1st PzB Tournament 2nd Battle: #0706_03 Yakovlevo - Breaching the Second Line

[ComradeP]

Note that my comments are mostly post-game, I had to format the PC due to a trojan and only kept the turn screenshots. I didn't take screenshots for some of the initial turns, as very little happened in some of them.

I'll detail my plan in writing, as it was quite simple: move north with basically everything, then swing west into Pokrovka through the fields from the high ground, using a smaller force to capture Yakovlevo.

Using a few units to chase the Soviets in the west was not part of my plan, but as the mirror game would later show, it can be a good strategy if the defender doesn't expect it. I will add comments about the mirror game where Gregor was the Germans from time to time as a useful means of comparison. That game isn't finished yet, but he had achieved a major victory about halfway through the scenario.

The new unit release rules where formations release by the battalion when spotted meant that I wanted to limit releases as best as I could. Unfortunately, the Fixed/release mechanics encourage somewhat gamey play as you're trying to move around certain enemy units.

This is more of a problem in Panzer Battles than in Panzer Campaigns, due to the visibility ranges being significantly higher. In Panzer Campaigns, visibility is usually 3-4 hexes. In Panzer Battles, visibility is usually around 10 hexes for most of a scenario. Flanking the Soviet positions from the east normally means the Tank brigades won't be released until they automatically release.

Regarding the map and force compositions, it favours the Germans as the eastern approach was historically reserved for the tanks and accompanying infantry that moved north later in the day as can be seen in the Ozerovskii scenario. Historically, halfway through the scenario the Germans would also lose a PzG regiment to withdrawals, but that doesn't happen in the scenario so in terms of the in-game force composition compared to the historical force composition, the scenario favours the Germans. Certain units being "duplicated" by being present in two scenarios at the same time is the case in many of the scenarios where a day of fighting is broken into smaller scenarios, by the way. We'll see the same thing in Nechaevka.

Assault plan:

My assault plan was to obscure most of my units with smoke on turn 1, limiting the Soviets to one released battalion and concentrating about a battalion on a single bunker. Vehicle units would fire from two hexes away and AT gun units would move up in support. Follow-up units would then exploit the gap and fan out to isolate the second row of bunkers and move on to the objectives afterwards. Weak forces would capture the hill in the east.

My second PzG regiment didn't have a specific destination yet. I rarely make detailed plans for follow-up forces, as where they need to go heavily depends on the situation at the time of their arrival/release and I don't want to dogmatically commit to a certain strategy, resulting in less flexibility later on.

I was hoping that two recon companies that start in a Fixed state would be released on turn 2 as they could spot Soviet AT guns , and that was the case, giving me two additional companies to use ahead of schedule.

I expected that I would be near Yakovlevo around turn 10, and near Pokrovka several turns later. In the end, this is more or less what happened, so the prediction was accurate but for reasons that will be explained later, victory was soon beyond my grasp.

Flaws in the assault plan:

My expectations for the assaults were too optimistic, as it's very difficult for an attacker to successfully assault a hex as the defender can stack units in them and all of those needed to be disrupted to eject the defender, and both sides use the same stacking limits so you often can't apply a numerical advantage. I don't really like that part of the combat mechanics, which might be why I sometimes forget them as I feel it's one of the weaker parts of the combat system.

I cancelled my assault into Pokrovka at some point, when it might still have succeeded, because I feared the impact the Soviet tank brigades would have and felt I wouldn't be able to remove the AT brigade on time/get into Pokrovka before the tanks showed up. It's difficult to estimate how well your opponent will use his mobile reserves, or what kind of damage they will be able to do. This was probably the event that decided the game, looking back. My initial breakthrough was significantly slower than Gregor's in the mirror game (he broke through by about turn 3-4, I broke through by turn 7-8), but that didn't necessarily matter much.

Differences between Gregor's assault plan in the mirror game and mine:

The crucial difference was that Gregor fired at the units in the bunkers from the adjacent hex with the StuGs, Tigers and Marders, and used infantry mostly to evict the Disrupted defenders. This was very successful, and he got numerous good Disruption rolls in the opening turns, probably above average. I did have fewer units in the bunkers that him, because he didn't release a third battalion.

He also attacked along a broader front, which meant that I had to spread my units out a bit more, but I feel this wasn't the most significant difference as it also meant that he had to assault each of the bunkers with fewer forces.

We discussed whether my breakthrough would have been as successful as his, had I shotgunned the defenders instead of firing from 2 hexes away. His opinion was that having more units in a hex would have limited the success of the strategy. I agree, but overstacking penalties shouldn't be underestimated. As we will see later on, his early losses were quite substantial due to overstacking penalties and me being able to kill a large number of men after evicting stacks from bunkers. Obviously, my losses in the mirror game were also high as my defensive line folded as if it wasn't even there.