Dog Fight - Ostkreig Tournament Round 1

[Dog Soldier]

Von Nev and I played a very tense game of the S41 scenario Over the Dnepr [HTH].

We are currently on the last two turns and the outcome for victory level is still in doubt. this one is up for grabs on the last turn!

We should be posting soon with the full turn by turn AAR. von Nev has roughly handled the 1941 Russians. They have proved to be very tough, and he is fighting hard for every yard.

:kill:
Though Russian infantry is dying in droves, they are making the Axis troops sorry they came to invade Russia.

For the Motherland!

Dog Soldier

[Dog Soldier]

AAR Drive over the Dnepr (H2H)
S41 Scenario xp2 Mogilev_PBEM (HTH)
Axis player von Nev
Allied player Dog Soldier

This is a HTH version of the stock Mogilev scenario modified by Foul and tested on the blitz HTH site. The game has been tweaked to promote a more even match for PBEM play. Optional rules that are required by the play testing are Artillery Set Up, Recon Spotting, Optional Surrender, Quality Fatigue Modifier, Night Fatigue and Programmed Weather.

Forces
The Germans will have the 10th panzer division and the 10th motorized infantry division entering from the west darning the morning of the first day, July 9, 1941. Later, on the morning of July 10, 1941 the SS infantry regiment Reich will join the fray. The German forces trickle onto the board over four turns each morning, so they will not be concentrated until the early afternoon, maybe 14:00 hours if I am lucky.

The Russians will have an all infantry force starting on board with four rifle divisions. They are the 53rd, 110th,172nd, and 187th from north to south spread along the Dnepr River and in the eastern edge of Mogilev. The 53rd is under strength as only two of the three regiments are in this scenario. There are plenty of mines, trenches, and few bunkers in Mogilev for the defenders. Supporting these divisions are elements of the 20th Mechanized Corps, 26th and 38th tanks without their armor, and a regiment of the 20th motorcycle. The tank infantry are dug in south of the city guarding the river where it leaves Mogilev and the only two bridges in the scenario. The infantry of these three formations only total 5,000 men. The tank divisions infantry are on foot with no trucks available. Only the motorcyclists are mobile. North of the city and west of it along the Dnepr River are the six battalions of the 210th motorized infantry division, again with out transport. Reinforcements are the 148th infantry division and a regiment from the 137th infantry division. To counter the panzer thrusts the Russians are going to have to leg it.

Russian pre game plan.
The Russians start the game fixed except a few mobile recon companies. For the most part, until released, I will dig in and hope the Germans make the mistake of releasing my forces before the Germans have entered their full forces. If the Germans attack piecemeal, I will have a good chance of wearing them down. I plan to use my reinforcements for a concentrated counter attack against the most vulnerable part of the German lines. I expect my at start forces can be concentrated quickly enough on this small battlefield to slow any German thrust until the reinforcements. That will be tough. There are 25 turns.
That said, everything will depend on the German moves as they will have the initiative. If I can defend well and react to von Nev’s moves, I can have a chance to take that initiative late in the game to halt his attack.
I am willing to give up the VP hexes for the most part to prevent any exit by the Germans. I expect the enemy to cross the river in the north and drive straight for the exits.

At start, 06:00AM July 9, 1941


The Germans will need 1,300 + VP for a draw, 1,750 VP for a minor and 2,150 VP for a major. There are only 900 VP in hexes, so the Germans must exit or obtain a very favorable casualty ratio to win. The second day will be decisive. My best hope is von Nev will fell the time pressure. If he rushes the attack I could wreck his force before it concentrates. I doubt he will give me the opportunity, but a Russian in S41 must be patient and have sang froid!

Dog Soldier

[von Nev]

Dog Soldier did a good job in setting up this scenario and the victory conditions so I won't repeat him.

The German forces at hand are the 10th Panzer division that is advancing east to the north of Mogilev and the 10th Motorized division that is advancing from the southwest towards Mogilev. Both of these divisions are at full strength and rested. Later in the game the Germans will be reinforced by a regimental strength unit of the SS division Das Reich.

Plan of attack!

First and foremost, to have any chances of winning I have to get over the Dnepr and quickly. This is no easy task as both divisions will not be concentrated to attack until around turn 3. Both are still arriving in the area of operations and they have to advance some 20 kms to get to the river. Additionally, with limited bridging assets I can't afford to waste a lot of time trying to build bridges or risk having the whole timetable of the attack delayed if they get disrupted trying to build a bridge. I see this as a distinct possibility as I know my opponent will use every single arty attack on bridging units. I expect them to get pummelled so I can't risk that. Plus, in the best case scenario it will take bridging units 3 or 4 turns to get a bridge up. That is almost 20% of the scenario time! I can't wait that long. Once across the Dnepr, the Russians will concentrate everything at the bridgehead and as a result it will be very difficult to advance out of the bridgehead. If German troops are exhausted enough, I run the risk of being counterattacked and thrown back over the Dnepr. Therefore, I will concentrate both divisions along a single axis of attack in a powerful attack lead by panzers and stukas.

