Nearly Forgot

I've had a busy week, and I nearly forgot to document this Tuesday's game, which would have been a shame. We were over at Chris K's, doing some more NQM round Stalingrad. Since my last participation Chris has moved the game on a bit, so I was presented with a different situation. Stalingrad has now fallen to the Germans, but large numbers of Soviet reinforcements have arrived, and we have them surrounded and may I say "bottled up". I was joined by Tim, with Jon F online, facing off against Phil and Richard. 

I've clipped off the bottom of the table (I'm using my phone, not my SLR). The units with yellow markers are Germans, those with Red are Soviets. The Germans have a ring of strongpoints based on villages. Off the bottom I have a couple of extra formations. Bottom left you can see one of my Sturmoviks bombing the Germans prior to my attack.

The Germans had two airfields for casevac and supplies. We put one of them under pressure early on, which forced their planes to fall back on one location. Got a bit crowded.

It's great when you have loads of stuff and it's quite good. Waited for nearly 30 years to launch an attack like this. The Germans top left are held in place whilst I pound everything else, surround it and start to overrun the positions. Bottom right is a German alpine unit breaking out. Who cares. The partisans will get them.

As the Germans fall back the pursuit opens me up a bit. There's still some tough stuff about. The left hand town still holds out, and that unit in the centre with the half track includes assault engineers. Nasty.

Phil is trying to improvise defence points everywhere, but I'm able to apply sufficient strength to keep them off balance. 

I've surrounded one end of the left hand town, but Phil has launched a lightning raid out of the position to try to thwart me.

I'm able to bounce Phil's counter attack, sending him back towards Stalingrad.

We are also putting pressure on the last remaining airstrip. Only isolated German units are hanging on outside the City, and it's time to stop and take stock.

A good performance by the Soviets all round. We had superior numbers, but German units are really tough to crack, especially when in prepared defences. We were short of heavy artillery, and our airpower kept getting interdicted. However I managed to get my head round the refit/resupply sequence, and was able to recycle and resupply units effectively to keep the pressure on. If it hadn't been for a whole run of pesky out of ammunition rolls early on, I'd have made a whole lot more progress. Lots of good news to report to Comrade Stalin.