"Case Blue 1942 game pics" Topic

Hi All,

Our group wrapped up our game con in St. Louis this weekend, and here's a few photos from my WW2 Eastern Front game (Infanterie-Division Grossdeutschland fights to hold its Olym bridgehead against Soviet tank attack on the morning of July 1, 1942) –

Map ground scale at 1" = 33 meters, with vehicles and hvy. weapons represented 1 to 1. Infantry units are squads and weapons teams.

Models used – 1/144th scale

what rules ?

home rules

Nice, looks like the Soviets got their asses handed to them in that last photo.

Good looking game. Thanks for sharing.

Ed, the Soviet attack coming from the north and west of the river did come up against the immediate counterattack, but this bought valuable time and space for their overall force to reduce the German bridgehead position (which was a reinforced infantry company dug in around the bridge).

Since the enemy's objectives aren't often known to the opposite team of players, no side can be quite sure what "wins them the game"……they have a situational mission assigned, but they also need to extrapolate enemy intent as the game unfolds. In this scenario, the Soviets needed to smash the bridgehead as a primary objective, but not necessarily exploit their drive further.

In this 1st running of the scenario, the Germans were enjoying (and maximizing their effective firepower at range), but the Soviets were slowly grinding their way into, and overpowering the bridgehead, while the German Pz. IV company tried to pin the T-34s to their immediate front (with some limited forays/threats of mobility of their own). However, this was occurring as the initial assaulting force of KVs and T-60s to the east of the river continued to batter the German defenders around the bridge.

The T-34 company commander did the right thing, but often a difficult game-thing……he took on the bulk of the enemy counterattack, and received the preponderance of casualties, but helped win the battle with his force's blood-letting.

(Paul, TY for your kind remarks too)

That is a great looking game, FlyXwire! It looks like a tense situation and a great game.
I have run a few games in the past that took place on the Russian Front in 1942.

The Russians were still using the combined tank brigade formation up until at least July. This had 2 battalions of tanks in the brigade. Each battalion was allocated 8 T-60s, 10 T-34s, and 5 Kv-1s according to Zaloga's book Red Army Handbook. An interesting unit to be sure.

Starting in July 1942 they started creating the new Tank Corps and the KV-1s were relegated to separate tank regiments.

Thanks Pete, and spot-on with the 2 battalion tank brigade organization (the wider battle here involving the Soviet 115th & 116th Separate Tank Brigades) -

link
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The gamed action was inspired by the first large-scale tank battle fought by the newly-formed Panzer Battalion GD (with the scenario forces scaled appropriately to match the game collection, and the game formations organized to reflect their actual tactical compositions).

I've been playing around with the idea of using this German XXXXVIII Panzerkorps drive towards Vorenezh in June/July, as the basis for a mini-campaign setting. It would be possible to model these Soviet tank brigades and the approaching German armored battalions at 1-1 castings ratios if in 3mm (these based as platoon/battery maneuver stands), and for using with my Tank On Tank game system, which is scaled to play out in wider battle arenas (but we'll see about that). ;)

It is certainly an interesting and transitional period of the War, FlyXwire.

During this period, the Germans are starting to get better equipment such as the upgraded Pz IIIJs and Pz IVF2s as well as the 76.2mm Marder IIIs. They still have plenty of the older types of vehicles as well. By this time, the Panzer crews have a pretty high proportion of veterans in the ranks.

The Russian T-34s and KV-1s are still hard to knock out and there are increasing numbers of them. The crews are still, overall, no where near the skill level of the German tank crews.

This mix makes the potential for some very interesting scenarios I think. When I have done this period before, I have found that each Russian player can easily control a tank battalion since it has 3 basic elements. I used the Mein Panzer rules for this but instead of activating the Russians by platoon, I activate them by company to reflect the lower level of tactical expertise they had at this time.

Still… those T-34s and Kv-1s are still very formidable.

Pete, you've portrayed the dynamics of this transitional period for the Soviets so well here (and the German asset advantages/limitations).

Also, this is how the Soviet tank companies effectively activate in our Tank On Tank mod too (reflecting poor/rushed training and lack of radios prevalent in their armored units).

I'm eyeing up the purchase and mounting of Grossdeuschland's Sturmgeschutzen Battalion complete in 3mm (this veteran formation also reflected this equipment transition you mentioned, as it upgraded to the more potent StuG III 40s).

Hey Pete, I used to have German armored battalions and Soviet Brigades in 'God's Own Scale' for 1943+, but sold that GHQ collection some years ago.

Since I'm doing mostly shop gaming now, for scenarios reflecting larger units, the move to 3mm and group-basing gets the games on board and finished faster within our normal time allowed. I could see home games looking and working awesome using large formations mounted 1 per though (if a game could remain set up for longer duration, or multiple sessions).

Hi FlyXwire

The last game I ran at our FLGS, Imperial Outpost in the greater Phoenix area, was 3 years ago.

I ran a simple 1942 North Africa game with 4 other guys including my friend, Scott, who provided assistance for the 3 other new players. Each player ran a company and we reached a conclusion in about 3 hours of play. It was all tanks with the Germans fielding Panzer IIIs and the British having Crusader IIs.

For store games, you need to keep the games shorter and thereby decreasing the number of units so that the game will flow quickly.

Just a few years ago, we had a decent group of people and we would play at Scott's house where we could leave games set up for several sessions. Those games were typically larger and more complex.

The problem with multi session games, I have found out, is that sometimes players don't show up or quit in the middle of the game. That creates a bigger workload for the rest of the remaining players and things really bog down. A classic example was out Battle of the Bulge Marnach game where we started with 3 or 4 players per side but in the end, I was controlling about a battalion due to player attrition. We ended up calling the game but it was looking like the Americans would have held.

That's been our experience with multi-session game plans, or expectations for mini-campaigns too (the losing side often votes with their feet long before the final defeat [um- conclusion] can ever occur).

Was a time when our areas' gamers jumped at joining up for some hosted campaign, but the effect was many would then drop out of sight on the rest of the gaming scene.

Over time, I've learned [maybe even been socialized] to compartmentalize on my presentation approach…..skirmish games with the biggin' figs, mid-scale miniatures for scenarios still aspiring to some tactical fidelity but with greater context, and micro or 3mm for "battle level" gaming – at the Bn., KG, Task Force level. Each one of these presentation levels still needs to fit into some time/space plan, and also into a generally-acceptable expectation for completion (and that's like 4hrs around here now, before things begin to "wander").

I think there's more difficulty for new players to game these mid-to-higher level scenarios, and/or even find other than the skirmish-level games going on much.

Absolutely stunning looking table and minis, Dave, hats off to ya!

Very interesting for me from a front/time/units standpoint as well. We demand more! ;)

V/R,
Jack

Jack, thank you bud!

Right now I'm working on an ACW scenario for a game day next month, and on top of that, we just saw our first snowflakes of the season around here, which reminds me I need to get an unused snow mat and some recce models finally onto the table (this stuff was finished almost a year ago and never played with them yet!) –