PBEM A test of wills game two over (Soviets)

[YueJin]

There seems to be a lack of detailed AAR's for this wonderful game so I figured I'd try my hand at one, partly in the hope it will get me to think about my play as well.

The Soviet 9th tank Division has been given orders to exploit the bridgehead over the Main River gained so daringly by the desant airborne troops earlier in the day. Only the battered American III armoured division stood between the Russians and an all-out breakthrough towards the Rhine River. The time is 2200 hours on July 22nd, heavy rain is falling and night-time gloom is settling in. The Soviet tankers hoped such conditions would provide good cover for their advance, whilst them Americans had confidence their thermal optic systems would give them the edge in such testing conditions.

The 1st Guards tank regiment would lead the advance from Froschhausen into the woods overlooking Weiskirchen whilst the 1/1321st MRR which has been attached to 1st Guards HQ is set to assault into the centre of town in 30 minutes once the tanks have cleared the road ahead.

The breakout from Heinburg into Klein-Auheim was predicted to be a bloody one by soviet high command 2/1321st MRR were to lead the assault into the town, casualties in this unit are expected to be near catastrophic due to the likelihood of prepared mines and obstacles on the roads and surrounding area. The 1321st’s T-72’s would take position in the woods overlooking the town to hopefully provide suppressing fire onto the defenders of the outskirts. In support of this attack a massive prepared artillery barrage from 12 203mm guns, 24 Gvodzika’s and smoke cover from the vasiliek mortars would come crashing down into the town at the start of the engagement. It was only to be hoped that this would not be wasted ammunition.

The Akatsiya’s were set to lay down minelets on roads is was expected the Americans might use as well as being on call for counterbattery fire against the MRLS’s and M109’s that were known to be in the area.
In the South a small recon detachment was to screen the villages of Dudenhofen and Jugesheim in the hope that they would convince any American units deployed in the area to remain put rather than moving North to where the real fighting would be taking place.

All was now set for the finale of the engagement between 3rd armoured and the 9th Guards that had been unfolding over the last two days.

[YueJin]

The first 20 minutes of the engagement proved to be every bit as brutal as 1st Guards HQ expected.

The opening artillery barrages proved effective knocking out what was presumed to be a number of bradleys in Klein-Auheim. However, disaster struck as the vasilieks ran out of smoke ammunition after the first volley! Their quartermaster has already been returned to the rear for court martial on the charge of gross incompetence. As a result of this 2/1321 was essentially wiped out without offering a shot in return, 36 BTR 60’s and their infantry were either destroyed or rendered inoperable on the minefields. The only bright spot in the north was the destruction of an entire M150 platoon by the T72’s, hopefully clearing the way for the next assault.

In the south, the T-80’s were more fortunate, finding a number of minefields but only 3 had their tracks blown off, none were unrecoverable. Additionally an American forward cavalry scout unit was located and its two bradleys destroyed.

Overall, not much movement made due to the obstacles and mines. The loss of a whole MMR battalion was a horrible loss but not unexpected. With the minefields clear Soviet HQ hoped that with another artillery barrage the next battalion could storm the town.

Current losses read 751 Soviet, 323 American.


Unfortunately it seems I cannot post 'links e-mails or phone numbers' until seven days after my 10th post despite the first picture uploading fine. Could an admin help me out with this or is this AAR a no go until I make 10 posts and wait 7 days?

Edit: It seems I can upload the attachment, I just can't embed it in the post so seems I can carry on, just a bit more clumsily.

[CapnDarwin]

Thanks for the AAR. The days and posts thing is a Matrix anti-spam thing. Sorry that is causing you problems. Always happy to see new AARs!

[governato]

Nice AAR!

I would spread your artillery ASAP though...

[YueJin]

The next twenty minutes would prove to Soviet high command that a full breakout in this sector was an impossibility. American armour had not even been encountered yet and already the 9th Guards had suffered over 30% casualties. In less than 40 minutes 21 T-80’s and 12 T-72’s had been knocked out of action entirely by minefields and artillery, almost half the tank force and a third of the MRR was out of commission.

The assault on Weiskirchen has been called off and all units on that axis of attack are seeking shelter and have orders to be constantly moving. The second wave will still go ahead as planned into Klein-Auheim but their objectives are limited to the town outskirts.

I’m essentially playing to try and get a contested battle result now, take one or two objectives, keep most of my force hidden and pound enemy locations with artillery. In one turn of artillery fire almost 50% of my direct fire capability has been destroyed. If I played this scenario again I would take it completely differently sacrificing all recon to clear the minefields/obstacles and spending the first 2-3 hours of the scenario in an artillery bombardment.

