It was another eagerly anticipated ASL game day in Bastrop, and I found myself facing off against Jeff Taylor in TTF7 Tigers To The Rescue. This amusing little scenario is from the latest CH pack, Tigers To The Front, which depicts a struggle over the Panther Line in Army Group North, 1944. I've never been a fan of CH, but I broke down and got this pack as it features one of the battles in a book I've been reading, "Tigers in the Mud," an autobiography by Otto Carius, who commanded a company of Tigers.
Although CH has turned out some real dogs, I have to admit their products are slowly improving. In this latest pack, most of the SSRs are just redundant and silly instead of contradictory and confusing. It was a pleasant change looking over all the scenarios with Jeff. Rather than puzzle over what the heck the CH SSRs were trying to say, we just got to laugh at SSRs like "There are numerous shellholes depicted on the map. They are treated normally." and "The leader with the radio sets up HIP. He loses HIP only for reasons that would normally cause him to lose HIP (EXC: Using the radio does not cause him to lose HIP)."
That's probably enough of the CH progress update, so on to the details of the pack and the scenario itself. For your $25, you get ten scenarios all set on a nice 22"x34" map with a large five level hill as the dominating piece of terrain. There are a few scattered trees and brush, and some small buildings in the corners of the map, but generally the landscape is wide open with shellholes and (lots of) trenches the only real cover. Here's an image of the actual map for those who want more detail: Map
The scenarios seem like a good mix with most being combined arms, although there are a few all infantry ones as well. Most are medium sized, running up in scale to a jumbo German attack on the ridge with about 30 squads on a side. As you might expect from the title of the pack, Tigers are the theme here and appear in most of the scenarios. The Russians aren't left out of the fun though, with lots of ISU 152s making appearances as well.
Jeff and I had decided on playing Tigers To The Rescue, which depicts the aftermath of a failed German attack on the ridge. At the point the scenario begins, eight German 4-6-7s, two leaders, and a standard mix of SWs are cut off on the level four and five hexes of the ridge. The Russian forces, fourteen assorted 6-2-8s and 4-4-7s, three leaders, a T-34, and a 76L ART piece, get to set up anywhere on the map three or more hexes away from the German set up area.
The Russians are trying to re-establish control of the ridge and get six turns to do so. The victor is whoever has more CVP at that point, with the additional wrinkle that the Germans get double EVP for exiting Personnel off the west edge of the map. The Russians therefore can't just take the hill; they also need to pocket as many of the Germans as possible.
To complicate things further, the Germans have some friends that enter on turn one as reinforcements in the form of three Tigers with a 10-2 and 9-1 AL. Although the Russians get four tanks of their own on turn two, it's clearly the German armor that will dominate the battlefield. The Tigers then have some interesting decisions to make. Depending on the situation, they can attempt to stabilize the defense on the hill, hunt the Soviet armor for CVP, or if the Russian infantry is dominating, try to cover the withdrawal of the landsers in an attempt to win by retreat.
In short, the Germans have the initial advantages of the trenches and the high ground. They can easily skulk back to the interior level five hill hexes that are out of Russian LOS and can easily rally there as well. The Russians meanwhile, have at best, shellholes to work with, and absolutely no possibility of covered rout paths. There's also a bit of a time pressure, as the German defense will become almost impregnable if the Tigers get established on the hill before the Russian infantry. It's key for the Germans to keep the Russians off the level five hexes as much as possible, because then it comes down to a slugfest between two forces in trenches. At that point, the German disadvantages really kick in. They are pretty outnumbered, don't match up at all well with the 6-2-8s, and have Soviets potentially coming in from all sides. At that point, the Germans can't do much but hope the Tigers really are coming to the rescue.
At the start of the game, all those decisions with the German armor sounded too complicated for me, and Jeff was nice enough to let me have the Russians. He set up a mixed German defense with a 360 degree coverage all around the hill but with most of his force covering the east side. That made sense; the Russians can't really set up to the north due to the board configuration, and setting up on the west side leaves the Soviets trapped between the hill and the reinforcing Tigers.
If there was a weakness in Jeff's set up, it was along the south, where only a single squad covered the approach to the vital level five trenches. I decided to try and take advantage of that and set up about two-thirds of my force to assault from that side. The rest were assigned as a pinning force along the east edge, with the exception of my tank, my ART piece, and a 50mm MTR squad who were sent to the far southwest corner of the map. Their job was to make life difficult for any fleeing Germans seeking to score EVP, and also to bother the Tigers a bit as they came on.
The attack started extremely well, with my ART piece placing some smoke to cover the southern approach. It ended up not mattering however, as an 8+1 broke the sole German squad on that side. That opened a clear path for my southern troops into the level five trenches, and things only got better when my eastern pinning force fired a 4+2 at another group of concealed Germans and got a lucky NMC. It turned out to be an 8-1/4-6-7/MMG stack, and not only did they both break, but Jeff also boxcarred the 8-1's roll, causing the best German leader to wound and ELR. I couldn't have asked for a better start, as the end of my turn saw me with six squads in the vital level five trenches, and the linchpin of Jeff's defense shattered. Then, the Tigers came on...
