alight here."

"That's me," said one of the men getting to his feet.  His comrade made a mental note to report the man for revealing military secrets and bade him farewell.  

Having had enough of crappy Italian tanks and dubious French troops for the time being Dave Wilson and I settled down for some deeply traditional ASL.  Germans vs Soviets in the monumental military balls up that the Germans called Operation Citadel (actually they called it Unternehmen Zitadelle; translation is just one of the helpful services I provide).  Having selected the most obvious place for a counter offensive the Germans politely waited until the Soviets had built up massive defences and then charged straight at them.  The component of this "suicide by pakfront" we decided to play was ITR 4 - Clash at Ponyri.  I shall command the Germans in their desperate attempt to seize Ponyri railway station while Dave's Soviets are determined to defend the ticket machine to the death.

To win I have to capture a minimum of five of seven designated victory buildings and a tower which for some reason is the focal point of the battle.  To do so I have an embarrassment of riches.  I have twenty three squads (including three of assault engineers) and six officers including a mighty 10-2.  Between them they have three medium machine guns, eight light machine guns, two flamethrowers, four demo charges and a radio; artillery for the use of.  Backing up this wealth of human material are eleven AFV, three StuG SP guns and a collection of Mark III and Mark IV panzers commanded by a pair of 8-1 armour leaders.  I had such a large force I wasn't entirely sure what to do with it, a fact that would become increasingly obvious as time went by.

If the attackers are rich in number the Soviets aren't exactly lacking either.  Dave has fifteen and a half squad equivalents of first line troops and a couple of squads of conscripts making up the numbers.  They are led by four officers including a pretty impressive 9-2.  These stalwart defenders of the Rodina are equipped with a pair of heavy (in every sense of the word) machine guns, two medium machine guns, two light machine guns, a pair of antitank rifles (for some reason), a 50mm mortar and a radio connecting them to their own artillery.  Providing extra punch are four guns; two anti tank guns (one 45mm the other 57mm) a 76mm infantry gun and a 76L artillery piece.  They also have a dug in T-34 tank providing extra support.  Additionally there are thirty two concealment counters, four wire counters, thirty two factors of anti personnel mines and six factors of anti tank mines.  He also has three foxholes, three trenches, a roadblock and can fortify four building locations.  The Soviet troops have molotov cocktails and can HIP two squads.  

Lest this seem inadequate Dave also gets three sets of reinforcements; on turn three he gets a trio of first line squads (led by a gallant 7-0) and a pair of monstrous SU-152 SP guns, on turn four he receives a pair of elite squads clutching a demolition charge and on turn five, largely as comedy relief, he receives two SU-76M rolling targets and a pair of lendlease American Stuart tanks.

Below is the at start set up. As you can see I have set up the bulk of my force in the south.  My intention was to smother the front line in smoke shells and then overwhelm the forward Soviet defences in the first turn.  With a little elbow room gained hopefully I could then do a full scale drive in the succeeding turns.  In the centre the plan was more or less the same, I hoped to use smoke to get into the woods and buildings and at least pin down his forces there while I hopefully cut loose down below.  Right at the top were a pair of tanks and a handful of squads more or less as a diversion to stop Dave cheerfully reinforcing the front.

At start set up

The first thing that we learned in this game was that we would spend a lot of time looking up rules.  Firstly if you roll boxcars while attempting a smoke round have you simply run out of smoke or have you malfunctioned the main armament as well.  Since I did this twice in the first fire phase it wasn't an academic question.  We decided that you did both which left me with two AFV without either smoke or a functioning MA, not exactly the start I was looking for.  Elsewhere things went a little better and smoke was indeed brought down on locations I considered appropriate.

Technical difficulties notwithstanding I managed to achieve most of what I wanted in the first turn but the lack of smoke in key areas would force a modicum of caution on me and most importantly would leave me badly placed to deal with the artillery which Dave was just about to bring down around my ears.  While the lack of smoke had hampered me down at the bottom of the board its presence had been helpful in the centre.  I had managed to get across the road with acceptable casualties and had discovered and disposed of his first gun (ok he malf'ed it on an intensive fire shot).  I had also started pushing troops through the buildings to out flank his position in the woods.

End of German turn 1

The Soviet turn started with my repairing one of my MAs (yay!) but rapidly continued with a storm of artillery raining down on my troops.  I was actually fortunate, my AFVs and my super kill stack (the 10-2, three 548 squads and all three mmgs) survived, I even generated a hero.  A couple of squads broke and the need to avoid the blast radius imposed some very circuitous movement on the part of the survivors which delayed their arrival at the battlefield.  My own artillery wasn't a factor as there simply wasn't a point where I had a decent line of sight to bring it down.  I had placed the officer with the radio in the centre which in retrospect was a mistake, it would have been better to have it down the bottom where there was at least a line of sight up the road.  As it was my artillery would do nothing all game.

Right up at the top of the board my diversionary force astonished me by surviving an attack from a pair of squads with a pair of medium machine guns (16+2) and things would go almost suspiciously well for me in those parts for a couple of turns.

End of German turn 2, so far so good

 

It's fair to say that the first couple of turns were the high point of the game for me (that's an ominous sign).  My forces in the bottom part of the board handily disposed of his defenders and snatched a victory building.  The StuG with the malf'ed MA I sent up the road on a fire drawing exercise which ended a hex later when it ran over AT mines in the street and was immobilised.  In the centre I pushed through the buildings and managed to pin his defensive force in the woods back against his own barbed wire where firepower and flamethrowers pretty much wiped them out over the course of the next few turns.  I need to give a shout out to my flamethrower troops, they scorched and sizzled their way forward without ever running out of fuel.  In less happy news Dave's sniper managed to wound my officer with the radio thus reducing him to three movement factors (and making him incapable of carrying the radio but neither of us remembered that bit).

