Krasni Bor: The Railway Embankment

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Tigers on the Hunt >> After Action Report >> Krasni Bor: The Railway Embankment

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Krasni Bor: The Railway Embankment - 10/14/2018 11:09:48 PM

UP844

Posts: 1662
Joined: 3/3/2016
From: Genoa, Republic of Genoa (occupied by Italy)
Status: offline

Reading the scenario description, this appears to be one of those "Stand and die" situations. Basically, the most I can expect to do is to inflict as many losses as possible to the Russians before being slaughtered by a massive horde.

I have to kill at least 20 squad-equivalents for a Minor, 40 for a Major Victory. Tanks would be worth 5 VP apiece, but the 37mm would be useless against T-34 and the scenario explicitly mentions "heavy tanks", which can only be KVs. Maybe I can kill some if the AI is stupid enough.

As I see it, the only way to accomplish something is to set up a thin skirmish line on the railway embankment and to kill as many Russians as possible when they are forced to cross open terrain hexes. Firing low-factor attacks, the -2 DRM should give me a fair chance to obtain some K/KIA.

I set up the squads spaced by 2 hexes, with a leader every 4 hexes, so as to minimise C&C loss:

...S-SL-S-S-SL-S...

SW were stacked with leaders to take advantage of the leader DRM; in the south, the line was very thin, with the 8 HS deployed as:

... HS-2xHS+L-HS-HS-2xHS+L-HS...

I deliberately left the southern side of the embankment ungarrisoned: it the Russian bypass my units, I certainly will not be able to stop them. On the other hand, if I stretch my line more, the Russian will overwhelm them in a hurry.

The game started and the Russian dashed forward: in the Defensive Fire, I always fired by single units: this meant a lot of low FP attacks, but with negative modifiers they were quite deadly. I paid special attention to leaders (the AI has no need for C&C but needs rallying his units) and LMG-carrying squads (which could fire at range 6) and at the end of the Russian turn 1 most of them were broken.

The Spanish low-FP, negative DRM fire proved quite effective: I didn't get more than a couple straight KIAs, but several squads were CR and a lot were broken.

The AI, as usual didn't fire a single shot.

In the Russian Rout segment, Interdiction killed a fair number of Russian units which retreated through open hexes.

The Spanish Fire Segment caused far less losses: firing at stationary targets greatly reduced the effectiveness of the fire.

In turn 2, Russian KV-1m42's make their appearance (straight out from the Leningrad factories, I suppose). Well, I will have to endure them. The infantry continues moving forward and to take heavy losses from the Spanish Defensive fire and in the Rout Segment as well.

This is the VP count at the end of the Spanish Fire Segment in Turn 2: the AI only fired 4 times (1 squad and 2 KV-1s). Note the very high percentage of killed Russian HS (CR results)

Attachment (1)

_____________________________

Chasing Germans in the moonlight is no mean sport

Siegfried Sassoon

Long Range Fire (A7.22)........1/2 FP

Post #: 1

RE: Krasni Bor: The Railway Embankment - 10/14/2018 11:20:31 PM

UP844

Posts: 1662
Joined: 3/3/2016
From: Genoa, Republic of Genoa (occupied by Italy)
Status: offline

The game continued on turns 3 & 4: the Russian tanks (and only the tanks, I'd like to point out) started blasting the north end of the line and some infantry also approached; in the South, most Russian units were broken and taking cover in their trench line.

So far, the Russian fired about a dozen times; the Spanish fired at least once per turn with every squad/HS or SW or ordnance (let's say 25-30 fires per turn). I suppose this might have influenced the 20:1 kill ratio. I have been accused to be a little trigger happy, but it works

.

On turn 4, some Assault Engineers appeared, but at the end of the Spanish Defensive Fire on turn 4 I achieved 80 VPs and a Major victory (even though the KVs are starting to inflict losses). I saved the game and I will continue it just for fun (I'd like to kill a KV in CC).

P.S. The game is being played at Very Difficult level, with fog-of-war.

Attachment (1)

< Message edited by UP844 -- 10/14/2018 11:21:54 PM >

_____________________________

Chasing Germans in the moonlight is no mean sport

Siegfried Sassoon

Long Range Fire (A7.22)........1/2 FP

(in reply to UP844)

Post #: 2

RE: Krasni Bor: The Railway Embankment - 10/15/2018 12:57:48 PM

UP844

Posts: 1662
Joined: 3/3/2016
From: Genoa, Republic of Genoa (occupied by Italy)
Status: offline

Turns #5 to #10 followed the same script:
1) the KV-1s advanced south, methodically killing my infantry (and never once came near enough to attempt a CC);
2) the Russian infantry advanced in the no-man-land between the two trench systems;
3) Spanish low-factor, high negative DRM defensive fire killed a few, CR's some more and broke a lot of them;
4) Some additional Russian units were CR's/killed in the Rout Segment
5) and so on, and on, and on...