I had set up my T-34 and 76L gun overlooking the one road to the hill, hoping to intimidate Jeff into taking the long way around. Dumb move on my part; I've played Jeff several times now and the man definitely knows his tanks. He just ignored my gun and sent the Tigers straight towards the hill. Instead, I was the one intimidated and sent my T-34 into motion, swiveling it to move out of German LOS in my turn. When the time came to execute the move, though, a close examination of the map showed I was trying to cross a double crest line...a few desperate MPs later and the 10-2 Tiger had his first kill of the day.
Meanwhile, back on the hill, my luck was more than making up for my boneheaded play. On the east side, Jeff broke his 50mm MTR and then also had a key squad boxcar and cower on a 4-2 shot. Suddenly, even my diversionary pinning force was able to rush into the trenches. On the south, my Russian horde pushed forward, and the 6-2-8 vs 4-6-7 matchup really made itself felt. By the end of turn two, there were Russians all over the hilltop and German infantry was already being captured for failure to rout. Jeff was really hindered by having effectively only one leader, as his wounded 8-0 stubbornly refused to rally.
At that point, my luck got so good, it even started to hurt myself. Over the next turn or so, Jeff's SAN of three activated several times, taking out two of my three leaders and giving the Germans ten CVP. Despite those setbacks, though, the Soviet infantry continued to sweep the ridgeline clear. Even when the Tigers arrived to turn the tide, Jeff's bad dice and my hot dice continued. Several times, pointblank 16+2 MG fire had no effect, and even the 10-2 AL had trouble hitting the Russians crawling all around his tank.
At this point, the battle was proceeding far better than I could have hoped for, with the three remaining German squads all broken and so I brought my reinforcing armor up to the ridge but not onto it. Rather than go toe-to-toe with the Tigers, I'd let my infantry hunt them and keep the armor in reserve. At first this worked well. I was able to maneuver my infantry pretty freely, as Jeff was more or less forced to hold off shooting until the DFPh rather than risk losing ROF and being rushed by the Soviet armor. The luck stayed strongly in my favor as well, as the Tiger with the 9-1 malfed his MA and was then destroyed by an optimally placed DC from behind. At this point, things were looking very grim for the Germans.
With only a few turns remaining, Jeff reached into his bag of tricks and went into action. The 10-2 Tiger used an IF shot in DFPh to take out a threatening 3- 2-8/captured PSK. In the German MPh, Jeff kicked the Tiger into motion and drove to the edge of the ridge, confronting an ISU-122, a lendlease Sherman M4/76, and a KV-1S. The horrified Russian armor poured a torrent of fire into the Tiger, but neither the Sherman nor the KV could dent the armor. Jeff then calmly dropped some fresh dice into his cup, gun dueled the ISU, killed it with ROF, immobilized the Sherman, and finally killed that one too with another IF shot. The KV was trapped like a deer in headlights and was swiftly dispatched in the following turn. Suddenly, I was down to one Sherman against two Tigers...
That state of affairs didn't last long, as Jeff ruthlessly used his 10-2 Tiger to hunt down my last tank, destroying it with a bounding fire shot that turned the AL into a real tank ace. It was an amazing display of armored prowess on Jeff's part. I should have been ready for it, given how he destroyed me in 'Valhalla Bound," but the sheer carnage caused by a single tank was still shocking.
Thankfully, the Soviet infantry had captured virtually the entire German force. I believe a German HS and leader perished in CC, but the rest of the force was ready to be sent to the gulags. With time running out, I was able to scatter my infantry across the ridge and just hide until time expired. Jeff made a valiant effort to score a last few CVP, but it was too tough, even for Tigers, to dig out concealed infantry in trenches. With the German armor driving angrily up and down the ridge, looking for more Russian tanks to destroy, I was happy to play out the last turn and steal the win.
Overall, it was a very enjoyable scenario. Neither too big nor too small, both sides had some interesting choices about what to do. Purely from a game perspective, the scenario succeeded very well. As an added bonus, I was also quite happy with how well it simulated the historical situation. As I mentioned above, I originally got the pack due to reading "Tigers In The Mud," which mentioned numerous times how the German armor consistently ended up dominating the battlefield, but the infantry was often overwhelmed by the Soviet firepower and thus the Tigers often had to retreat from tactically significant positions. Obviously, that was exactly how it played out in our scenario, with the Russian 6-2-8s and numbers outclassing the German landsers. At the same time, the Tigers withstood many APCR and AP shots, destroyed every enemy tank on the map, and ended up dominating the key ridge at game's end. All in all, it was a great game from both the 'fun decisions' and the 'simulation' viewpoints. I'm hoping to play a few more scenarios from the pack soon, and I'll let everyone know if they live up to the coolness of this one.
Finally, a big thank you to Jeff. Win or lose, he never complains, always gives a good game, and even pretends to laugh at my jokes. Thanks, Jeff, for being a great guy to play
And, thanks to all for reading,
Zeb