Current score reads 2817 Soviet losses to 605 American, both sides kills nearly entirely from artillery. Turns out this might not have been a good scenario to AAR as nearly 40% of my force is gone, there’s a real possibility this could end without me even having seen more than 10 American units.

(The stack on the Weiskirchen road were scheduled to arrive at 10 minute intervals so they wouldn't get strung out but when artillery landed on the first unit they stopped moving and so they all piled up.)

[YueJin]

With only 26 active tanks remaining 9th Guards was moved to a wholly defensive posture. For the next 4-5 hours an blind artillery bombardment would be laid down and the remnants of the ground forces ordered to dig in at Froschausen and Hainburg. Mines would be laid down to protect the roads into the Main bridgehead in the hope that the Americans would launch their own costly counterattack.

Losses are at 4,571 Soviet (59%) and 1,358 American.

(No luck with counterbattery so far so all artillery has been changed to barrage orders, with some luck they might be able to scrape a tactical or minor defeat).

[Mad Russian]

Single phase assaults aren't normally a good idea.

This scenario has a very short brutal ending if you simply attack all across the line.

It's been my experience that you have to play the AI as you would a human player to be successful. That means a two prong out of phase attack.

The first attack goes in at a location of your choosing. It leads with it's recon to see what is out there. The other attack location sits and waits. Usually for the amount of time it takes for the first attack to be developing well. Then you launch the other attack. That will normally have enemy forces on the move towards the first attack. It catches some of them out of position and hopefully even some of them out in the open. It would depend on how I felt the day of the attack if I used all my smoke to support the first or the second attack.

In either case, the second attack would be the hammer intended to break the NATO line.

Good Hunting.

MR

[YueJin]

The transition to defence went as smoothly as could be expected, nearly all units are now out of sight and the artillery knocked out a number of Bradleys. Only 35% of the original Soviet force remains though so unless the few remaining tanks and the one surviving MRR battalion can knock out around 1,000 points of Americans for no loss this will be a decisive defeat. Not much else to report as little contact has been made.

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

Single phase assaults aren't normally a good idea.

This scenario has a very short brutal ending if you simply attack all across the line.

It's been my experience that you have to play the AI as you would a human player to be successful. That means a two prong out of phase attack.

The first attack goes in at a location of your choosing. It leads with it's recon to see what is out there. The other attack location sits and waits. Usually for the amount of time it takes for the first attack to be developing well. Then you launch the other attack. That will normally have enemy forces on the move towards the first attack. It catches some of them out of position and hopefully even some of them out in the open. It would depend on how I felt the day of the attack if I used all my smoke to support the first or the second attack.

In either case, the second attack would be the hammer intended to break the NATO line.

Good Hunting.

MR

The problem was this is the first time I've played a map with both minefields and starting artillery. In most maps the NATO artillery arrives from reserves after the tanks are already through the minefields. None of the counters were stacked in the first 20 minutes but artillery still claimed over 30 tanks as they were stuck. As I said if I replayed this map with the prior knowledge of the mine positions I would sacrifice the BRDM recons and probably the BRDM Fagots as the most expendable units to clear the minefields for an attack to go in. My opponent also used his artillery to lay down a secondary minefield making any direct assault suicidal. I feel sacrificing units to clear the minefields and laying down a two hour bombardment on likely rifle/bradley positions would have opened up the game.

It's obvious this map is a very different ball game to most others and requires careful preparation rather than the aggressive sledgehammer needed on other maps to crush existing NATO forces and get into good positions before their reserves arrive.

[YueJin]

A rare taste of success for 9th Guards, brought about as all of the death so far has been, by mines.

A platoon of 4 M1A1's blunders onto one of the minefields laid down by the Akatsiyas (southern minefield) and is wiped out. All we need is one more instance of that and we'll be into the tactical loss region.

[Mad Russian]

One thing I learned long ago, in FPC I learn something about the game every single time I play. So, no game play is 'wasted' so to speak.

Good Hunting.

MR

[ashandresash]

Oh, man. This game really punishes your mistakes, and encourages you to make proper recon tasks.

Good for YueJin, for sharing your experience (and making all of us learn a bit more about Red Storm).

[YueJin]

Well this defensive lark is going rather well, we lose the last T-72 but claim around fifteen unknown contacts through artillery fire. The minefield in the North (highlighted hex) is triggered and bombarded. The force may be hanging on just above 30% strength but if the remnants can survive a little while longer mines and artillery may make sure there aren't all that many Americans around to retake the bridgehead.

