So, um well there was this bunch of frost bitten Italians shivering in holes waiting for an avalanche of Russians to flood their overstretched lines. Setting up a defensive line along the Don River must have seemed like a good idea in the Summer or even Autumn. In the Winter the solidly frozen Don gleamed maliciously at the Italians and (metaphorically) licked its lips. In between shivering and counting how many fingers they had left the Italian alpini of the Tridentina division stared across the icy expanse in the vain hope of seeing at least one mountain to justify their presence in this frozen hellscape. What they saw instead through the mist and snow was an improbably large number of Russians charging towards them.
This is ASL scenario AP21, Red Don. Here I shall command a bunch of elite (but seriously cold) Italians attempting to hold back Ivan Kent's Soviet hordes as they charge across the Don to evict the fascist beast's toy poodle from the Rodina. To help me hold the line I have eleven elite squads, a heavy machine gun, four light machine guns, three 45mm mortars and some unreliable artillery support. Added to this is a collection of trenches, barbed wire and minefields to slow the Russians down.
Ivan has twenty first line Soviet squads, four officers (including an awesome 9-2), a heavy machine gun, a pair of medium machine guns and three light machine guns. With these he needs to surge across the (conveniently frozen) Don, swarm up the opposite bank and get ten VPs worth of troops (approx five squads give or take a leader) onto the hills on the other side. The Italians are permitted to set their mines and wire up on river hexes at the price of making them visible to their opponents.
I checked out AARs by others who had played this scenario and it seemed that the Italian defenders had favoured an upfront defence. That is using the wire and mines to block off, or at least discourage, Soviet attacks on parts of the front and placing the bulk of their force in trenches along the riverbank to slaughter the attackers as they rush across open ground or open ice in this case. I considered this and decided to ignore it. Placing all of my defenders up front seemed like a good recipe for getting them killed by well directed Soviet kill stacks. I decided on a layered defence instead. The wire I did indeed set up on the river, mainly on the flanks to either slow down or channel his attack towards the middle. The artillery observer, nestled deep in a trench in the woods, was indeed on the riverbank ready to bring down fire on pretty much the entire river. A squad and lmg lurked in the building just to the north covering the northern river bank. A half squad an mortar were in the woods just behind them.
In the middle my 8-1 leader plus a half squad with the hmg hid in a building just back from the riverbank and another lmg squad and mortar half squad took up position in the woods to the south. With these I hoped to inflict some pain on Ivan's initial rush across the river. Actually I botched it, I had forgotten that the river was a level lower than the open ground and by setting my defenders back from the bank I had largely guaranteed that his troops could cross with impunity. Behind my initial defenders I had scattered minefields where I thought they would do most good and then placed a couple more squads in trenches in overwatch positions on the hills. The remainder of my force (about half) was entrenched in the rear hexes of the hills out of harms way.
You can see my strategy, basically it wasn't about stopping the Russians anywhere but rather slowing them to a crawl and forcing them to pay a continuous price to get to the hills and once they had got on them assailing them with fresh forces fighting from trenches. I set up one halfsquad with a mortar well in the rear where he could fire on the forward hills if necessary. I didn't think it was a bad strategy but it might have worked better if I'd remembered to put at least a couple more squads right on the river bank.
Having assessed such of my defence as he could see Ivan came on hard in the south with a diversionary force in the north. A trio of squads with his support weapons (and awesome leaders) moved forward in the centre where they could support either attack. Due to my botched deployment Ivan's first turn went smoothly, true in the north an lmg broke one of his squads but the remainder closed up to the riverbank while in the south a ghastly mass of Soviet squads piled up in front of the wire. Ivan wasn't going around the wire, he was going through it. One faint harbinger of things to come however was that my artillery spotter gained battery access. The spotting round wandered all over the map but the writing was on the wall.
In my turn I was faced with a dilemma. In the south Ivan was closing up to the riverbank. I could move my front defenders forward and lay them open to massive defensive fire or keep them in their flawed positions and give away a little more ground as Ivan topped the bank. I chose option B. Things weren't helped when my hmg team, gaining a fleeting opportunity, managed to break the hmg with its first shot. On the other hand a mortar managed to break a Soviet squad in the centre, Ivan would take bloody retribution for its temerity.
Things were going reasonably well in the north, I wasn't hurting him too much but wire and the presence of an lmg and mortar were encouraging him to be cautious. With his kill stack now in position in the centre he shot back at my audacious mortar team and sent them yelping to the rear sans mortar. But nemesis was approaching his kill stack. In my fire phase I corrected the spotting round and delivered an avalanche of steel. The first result wasn't too impressive, his 9-2 officer rolled snakes and battlehardened into a 10-2 officer but then his trio of squads broke and the kill stack was down.
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| Artillery has broken Ivan's kill stack but his troops in the north and south are getting off the river |
With his fire support reduced to encouraging shouts from across the river Ivan was a little more circumspect with the rest of his force and settled for closing up to the river bank in the south ready to explode next turn. In the north he eased cautiously forward against some half hearted defensive fire.
Now the moment of decision had come in the south. While his freshly minted 10-2 attempted to rally the shellshocked survivors of the artillery barrage in the centre his southern troops breasted the bank and moved forward. However as they did so my previously misplaced defenders were now in ideal positions and the slaughter was dreadful. Broken squads and half squads piled up all over the southern part of the river and even my northern defenders got into the act breaking more units of his diversionary force. I had slowed him but I hadn't stopped him. Among the carnage in the south some squads shook off the body parts of their comrades and moved forward capturing my recently abandoned mortar. Others eased up the south side of the board looking towards the nearby hill.
In response I pulled back my surviving forward defenders and solidified my grip on the endangered hills. In the rear noble rally efforts had allowed Ivan to patch his kill stack back together and he moved it forward. Once again I called for artillery and once again was rewarded with a black chit (scarce ammo, what's that?) although once again the spotting round went wide. No matter, Ivan spread his machine gun teams out this time setting up two forces in the woods on one of the centre islands. In my next fire phase I adjusted the spotting round and immediately converted to FFE. That was a risk but my roll was accurate and once again the artillery rained down on Ivan's fire support. This time there would be no mistake, snake eyes eliminated the 10-2, a squad and an mmg. Normal morale checks broke the remainder, Ivan's kill stack was again smashed and this time it would be a lot harder to patch back together.
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| In the south the survivors of Ivan's surge up from the river move forward (although one of them has moved forward onto a minefield). |
Not all of my southern defenders made it back to safety. On the southern hill an overwatch squad has been broken and has fled to the rear and the broken mortar halfsquad is limping along in the open hoping Ivan has better things to shoot at. In the north a couple of his squads have made it past the first defenders and are closing in on the northern hill where one of my squads has been unsuccessfully trying to dig itself some foxholes for the last two turns now.
This is where we left it for the night. Ivan has taken punishing casualties but is now moving in the right direction, especially in the south. It remains to be seen if the rest of my strategy will work as well as the beginning. Ivan will be coming in hard in the south and I can't ignore the north, even if he doesn't rally any of the squads in the river he has four VPs worth of infantry within sight of a hill and all they have to do is get there and survive. Plus down in the south is a 9-1 officer who will no doubt be able to rally a fair few of the slackers. The game is poised but I'm happy with what's happened so far, I've even managed to repair my hmg (and an lmg I broke at some other point in the game). If the support weapons and the artillery hold together I might be able to squeeze out a win.
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