This is the final result: the Spanish only managed a meager 7:1 kill ratio (almost all the Spanish losses were inflicted by the KVs)

The Russians AI made enough points to get a Minor Victory (I never saw these units, so I suppose they were south of the south end of my defensive line)

Attachment (1)

_____________________________

Chasing Germans in the moonlight is no mean sport

Siegfried Sassoon

Long Range Fire (A7.22)........1/2 FP

(in reply to UP844)

Post #: 3

RE: Krasni Bor: The Railway Embankment - 10/15/2018 1:25:44 PM

UP844

Posts: 1662
Joined: 3/3/2016
From: Genoa, Republic of Genoa (occupied by Italy)
Status: offline

This is the map at the end of the game: there are lots of broken Russian units in the Russian trench line, but most of them are out of LOS.
- Red arrows represent successful Russian attacks.
- Magenta arrows represent repulsed Russian attacks.

The Russians achieved a clean breakthrough with the tanks (not a difficult undertaking, when you are invulnerable to everything the enemy can throw at you) and managed to advance a few units over the railway line in the south, where the line was held by the Spanish HS with no support weapons. I suppose a sizable force of Russian made a nice walk south of the area depicted in the map (which does not represent the whole map area, but only the portion where the Spanish line was deployed).

Unfortunately, in scenarios with exit hexes the defender tends to run towards the VP hexes, unless VP hexes are present. In this case, playing with the Russian will become a race to the exit areas, and in a moving battle the few Spanish units have no chance.

Given the current limitations of the game, the scenario reminded me of the attacks by unarmed Iranian revolutionary guards against entrenched Iraqis in the First Gulf War (and with equally gruesome results).

This is NOT - I care to point out - a complaint against the scenario by itself.

Some possibilities to make things a bit tougher for the Spanish side:
- giving the Russian an OBA and/or some longer-ranges SW (MMG/HMGs, Lt Mtr, 82mm Mtr)
- adding some VP hexes to force the Spanish player to garrison the whole line
- tweaking the VP requirements

Attachment (1)

< Message edited by UP844 -- 10/15/2018 1:27:39 PM >

_____________________________

Chasing Germans in the moonlight is no mean sport

Siegfried Sassoon

Long Range Fire (A7.22)........1/2 FP

(in reply to UP844)

Post #: 4

RE: Krasni Bor: The Railway Embankment - 10/16/2018 3:59:04 AM

Rosseau

Posts: 2757
Joined: 9/13/2009
Status: offline

Thanks for the info - good points on scenario design techniques!

(in reply to UP844)

Post #: 5

RE: Krasni Bor: The Railway Embankment - 10/16/2018 12:09:12 PM

UP844

Posts: 1662
Joined: 3/3/2016
From: Genoa, Republic of Genoa (occupied by Italy)
Status: offline

Since I had very little to do other than butchering advancing Russian squads and watching KV-1s butchering my own squads, I took very detailed notes about every time the AI infantry fired at my units. It was not a very demanding task, since the AI infantry fired a little over a dozen times over the whole game. Spanish fire amounted to 15-20 fires in the Spanish Fire Segment and approximately double that figure in the Russian Movement Segment.

As far as I was able to ascertain so far, AI infantry fired against the Spanish units in the entrenchments (+2 TEM) only when it managed to fire at least 6 FP.

This meant it only fired when:
-> it had 2 or 3 1st line/conscript/SMG units stacked together and in normal range (4/2/2 hexes) to their target
-> it had 1 Engineer unit in normal range (2 hexes) to its target
-> it had any unit adjacent to its target.

Since Russian stacks were #1 targets, the first case only occurred once. All the remaining fires involved single squads firing at adjacent units (often, at adjacent units broken by KV fire), which took place in the late stages of the game, when the thin Spanish line began to crumble because of the KVs that, unlike the infantry, never missed a chance to fire.

In plain, cold numbers:

-> the AI only fired when it had at least a 41.6% chance to inflict a possibly damaging result (PTC or more) (rolling a "6" or less)

-> Spanish defensive fire, with a -2 DRM for moving in the open and without considering leadership DRMs, had the following chances to obtain a possibly damaging result (PDR in the list below):

1 FP = roll of 7 or less (58.3%) for a PDR, 3 or less (8.3%) for a K or better (HS/LMG at long range)
2 FP = roll of 8 or less (72.7%) for a PDR, 4 or less (16.7%) for a K or better (HS/LMG at normal range, squad at long range)
4 FP = roll of 9 or less (83.3%) for a PDR, 4 or less (16.7%) for a K or better (squad at normal range)
7 FP = roll of 10 or less (91.7%) for a PDR, 5 or less (27.7%) for a K or better (HMG at normal range)

Besides confirming the wisdom of the old ASL advice about firing many low FP attacks with high negative DRMs, this should clearly explain why the scenario looked more like Rorke's Drift than a WW2 battle.