In PHASE ONE, the 10th Panzer division will sweep down and attack from the north into Mogilev and try to capture the river bridges in the southern sector. Their recon units will advance towards Mogilev and conduct recon spotting to find the forward edge of the expected minefields around Mogilev. The panzer battalion will charge into the minefields and try to clear infantry on the other side while engineer units clear the minefields. Once they get into Mogilev their primary mission in to get to the bridges. In PHASE TWO: Once they cross the bridges they are to attack northeast along the road to the exit point. As they do this they will provide flank security for the 10th Motorized division's attack that will be parallel to them. The combination of both these divisions attacking side-by-side will blast aside any Russian resistance as they try to exit the map at the exit hex.

In PHASE ONE, the 10th Motorized Division will cross the Dnepr south of Mogilev and in conjunction with the 10th Panzer Division's attack through Mogilev they will try to pin Russian units inside of Mogilev. In PHASE TWO their primary axis of advance will be an attack northeast towards the exit hex. They will attack southeast out of Mogilev along the road in a feint attack to try to hold Russian units here to prevent them from getting in front of the main attack which is northeast out of the town.

The Das Reich reinforcements will reinforce the attack when they arrive. I expect by then both the 10th Pz and the 10th Infantry will be tiring. The added punch of the Das Reich units will be enough to keep the attack going.

The Luftwaffe units in PHASE ONE will opportunistically attack Russian artillery positions when spotted (especially in transport mode), but their primary mission that starts with PHASE TWO is to blast the units opposing the attack up the road.

The below picture is my plan:

[von Nev]

In looking over Dog Soldier's setup post, it will be interesting on how this battle plays out as my plan did not align with what he was thinking. I thought about crossing the Dnepr north of Mogilev but ultimately did not go with it as I was worried at the amount of time that it would have taken to get both the 10th PzD and the 10th Inf Division concentrated north of Mogilev trying to cross. By my count, it would have taken at a minimum 5 turns to cross anything in force. (3 turns to get to Dnepr. 1 turn to initiate bridge setup. 1 turn to build bridge. 1 turn to cross.) If he noticed that I was concentrating everything up north he could have stacked his units deep behind the bridgehead.

A while back I played a S41 campaign as the Russians and I was able to delay my opponent in a bridgehead for some 20 turns at tremendous cost to him. I cannot afford to get into a grinding battle with no hope of getting any VP hexes. So, I opted to capture Mogilev which would give me a lot of VP hexes as well as options for attacking out of Mogilev along two hard surface roads.

[Mr Grumpy]

I will add some neutral comment here as this is my edited version of this scenario and in testing with RickyB & Bilco i played this scenario several times.

As a game from the XP2 pack, this scenario was very biased towards the Russian side when played between two equal opponents, so i made several changes to attempt to balance things up, i should say at this point that although i want my H2H scenarios to be as historical as possible, i am prepared to lose a little historical accuracy to gain maximum balance and hence player enjoyment! :)

In summery during testing it was found that the scenario was too short at 20 turns (increased to 25), dust spotting was causing excessive casualties to the approaching German forces, the German air availability was too low, small German bridging units were being wiped out by Russian artillery, at C quality the Russian Infantry had too much staying power and the available vp hex's were valued too low. :chin:

I made various changes to alleviate these problems and this is the version that was used in the Ostkrieg tourney.

*Note* Since these comments were written the scenario was reduced further to 23 turns in reaction to more testing results.

My view on the players opening comments.
Russian
I feel Dog Soldier (DS) has summed up the Russian position very well, a German thrust to the north of Mogilev is the most obvious German strategy (or so you would think), there is very little he can do until Von Nev(VN) shows his hand. In looking at the victory point situation i feel that DS may have underestimated the amount of points VN might gain through isolating and eliminating Russian units, which may impact on the amount of units VN has to exit?

German
Reading VN comments i feel that he may have slightly overestimated the difficulty in bridging the river, in test games many bridges went up in 1 or 2 moves especially if you concentrated two bridging units in one hex, also there is a Engineering unit in the Mogilev garrison and in many test games this unit destroyed the very bridges VN is hoping to capture! :eek1:

Also almost all of the Russian units are fixed (representing poor command & control) and so DS will not be able to rush in force to oppose any crossing he might attempt and there are a couple of spots along the river that the Germans could ferry their Infantry across the river to form a bridgehead and hence push the Russian artillery spotters out of LOS of any bridging attempt.

