Dog Fight - Ostkreig Tournament Round 2

[Ricky B]

Dog Soldier put up an excellent summary of the two sides and their forces for this scenario. There is also a supporting KG style unit in play for the Germans the is important for fleshing out the front line.

I will follow up tonight with my initial plan of action, but wanted to post some notes regarding my playtesting of this scenario as the German player against Foul before its approval for HTH play.

1. The German forces, although containing some excellent units and hitting power, are thin on the ground, and the LW units are nearly useless except for holding the frontline so as to delay the Soviet advance.

2. The German bridgehead north of the Chir is very defensible, and actually has a good chance of surviving everything the Soviets can throw at it, unless they pull back their tanks and motorized infantry to push against it. Although easily cut off, the bridgehead has a supply source and so does not go isolated. In testing against Foul, I always tried to hold the bridgehead and it survived in all of our battles. However, as Dog Soldier mentions, these units are probably more important at beefing up the defensive line south of the Chir rather than holding onto the 75 objective points in the bridgehead, and I had decided that if I was going to play German in the tournament, I would give up the bridgehead to use the forces south of the Chir.

3. The Germans always seemed able to compress the central bridgehead but not eliminate it, in all of our tests. I found the key point there was pushing on the Soviets as long as possible then shifting the forces against either or both the cavalry or the western bridgehead, and the timing of the shift was critical or the lines would collapse. Generally, the Soviet forces took such a beating in the center that they were unable to break out against relatively weak screening forces.

4. The western bridgehead can at best be contained, rather than crushed, although significant Soviet losses could be inflicted at times. Trying to stop their advance short of the objectives is vital.

5. The cavalry crossing in the east is dangerous if sufficient reinforcements were not sent in time, as it would allow the front to stretch so far that many more units would be required for the Germans to prevent a hole to open. So holding the front line as long as possible is important there.

My playthroughs as German seemed to follow history fairly consistantly, where the 11th Pz almost had the central bridgehead crushed but had to rush off to then hold back the western forces, the German bridgehead north of the Chir was given up to conserve forces, and the cavalry played a fairly small role in the action.

Rick