Dog Fight - Ostkreig Tournament Round 2

[Dog Soldier]

German turn 11.
04:00 AM December 13, 1942
Snow Conditions
Dawn Visibility 1km.


Victory points after the German
turn eleven


My HQ’s came back into command. I can not take another turn like that again with most of my best units one morale level lower due to low ammo. It caused me to take more losses than I should have from the Soviet artillery across the river.
The Russians, they got to be as tired as we are. This turn I continue to whittle down the Russians in the Sulatskiy bridgehead. Next turn, I will begin to retreat from the northern most Axis positions. I am not sure my troops there can hold one more turn. I have no choice. I will need to have them cover the rear of my final assaults on the Sulatskiy bridgehead. The Sulatskiy bridgehead represents the best chance of gaining VP. If I can push the Russian units more, they may begin to break. Then the Sulatskiy bridgehead will collapse quickly. That will be the key to my draw, or minor victory. I have two battalions of infantry on the southern side of the Sulatskiy bridgehead resting this turn. They may recover to B morale, just barely in the next turn or two. Then I can throw them into the final assaults.
To deal with the Soviet armor pocket behind the Sulatskiy bridgehead, I stacked my disrupted infantry unit that the T-34s assaulted in the Russian turn 10 with some good order units. I have positioned my other units there to prevent this stack from being surrounded. Axis ZOCs will prevent the isolated T-34’s from moving toward the bridgehead. I assaulted the T-70 unit and destroyed three more armored cars with direct fire while moving my armor into a stronger position. I thus reduced the pocket back to two hexes. I will see if I can eliminate this pocket soon to free up some troops for the end game. RickyB has been using the artillery behind the Sulatskiy bridgehead effectively to disrupt my infantry here and cover his isolated units.

I patched the western front back together again. The loss of the state farm is inevitable. I will have to abandon it soon as RickyB continues to hit my weak units holding the flanks of the state farm.

The Soviet Cavalry is setting up for a breakout. I observed a strong force moving through the mines to south along the river bank. They will pop up to attack the ridge soon. I moved my last reserve company in to hold them off another turn. The threat here is the strong assault values of the cavalry. The flak units are in the Russian stack to absorb defensive fire and exploit any hole with quick movement. I will try to disrupt these flak units, as they pose a greater breakout threat than the cavalry who have to do the assaults.

My chances in the scenario are getting grim, but I am still in this fight. I have prevented any major breakthroughs all game so far. Only the one T-34 unit got through and it is now corralled with the rest of the Soviet armor that penetrated my lines. These armored units are not causing my troops to be surrounded, so that is a small victory. I am using a minimal force of disrupted infantry that can recover to contain them along with the one panzer unit to help speed up the destruction of the Soviet armor. Once I have the Soviets all disrupted, the infantry can finish them off, releasing the panzers for other duties

Dog Soldier