5,320 kills for the Americans, 2,575 for the Soviets now.

As a side note, I'm now getting two turns to every American one as I've not lost any HQ's and whilst some whole units have been removed from the OOB the chain of command is still pretty healthy. I'm guessing some of my blind artillery fire took out a few American HQ's as well. It's allowing for some really responsive artillery fire

[Alex1812]

I have repaired bridge in the North part of the map and now my mobile infantry has a good chance to destroy Soviet artillery

PS. I don't see YueJin's screenshots [8D]

[YueJin]

In a move of great cunning and worthy of admiration, the Americans have repaired the Northern bridge across the Main and have flanked 9th Guards artillery positions. However, the rapidity of the Soviet command structure allowed new orders to be given to the artillery just as their potions were about to be overrun. The final minelet barrage was placed on the road being taken by the one visible mechanized infantry unit and ended up landing right on top of them! Over the next few minutes the entire unit vanished under a cloud of 203mm shells plotted in the hope that the minefield would halt the American infantry.

Unfortunately there is still one relatively untouched mechanised unit within firing range of the artillery and spotting for the American guns. They have 3 minutes before new orders can be relayed to the Soviet artillery, will it be long enough to finish off enough guns to force a Russian retreat?

(minelets are incredibly effective, this should have been the end of my artillery but by plotting minelets in the path of that unit and additional barrages on top of that I could snare and destroy the entire unit. If I wasn't out of them I'd repeat the trick next orders on the other unit.)

Quick question, I know a lot of Soviet guns post WWII kept their direct fire sights, I'm wondering if the 203mm guns in this scenario would have them as they were engaging at a range of less than 500m.

[YueJin]

The artillery does get one final barrage off but American counterbattery fire claim another few guns and pushes us over the 70% losses threshold. The battle ends with 16,711 points for the americans and 3,124 for the Soviets leaving me with 16% and 1% into the decisive defeat bracket.

Looking through the reported kills sheet for the Soviets mines+artillery totalled 75 kills out of 105 total. For the Americans 154 kills of their 286 came from artillery and mines meaning mines+artillery scored 59% of all kills in the game.

The main lesson I'll be taking away from this one is to know if the enemy artillery starts the map deployed, if it does take any route possible to avoid mines, as in this game and in others I'm playing if a unit touches a minefield it WILL be wiped out by artillery in the next 10 minutes, no questions asked. I would suggest that if possible kill markers from mines not be shown as it is immensely powerful soft recon that means for 30 minutes if you fire your artillery at that spot it is guaranteed to hit and kill.

The other thing I'll be trying to do more of is coordinating the artillery barrages with assault using the delay command and tasking multiple batteries to fire smoke due to the risk of running out of smoke rounds if too few batteries are assigned to the task.

Thanks to Alex, my opponent for this game for being prompt with turns, well done to him and I'll try recording another game another day. Let me know what I could do to improve future battle reports and I'll try to use them, not all that experienced in AAR writing.

[YueJin]

Well I was eager to see if I could apply the lessons learnt from the previous game here so I put up the exact same challenge and what do you know, the exact same opponent accepted so this will really be a test of the new tactics. For the format for this report I’m going to try splitting the 1st Guards tank, the 1321st MRR and the artillery group into their own section to try and give a better idea of the orders I’m issuing.

Deployment and initial orders

1st Guards Tank
The 1st Guards Tank are taking up assault positions on the outskirts of Seligenstadt. Depending on recon findings they will either strike into Weiskirchen or further south at Dudenhofen based on how well obstacle clearing goes and expected resistance at either objective.

1321st MRR
Two battalions of the 1321st are in staging areas around Klein-Krotzenburg and Hainburg. They are looking to either attack Kein-Auheim in overwhelming force after the artillery barrage or alternatively to use the woods for cover and circle around to attack with one battalion from the West if I think the recon elements moving to the crossroads can screen such a move. Once obstacles are clear, the regiment’s attached T-72’s will try to approach the town from the West and take firing positions in the woods around the lake. All of the battalions have two companies further forward and one in reserve in an attempt to make sure they won’t go completely combat ineffective.

Brigade attached artillery group
The artillery is laying down a mixture of suppression and neutralizing fire on the outer hexes of Klein-Auheim, Weiskirchen and Jugesheim. It’s unlikely we’ll send an attack onto the plains in the South but the artillery fire is aimed there to convince the Americans an attack there may be possible.


