Gertsovka The Cornerstone

[Dog Soldier]

Panzer Battles
Kursk – The Southern Front

#0704_01 Gertsovka: The Cornerstone

Opening Russian Comments
This can be a tough assignment for the Russians. They begin the game in a spread out defense in depth position of platoons. They need to cover victory positions along the stream with platoons. The Russians cannot defend everything. Choices have to be made which victory locations to defend.

The ATG guns will serve to maintain the bunker positions as I maneuver my infantry to get the best shots on the Germans. There are two bunkers, one on either side of the railroad cut protecting the entrance to the village. While protected by mines, these will fall to the German assault. It is only a matter of time. How much time they buy will determine how the rest of the defense will be composed.

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Russian Initial Positions
The Russian have three main choices here.
1. Sit in the bunkers and make the German dig them out. Not a bad choice. However, he who sits in forts has lost before the battle starts. Some smart general who believed in maneuver said that.

2. Pull everyone forward and try to stuff the Germans at the railroad cut and embankment. This strategy tries to prevent the Germans from breaking into the town. It can work. The mines on the east side can prevent any rapid German flanking move. Excellent interior lines allow the defenders to shift to meet any unanticipated German threat. The west side is open ground and hard to defend a flanking move there. The Germans do not have much time to develop a strong move on that side of the map. Yet if they do come there in force the Russian garrison may find themselves cut off from supply the second half of the game. In which case the defense folds like a wet dish cloth.

Note: The design team changed the isolation rules so Russian strong points can still be bypassed and surrounded in this game, but they do not fold like a dish cloth any more. Strela can comment on this more. In another test game he and I ran after the change, Russian defenders of another village used a pair of pillboxes to tie up the advance of an entire German regiment, IIRC correctly. While the defense was surrounded, they still chewed up the Germans pretty badly who were pinning them in the pillboxes. Additional troops had to be brought back to clear out those Russian strong points weakening the German drive a key point in the game.

3. Defense in depth. This is a play for time strategy where Russian platoons will be chewed up at an alarming rate. The Germans will not take nearly as many casualties from the spread out Russians. Yet this defense is capable of running the game clock out. A German player might get anxious about the delays and make mistakes which the Russians can them punish them for. OBA, especially the rockets can really tear up a German company in two turns if they are caught in the open by this type of defense.

Dog Soldier