P.S. I also replayed "The Halfway Position" adopting these tactics and at the end of the scenario I got a Minor Victory with a 25:1 kill rate (the Spanish only lost a HS, which was eliminated while attempting to rally, not because of Russian fire - no AFVs here

). The Russian infantry fired exactly seven (7) times over the whole scenario.

< Message edited by UP844 -- 10/16/2018 12:10:10 PM >

_____________________________

Chasing Germans in the moonlight is no mean sport

Siegfried Sassoon

Long Range Fire (A7.22)........1/2 FP

(in reply to Rosseau)

Post #: 6

RE: Krasni Bor: The Railway Embankment - 10/17/2018 9:22:31 AM

ArtReg250

Posts: 16
Joined: 8/21/2018
From: Spain
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: UP844

This is the map at the end of the game: there are lots of broken Russian units in the Russian trench line, but most of them are out of LOS.
- Red arrows represent successful Russian attacks.
- Magenta arrows represent repulsed Russian attacks.

The Russians achieved a clean breakthrough with the tanks (not a difficult undertaking, when you are invulnerable to everything the enemy can throw at you) and managed to advance a few units over the railway line in the south, where the line was held by the Spanish HS with no support weapons. I suppose a sizable force of Russian made a nice walk south of the area depicted in the map (which does not represent the whole map area, but only the portion where the Spanish line was deployed).

Unfortunately, in scenarios with exit hexes the defender tends to run towards the VP hexes, unless VP hexes are present. In this case, playing with the Russian will become a race to the exit areas, and in a moving battle the few Spanish units have no chance.

Given the current limitations of the game, the scenario reminded me of the attacks by unarmed Iranian revolutionary guards against entrenched Iraqis in the First Gulf War (and with equally gruesome results).

This is NOT - I care to point out - a complaint against the scenario by itself.

Some possibilities to make things a bit tougher for the Spanish side:
- giving the Russian an OBA and/or some longer-ranges SW (MMG/HMGs, Lt Mtr, 82mm Mtr)
- adding some VP hexes to force the Spanish player to garrison the whole line
- tweaking the VP requirements

Thanks for your AAR, UP844, your comments are greatly appreciated!

In fact, the russians did fire even with AT guns to the spanish lines, also with mortars, together with their field artillery and Katyushas. The two hour barrage was so tremendous that probably the two spanish companies are a bit overestimated in their strenght. On the other hand, the russian infantry met their advance difficulted not only by spanish MG-34, also by the terrain: the 06:40 hours iced, plain ground was a muddy moon landscape a 08:40 hours. Russian tanks pushed forward towards Krasny Bor leaving behind their own infantry in many occasions. Also, as russian infantry advanced, the artillery began to roll barrage to cripple also the spanish second line. But I ommited these details in the design proccess searching play balance. Historically the russians were rejected twice, but pure, brute numbers finally overrun the spanish defences.

It would have been nice to have a little amount of barbed wire and anti-personnel minefields. Although most of these devices disappeared as a result of the russian barrage, some of them survived.

It�s no clear if this sector was attacked by T-34 or KV-1s, both were present at Krasny Bor, but I met that T-34 were too fast and they tended to do exactly what they did in real life: run for the exit hexes at full speed leaving behind their infantry. So I decided to introduce KV-1s.

I thought also a possible special rule, give a second crew armed with a PSK to the PaKs to simulate the PaK 36 Stielgranate 41, so giving some chance to kill the KVs, but finally I discarded that. Historically, the spanish infantry was virtually defenceless against the nearly 100 russian tanks in Krasny Bor, two of them were killed by a captain in other sector of the battle, a third one by a engineer battalion private with a Tellermine in the streets of Krasny Bor. Surprisingly enough, probably a T-34 was also knocked out by a PaK 36!

I sincerely appreciate your suggestions, although being an old ASL player, I�m a rookie in TotH scenario design. But I think that the main goal has been achieved, I mean, a reasonabily fun and interesting scenario, with the historical background in mind. I�ll kep in mind your scenario desing tips!

< Message edited by ArtReg250 -- 10/17/2018 9:23:22 AM >

_____________________________

"Duro es el enemigo y duro es tambi�n el invierno ruso. Pero... �no importa! M�s dura es a�n mi raza (...)"

General de Divisi�n Agust�n Mu�oz Grandes

(in reply to UP844)

Post #: 7