Ps: fiddling with file names to see if I can beat the image embedding filter, managed to do it for some of the previous game's images but having trouble again.

[YueJin]

2228 hours July 22

1st Guards Tank
No action to report here, units hold their position and await scouting reports, one minefield and several obstacles have been found in the central sector

1321st MRR
Again not much happening the North, forward recon elements are clearing obstacles to the East.

Brigade attached artillery group
Artillery fire claims a couple of enemy APCs (since I have 89 points for two kills I'm guessing bradleys) however one battery of Akatsiya's takes five losses to enemy ICM counterbattery fire (that's something I've never seen or been able to do before). Due to this artillery units are moving onto open ground where they can shoot and scoot better and are only receiving two fire missions rather than three in the hope of better dodging counterbattery.

Points wise I'm up 89 to 69 but it is of course early yet. 9:32 still remains to be fought out.

[YueJin]

2321 hours July 22

1st Guards tank
Obstacles to the West are clear and within the next 30 minutes a final decision will be made on whether the T-80's will push West or South based on reconnaissance reports.

1321st MRR
Forward recon elements of the 1321st encounter a patrol of 2 US bradleys and their cavalry scout infantry. One bradley and its infantry is destroyed for the loss of two BRM Korshuns and one BRDM Fagot. Artillery is tasked to finish off the threat as it must be destroyed before seeing the following T-72's which are advancing to their jump off positions in the woods.

Brigade attached artillery group
Thankfully no more counter-battery losses (although that may be due to the lack of fire from my side). Vasilieks continue suppressive fire on the outskirts of major VP towns. 3 batteries are tasked with taking out the last of the American scout unit whilst others either remain on counter-battery (might stop bothering with this as no CB shots have been fired at all so far in the last two games despite enemy artillery firing heavily and multiple batteries being placed on it.) Or completing shoot and scoot moves.

Current kills are 126 American and 143 Soviet.

[Mad Russian]

Much better use of your recon elements this go round. This should have the American a bit worried at this point in the game. You aren't just charging forward on all fronts but picking selected parts of his line and will hit them with the steamroller.

Good Hunting.

MR

[YueJin]

2346 hours July 22nd

After two hours of probing and manoeuvring Soviet command has issued orders for units to move to their final jump off points before the attack.

1st Guards tank

The strike from the T-80's of 1st Guards will land not at Weiskirchen as originally planned but further South at Dudenhofen. The first factor leading to this decision was the lack of fire directed at the BRDMs down there which have reconnoitred the edges of the forest. Secondly additional minefield barrages were observed dropping down on the road to Weiskirchen meaning that any assault along that road would require at least an extra hour of clearing minefields and moving into position. Thirdly, a small valley in the South has been spotted (around the 1,500 VP next to the K174 mark) and soviet tanks would be able to burst from the woods into this and use it as cover to assault directly into Dudenhofen. Additionally, one battalion of the 1321st MRR has been reassigned to 1st Guards command and will strike into Jugesheim from the woods to the North, hopefully pinning any defenders there and cutting off the road for any reinforcements from Weiskirchen.

1321st MRR

A serious annoyance has occured in the North. Whilst T-72's were moving towards their starting locations for the assault a minefield barrage was placed in the road ahead of them. Despite recon spotting the position of the mines, one T-72 company ploughs straight into it (I thought units could adjust their course to take spotted obstacles into account? If not they really should.) The chances are high that NATO artillery will now bombard this spot and wipe out the entire company (pretty much resigned to losing all 13 T-72's here over the next 30 mins while they try and clear it)

In light of this and the decision for 1st Guards to strike South, the ultimate destination for the 1321st has been changed. It is assumed that Klein-Auheim will be a fortress town by now, well defended by dug in infantry, so it is going to be bypassed. The 1321st will take up positions along the N45 and then strike in an offensive going off at the same time as 1st Guards not East, but West into Obertshausen aiming to find American HQ's, Artillery and tanks rather than fortified infantry positions. Once a gap at Obertshausen is spotted, remaining recon elements and BRDM Fagots will break through and begin scouring the countryside for the American artillery.

Brigade attached artillery group

3 203mm guns were lost to counter-battery despite the measures of being on ground allowing for easy movement and only firing one salvo. None of our guns fired in counter-battery. All artillery is going dark now until 30 minutes before the assault when they will open up once more. In the likely vain hope of them ever taking a shot at American artillery all batteries are placed on CB orders but expectations are low.