With his forward defenses broken I could thus push forward and immediately ran into two problems.  Firstly it became obvious I had overcommitted to the bottom of the board and tied down my best officer and a lot of firepower where it could only be of marginal value.  The second problem was that I suck at commanding armour.  To be fair with three hidden guns and a dug in T-34 lying around the place there was always going to be an element of sacrifice but I just never managed to deploy my tanks effectively.  I found all three guns and the T-34 in turn three so I guess it was understandable that the tank that found them had a pretty short life expectancy but I was never able to amass a force of tanks that could shoot their way forward and instead Dave had a pretty easy time picking them off despite the fact that he broke the 45mm AT gun and I managed to chase off the crew of the 57mm.

Happy time almost over

Another rule that Dave and I agonised over was what to do with an immobilised AFV that disabled its MA and technically should have been recalled.  It obviously can't go anywhere but since it is technically under recall can it use its secondary armament against the enemy, essentially for the rest of the game?  I was prepared to say "no" purely on the spirit of the rule but Dave had no objections and since the only AFV to be immobilised, disable their MA and be recalled were mine I was happy to go along with that.  Not that it actually did me any good.

A glance at the picture above seems to show me in reasonable shape the occasional wrecked tank notwithstanding but now I had reached the hard core of Dave's defence and his reinforcements were on their way.  And here I was pretty much stuck.  Dave's dug in T-34 ruled the battlefield whereas the kindest thing that can be said about my armour is that their burning wrecks provided me with a little more smoke cover.  Strangely at this point Dave was also feeling dubious about his chances of success.  He had placed a goodly number of his squads into his forward defences in the woods and those I had destroyed.  I put icing on the cake by blowing in the wall of a fortified building location (I think the only time in my entire history of playing the game where a DC was something more than a 1pp inconvenience to me) and killing the defending squad inside.  

 Up at the top of the map I was grinding my way through his defences (and capturing another victory building) and pure luck had put me in a good position in the large building I had essentially been trailing my coat in front of.  That immediately went horribly wrong and strangely right.  I had got three squads into the building and had managed to break the pair of squads manning the mmgs.  However a subsequent shot from a nearby unit broke all three of my squads and their leader and they promptly surrendered to the one unbroken squad he had left in the building.  This left that squad so swamped with prisoners that they were unable to fire and I was able to move another squad into the building and chase his broken units out.  The result was that he had one squad in a fortified location incapable of firing and I had one squad with a newly captured Soviet mmg who would gain the building if they were prepared to accept the risk of depopulating half of Germany in order to break one Soviet squad.  I consulted my conscience and decided I could not leave that many widows back in the Heimat wailing for their men.  OK, that's a lie I busted the mmg trying to kill them and then got broken before I could pick up the other one.

The happy time was over as Dave's SU152s lumbered into the battle.  They didn't really do much, with a breakdown number of ten Dave was really keen to use them over much but there was no way I was going to try running troops across in front of them.  Well, not until I got really desperate.  It was now that my overweighting to the bottom came back to haunt me.  Three squads with three mmgs and a 10-2 leader are rather ineffective against SU152s and a combination of buildings and some damned fruit trees meant that they were incapable of hitting the guys Dave had up in the water tower (which included his officer with the radio meaning he could drop artillery fire pretty much anywhere he wanted.

Things are now a little awkward

I tried to bring my remaining armour forward which was convenient for Dave as his T-34 was running out of things to shoot at.  Despite this I managed to take out the crew of his 76mm artillery piece which was the only bit of ordnance he had left on the board and I pushed my infantry forward from the centre.  I was readying myself for a final charge to the water tower.  I wasn't crazy about it but there seemed very little option.  I had worked a couple of AFV around behind the tower and had hoped I might be able to shoot him out of the position.  Sadly a combination of my own ineptitude and Dave's reinforcements put paid to that idea.  He simply drove an SU-76 up next to one of my vehicles stopped and destroyed it in the advancing fire phase.  A Stuart did the same to the other vehicle.

Getting ready for a forlorn hope

Time was ticking away, I had four buildings and was challenging for a fifth but it all meant nothing if I couldn't capture the tower.  There was one tiny flicker of good news, a sniper result against the exposed crew of the other SU-76 gave me my only armour "kill" of the game as the terrified crew decided that elsewhere was a better place to be.  My infantry was as well placed as it was going to be.  Across the way he had a pair of heavy machine guns guided by a 9-2 and enough armour to open a tank museum.  There wasn't going to be anything pretty about this, I was basically hoping that Dave's dice would be rubbish.

The end.  The Germans are denied

Well what can I say.  Sometimes a mad dash into the open under a hail of fire works.  Today was not one of those days.  I did get a bunch of guys across the road, a half squad captured his 76mm gun but most of them broke under fire from his T-34's machine guns and a hit from an ISU-152.  I got troops into the tower location but ultimately they died before they could climb the ladders (or whatever the hell they are) to get to his troops high above.  Meanwhile his artillery was threshing the area my broken troops had retreated to.  It was enough, I gave the concession with one turn to go.  Even if I rallied everything the only thing I could try was a repeat of the same.  Still it was closer than I really deserved.  Dave and I both really enjoyed this game.  Despite the number of units it played relatively swiftly (ten hours) and each of us had our opportunities.

The whistle blew and the train lurched forward.  The passenger who had just finished filling out his Citizen's Denunciation Card looked up as his former conversation partner jumped back on followed by a pair of NKVD troopers.

"Oh you're back.  What happened to counterattacking the German Ninth Army?"

"Done it," replied the other.  He indicated the two men behind him, "I may have mentioned that you didn't seem keen to join in.  These guys would like a word with you."