The Russian army was huge with two infantry formations that had no armour support but a lot of artillery, two large tank formations of poor quality tanks, a few motorised infantry with attached tanks and a tiny unit of well armoured but poor quality T-34's and KV1's. The entire army didn't have any troops rated 'average', the best of the lot was one of the infantry formations which was 'average' in defence! The German army was somewhat smaller and of much higher quality in general.
As expected the terrain ended up with the two German-placed objectives in the open on the Russian left and the two Russian-placed objectives in the centre in cover. I deployed the Russian infantry in the centre to hold the objectives in cover, most of the tanks and the motorised infantry on the left covering the objectives in the open and the T34/KV1's plus some of the remaining tanks in reserve. The Russian right flank I largely ignored and left open. The Germans deployed pretty much opposite the Russians:
The Germans promptly attacked across their front putting all four Russian objectives under pressure. To win they have to capture two and hold their own objective by nightfall:
The German attack on the Russian centre where the objectives were in terrain faltered quite quickly with few Russian losses and fighting died down in this area as it became obvious the German attacks would not succeed. On the Russian left however the Germans did make progress against the objectives in the open with the Russian defenders taking heavy losses but managing to hang on by replacing damaged formations with fresh ones from reserves. For a while it looked like the furthest forward Russian objective would fall but in a crucial combat one heroic Russian defender of the Motherland held out long enough to be replaced by fresh troops saving the objective!
With night approaching it was clear the Germans were not going to achieve their aims so they withdrew. The situation at the furthest forward Russian objective, scene of the heaviest fighting:
The nearby Russian objective in the open, heavy fighting here also:
The centre objective, after an initial attack all quiet on the Eastern Front here:
The more I play Rommel the more I think it is such a subtle game that really makes you think like an army commander. This was only Mike's second game of Rommel and he went in for the line them up and charge them in plan which works in many sets of wargames rules.
Having played a lot more games as the Germans I'd have considered two different plans. The first would be to commit around 2/3 of the army to an attack on the two objectives in the open on the Russian left. The remaining 1/3 (probably the strongest units) I'd have kept back. Then, if the attack on the Russian left looks like working, I can commit my reserve to finish off the weakened defenders. If it does not look like working (perhaps because the Russians have weakened their centre to support their left) I can use the reserve to attack the centre objectives.
The second plan which would be more adventurous would be to sweep around the undefended Russian right flank to attack the centre objectives while using a small force to pin the enemy left.
Rather like the late war Germans, early war Russians are probably reasonable when defending but would be awful attacking, when at most you can commit nine strength points (plus artillery and tactics) to an attack it is not going to inflict much damage at all. They also suffer badly from their poor organisation with the inability to combine infantry and tanks for mutual support or to spread out the well armoured T34's and KV1's to strengthen the weaker tanks weakening what is already a weak army. This seems pretty historical though!
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