Dog Fight - Ostkreig Tournament Round 1

[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!