Dog Fight - Ostkreig Tournament Round 2

[Ricky B]

Soviet turn 3:

The offensive in the west picks up speed this turn, as the LW infantry are too slow to pull away from my tanks and mobile troops. I push back the defenders southwest of the 25 point objective shifting most of my T34s to that area in hopes of a clean breakthrough in the next few turns, or at least to force the German commander to shift his panzers away from central bridgehead immediately, as the pressure there is very heavy. I do feel like the lines are thin here and will break soon if more troops don't arrive to support them.

There is also a secondary attack north of the objective in order to tie down the infantry in the area and prevent their shift to the more vulnerable area further southwest. I hope to force Dog Soldier to use his mobile forces in the southwest. I am using two T34 units that remain low fuel this turn as they couldn't contribute to the attack further south due to their limited movement, as they were able to move up and fire against the infantry anyway. This stack is shown to the left in this end of turn image.



In the center, my forces are moving into the fortified towns, which should allow them to stabilize the front for a few turns, but their losses have been quite high due to the 11th Panzer Div firepower.

In the east, my cavalry forces start the turn with 2 of 3 units disrupted, but one of them recovers from disruption. I put the disrupted unit into travel mode and pull it back across the river while sending a fresh unit into the lines. I finally prepare to move up on the flank of the defenders facing my cavalry, so that my reserve cavalry units can bring some fire against the defenders and thus raise the pressure on them, but still don't do anything there, hoping for a quick breakthrough.

Things continue to develop almost as expected, although the losses in the center are heavier than expected, due to Dog Soldier's excellent attack, and the cavalry are still completely locked up in their one km square bridgehead.

Rick