Leto's View - To assault a Soviet. QB DAR vs Colonel Talvela ***

[Copper]

Apparently the leaflets dropped the night previous, inviting the Russians to trade in their guns and rifles for S'mores has not been taken seriously.

Perhaps Dave's troops have no idea what a S'more is, and I may have likely had better results if I had advertised for pickled bulls balls or beet candy.

The more S'more's for me I guess.

The eastern flank is opening up a bit, but the going is still much too slow for my liking. Thinking that of the remaining 3 of 4 russian 57ATG's, Dave can't have tucked one away in the path of my onrushing panzers now that they are crossing the hill and heading for the flag.

I will be gleefull if I do not lose a tank next round, but expect that the far eastern flag has the SU-100 parked behind it for a reason: no more ATG's. And that being said, I am slowly pushing back the Monster SU with threats from the infantry being pushed into its flank from behind. Note, that I do not have a leader with the two units flanking, and that is bad news. Being behind enemy lines means you need to work with a leader holding a Luger to the back of your troops heads, for sometimes they will up and surrender if their retreat lines (the back of my side of the map) are not available to them. That would truly suck to lose my sturmtroopers that way, so I am going to try and rush the leader over there toot sweet.

Here is the East:



Note, the two hetzers charge forward (the damaged gun first) to make sure there are no hidden guns. The Grille will maintain fire on the 1st gun position and the other will move into firing position for the woods.

In the middle, I prepare to smoke em up a bit and charge the light woods in front of me.



With the soviet foxhole that had LOS to my advance has now vomited out its occupants (running with their pants on fire in retreat). Smoke is precious, so I only want to use 1 or 2 rounds from the mortars. I pause the mortars 10 seconds and then give them a "rotate" command. They should fire one round of smoke and then cancel the orders to move. Great way to conserve smoke.

Notice the red circle. This is a deep dark path I do not want to go down. I plan on isolating the soviet troops there and cutting to the left to take out the very center flag. 105 arty is centered and dropping on that flag, and another platoon to the far west is using the smoke dropped to protect them from the T-34 to gain entrance to the woods in front hopefully unscathed. Note how Dave has placed his defenders... deep enough in the woods so that he can see the first few feet of ground in front of them, but very hard to shoot at due to their depth back of LOS in the woods. When setting up, make sure that you have limited LOS to your positions much like this.

In the West, the encirclement continues. Another soviet unit is unearthed with my run and go half squad tactics. 81mm mortars will drop on the far west flag in one minute, and after another minute, a full scale assault will take place. The hetzer gives support but is wary of ATG's... (one has to be close). I'm hoping that by keeping the hetzer hull down he'll not incur the wrath of the gun until my arty drops to knock it out.



So far, I have a lot of work to do on the far east flag, and have my strongest forces deployed there to take it on.

In the middle, I do not expect to gain any flags, but perhaps I can contest the middle one.

In the west, I think I have the far west flag with some work, and I will be in good position to take the second flag, barring I can knock out his T-34 somehow.

So far, my strategy of flank manuevering has limited my casualties to a handful, and staying away from the depth of Dave's kill zones may give me enough points leeway to scrape a draw or minor victory with 2 flags in possession and a couple contested.

I have 16 turns left, so the real assaults have to happen soon.

Cheers!

Leto