Having said that VN has correctly recognised the need to concentrate all his force into one "Iron Fist" that no Russian defence should be able to stop, (splitting the two German Div's is a recipe for disaster) and he is correct that the Das Reich can be fed in as and where they are needed.

Summery
To be fair i should state that my comments are made with a mass of hindsight that i have gained working on and testing this scenario, how interesting it is to compare how two experienced commanders like DS & VN can read the same situation differently, can't wait to see how this game develops!

[Ricky B]

Additional comments I have on the situation and notes above. The Soviets have powerful artillery that can cause very heavy German losses. By concentrating the German power into one major strike instead of two isolated ones, the amount of artillery that the Soviets can fire is limited, along with their ground forces that can get involved in the short term.

Secondly, although the crossing is bloody, having 2 divisions concentrated against just one part of a Soviet division is going to succeed, but time is of the essence. The Soviets are almost entirely footbound and so slow, in addition to the fixed status that Foul implemented. So a quick concentrated thrust, with deception involved using a couple of spare bridging engineers to feint additional crossings at the same time, can burst through the Soviet lines.

Also, the Germans have huge mobility and can switch around as needed, so trying two very separate crossings and sending everyone to the first successful one can work, although it might lead to early release of the Soviets.

The Soviets have to play for time, try to avoid heavy losses, and concentrate their power before getting too involved in the fighting, if possible.

Rick

[Dog Soldier]

Great comments RickyB and Foul. Your insights from amny paytestings are very interesting.

Dog Soldier

[von Nev]

Here is turn 1 for the Germans.

Both divisions advance towards Mogilev with a wide screen of recon units at the front. I am doing this to make sure that I do not have any Russian units that are sneaking forward or around. I honestly did not look at the Russian setup so I don't know their force structure and their original setup.

The 10th Panzer will try to do some recon spotting next turn to see where a good place to enter Mogilev. I want to find an area that provides an attack route that provides some cover for my engineer units as they try to clear minefields.

The 10th Motorized Division uses recon spotting at the point where I expect then to cross the Dnepr. At that point is an infantry unit and a AT unit. I do not get close to any other units by the river as I do not want to unnecessarily unfix Russian units.

I also run a recon flight over Mogilev's city center to see what is in there. It uncovers a motorized recon unit and two artillery units (one medium and the other heavy). My first Stuka sortie is dispatched to attack the medium arty unit. I elect to attack the medium unit because it can move much quicker than the heavy unit. The heavy unit will be there for a while as it takes a full turn to get into travel mode. The Stuka attack destoyes several guns and rubbles the area.

[Dog Soldier]

Russian turn 1.
06:00 AM July 9, 1941
Normal Conditions
Visibility 4km.

Dig, dig, dig. With the Russian army fixed and no Germans seen, not much else to do. The way the game handles fixed units may seem strange. German air recon spotted Russian artillery in Mogilev and attacked the unit destroying eight guns and disrupting the unit in hex (26,28). The guns are still fixed! Same for the AT guns attacked south of the city along the river. Just one of the features that a defending player has to live with.

It is also a good example of how poor the command and control system of the 1941 Russian army was three weeks into the war on the eastern front. Stalin's purges had done the work for the invaders.

Dog Soldier

[von Nev]

German Turn 2:

Both divisions continue to quickly move towards their attack positions. However, prior to the arrival of any other elements of the divisions, the recon units do extensive recon spotting of the areas in front of their attack positions. Recon spotting is a function that is VERY handy and really makes the recon units work as they would normally. In this case they spot the minefield belt around Mogilev as well as spot more mines on the western side of the Dnepr. Through recon I spotted the Russian AT unit in travel mode that was previously opposite the 10th Motorized crossing point. A quick attack by Stukas destroyed all 10 guns.

The 10th Panzer Division units are assembling in the woods north of the river behind the hill. This area is out of sight from the Russians and all units advance to this area on a covered route (hopefully unseen). The divisional artillery will setup northwest of the town also out of sight. The guns will be in a position that can range all the way to the bridge crossing in southern Mogilev.

The 10th Motorized is rapidly assembling just west of their intended crossing site on the other side of the forest out of sight from the Russians. Since the division will be crossing under fire I intend to have maximum units be able to pummel that infantry unit just on the eastern side of the river as the engineers build the bridge. The divisional artillery will be setup northwest of the crossing site along the rail line and will range to the bridges in southern Mogilev. The regimental guns will setup just behind the forest to the west of the crossing site.

As I mentioned earlier, but it is worth saying again, I do not want to be exposed to the Russian arty unnecessarily. It can lay crushing barrages on any unit caught in the open. These are VP points that I cannot afford to lose. This is the why I am taking so many measures to make sure the Russians cannot see me. Additionally, by not exposing my units I can hopefully hide my true intentions as long as possible. :stir: