Thursday, October 24, 2013

Project Kursk 24: Soviet Reinforcements and a 250 Point Game

This week I have been mostly...adding a few reinforcements to my Soviets.



Sorry for the bad photo, but you should be able to see in there some A/T rifle and MG teams, mortars, snipers and an NKVD officer with his GAZ jeep.

I was also lucky enough to get in a couple of 250 point games with the lads at school, when I should have been doing marking. Today we played a meeting engagement. I had two platoons of T-34s, a sniper, a squad of tank riders and an NKVD senior officer. My opponent brought two snipers, a squad of Panzergrenadiers in a halftrack, three Stug Gs and a Sturm Haubitze 42H. This was the first 250 point game I've played, and like Chris who commented on my last post, I was wondering how well the game would work with such small forces.





I was very pleasantly surprised! To start with, we finished a complete game (!!), taking just over an hour and a half to reach a decisive result. Despite being small, both our forces had high enough Battle Ratings to avoid a sudden defeat. The Soviets had a BR of 25, thanks to the NKVD officer's ability to boost the Soviet 'morale', the Germans a BR of 18.



The game was lots of fun. I used the mobility of my T-34s and the ability of the Soviets to activate multiple tanks with one order to charge the German Stugs, gaining a decisive advantage by staying out of the firing arc of their guns. This was a game where the tactical advantage of tanks over assault guns was well on display, and I was able to knock out all the German armour for the cost of two T-34s, plus a third that maddeningly ran over a mine. The Germans executed a daring raid with their halftrack that killed my NKVD officer, but that was their swansong. After half an infantry squad was wiped out by HE fire from a couple of T-34s, the Germans exceeded their battle rating and threw in the towel.

T-34s showing the advantage of having a turret



All in all a very satisfying game against one of the school club stalwarts. It was particularly great to see his nicely painted army on the table for the first time.

7 comments:

  1. Nice work Alan, I am really pleased that it works at 250 points. 1.5 hours is also really good for an after school game. The battle rating system seems to work well then even at small sizes. Well this is now a quandary do I play chain of command or the battle group series hmmmmmm, I know both.

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  2. Well, I just bought Chain of Command too....

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    1. I have to admit that I played a demo of CoC at MOAB and really enjoyed it. So far the only Battlegroup games have been Solo, so it is a different feel. CoC has my vote for skirmish but I think Battlegroup is still in for me. Well It must be as I have ordered the Fall of The Reich book too..........I hope you like Chain of Command.

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  3. Painted carpet as game table! Great! Nice battle report and pictures! Nice addition to your Russian army! Thanks for sharing!

    Greetings
    Peter

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  4. Great table and that Flame marker looks awesome!
    cheers

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