054 Meat Grinder

 
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054 Meat Grinder

Last week I had the rare-these-days opportunity of playing in-person with two of my greatest friends. The friend I played with has a solid foundation of experience with this game, but among the two of us, I am the more experienced.

We played this scenario once. ScubaSeth as the Soviets, me as the Germans. I won.

The approach I found extremely helpful in this scenario during the first three rounds against all the Soviet armor was to be in an active defensive posture behind the line of buildings at the south of the intersection in the middle of the map. I made a few mistakes--including stupidly getting one of my Panther tanks knocked-out on the very first Soviet turn--but overall I did an effective job of selectively setting-up Op Fire for any vehicles that came into view or infantry that came into the buildings, while striking in force at Soviet units that crossed into my defensive perimeter.

The most illustrative example of the latter was when I used three infantry squads in sequence to attack-attack-assault a Soviet infantry squad that had taken-over the 88mm AT gun in the entrenchment hex on the east side of the map, during round 2. I couldn't afford to lose that gun at that time. With this attack, I effectively destroyed the Soviet infantry threat from the north east.

Another key thing I did during round three was send three infantry squads west to stand in the way of two T-34s and one KV-1 that were threatening from the SW. At normal range adjacent to these tanks, the squads were able to lightly damage the tanks--which is something--but even more importantly, they acted as barriers to further movement east of the tanks. If the tanks were able to continue moving east into the center of the German defenses, they would have neutralized the 88s and the game would have been over.

With the Soviet tanks coming from the west blocked by German infantry, when Germany got reinforcements at the end of round three, the following two rounds Germany was able to absorb Soviet tank attacks and methodically destroy these tanks.

If I recall correctly, ScubaSeth surrendered at the end of round five, because he realized he didn't have the units or movement points to achieve victory conditions.

wrote:

... used three infantry squads in sequence to attack-attack-assault ...
 

if I remember correctly there are only 2 actions per side.
Did your opponent underestimate your early actions?

You are correct: Only 2 actions per side. What I did was do a movement-&-fire action with two units during one action turn against his squad that was fatigued, firing only half firepower but hitting at a 4-5-6. On my next action turn, I assaulted with the third squad--the Expert squad--and that finished him off.

So, yes, he did underestimate the fact that I still had all those actions to do against his squad that just took the hex.

One of the challenges I really like about this game is figuring out how to sequence actions in the most advantageous way possible, and riding that fine line of risk that I'm either too early or too late for something.

wrote:

You are correct: Only 2 actions per side. What I did was do a movement-&-fire action with two units during one action turn against his squad that was fatigued, firing only half firepower but hitting at a 4-5-6. On my next action turn, I assaulted with the third squad--the Expert squad--and that finished him off.
So, yes, he did underestimate the fact that I still had all those actions to do against his squad that just took the hex.

I hardly choose the assault action , but my usual opponent (Pino) uses it more often and sometimes I underestimate it too.

One of the challenges I really like about this game is figuring out how to sequence actions in the most advantageous way possible, and riding that fine line of risk that I'm either too early or too late for something.

And that makes it all the more interesting.
Personally it always leaves me with a sense of "I want to play it again"!