MAIN EVENT VII! Ratzki vs Joonny....

[Der Kuenstler]

In my opinion the game is aleady over and i predict a tactical victory at least for the Axis...

It certainly looks like it's going that way. Here in minute seven Joonny decides to have his AFVs blow down the church. This was actually a mistake, IMHO. The church was empty for one thing, so bringing it down did not kill any Russians. Secondly, it is a heavy building so the smoke will hang there a long time, blocking Joonny's view and allowing Ratzki to run his Russians in there. What I like to do in this situation is shoot the building until it is ALMOST going to fall, then let it sit there. That way the other guy will be afraid to run his troops in, because another shell or two would bring it down.



Here is a shot of Ratzki's last ATG getting finished off. The Huns up on the hill are having a great time, shooting pretty much at will with no return fire.



Ratzki here orders one of his T34/85 platoons back down the hill and around to the North, but even that doesn't go smoothly - the rear tank bogs in the wet seaside ground...



Because Ratzki elected to give all of the Southern cliffs to Joonny without a fight, Joonny is now able to see behind Ratzki's lines with his sharpshooters up there. This picture is from Joonny's side - notice he can see clearly what the T34s are doing and so Ratzki's hope for surprise is gone. Notice the T34/85s here are showing up as regular T34s because of the FOW.



After seven minutes Ratzki has done nothing significant to injure Joonny - I'm afraid the whole battle so far can be summed up with this shot:



But Ratzki has only lost a conscript AFV and a couple of 45mm ATGs, which weren't worth much anyway against Hun armour. He still has about 85% of his infantry in good shape. We'll just have to see what he can pull out of his hat...