"Thunder in the North" Mirror Tournament - During / After Action Reports

[Crossroads]

I am happy to report the tournament is well under way, with shores of the grand river Vuoksi exploding in flames in three groups of two parallel mirror games.

At turn 8 / (18), the Soviet forces led by their capable leader Marshal RD_DD have made Mother Russia proud, as the captured Finnish radio message reveals:



To: High Command
From: General K. "Battle" Kat

I regret to report the fierce see-saw battle for maintaining our positions within the town of Äyräpää - per Your strict order - has ended. After a brave fight, our remaining soldiers in the East have all evacuated to northern shores apart from some remaining groups of isolated pockets in the South shore. I do not expect any of them to make it much longer there and have already counted them out from any future actions.

The friendly losses have been far heavier than expected, while the even more significant losses caused to enemy forces have been not enough to stem their continuous advance. Our two engineer platoons remained undisrupted at the bridge, but due to enemy stacks limiting the visibility to the other shore I can't report whether the southern entrance to it is destroyed or not...

I have ordered our troops to make a stand at town of Vuosalmi in expectation of receiving reinforcements before the enemy can cross the river in force. The Vasikkasaari Island seems to be a target of enemy amphibious landings now, and at the moment we can but try to contain it with our artillery.

The enemy commander led his troops forward at a speed we thought not possible, storming and capturing our positions before we could retreat to next defensive positions, or to launch a well planned counter assault. The Extreme Assault tactics yielded by both sides have been very decisive in determining the ownership of key hexes, many of them changing hands several times during the course of action.

Meanwhile, in the middle sector where we evacuated from early on - but not early enough as two of our forward companies still got surrounded and destroyed by the fast moving enemy forces! - the high ground and the now destroyed bridges seem to be heavily congested by the opposing forces, clearly planning to throw themselves across the river Vuoksi there. I strongly urge You to send any available bomber squadrons to assist in keeping the bridges from becoming usable.

Situation at Western sector, at Suursaari island, seems to have stabilised however and our troops remain firmly in control of our positions south of river, especially with the reinforcements that made it from the middle sector. I request a permission to move even more forces to southern side of the river, and to begin a strong counter attack to disrupt the enemy from advancing across Vuoksi from their positions in the middle!

I strongly request any and all available reinforcements to be sent to my sector. I can confirm the first sighting of the requested German 303. Assault Gun Bde, while the FAF together with German detachment Kuhlmey have been very helpful.

At the beginning of the turn, the situation stood as follows:

- Allied losses 1117 pts
- Axis losses 852 pts
- Objective points held by the enemy: 750 pts
- Situation 485 pts


I can't believe the amount of losses, and it is only turn 8! Not a fun place to be for our grunts!

I have tried to balance this in a manner that if Soviets hold most of the southern shores, with acceptable losses, that should be a draw. I assume we must adjust the objective values at south a bit, for an example making Äyräpää worth 500 points.

But let us finish our games first, and only then compare the respective results. I can also report my mirror game as Soviets, using a brute force approach, is not going well at all, I'm well into minus points at this same stage. And in one of the earlier test games, the Soviets captured two bridges in tact early on, making it a wholly different story all together as the fight was taking to Northern shores from the beginning.

Hoping everyone's having fun !!!