My initial Russian set-up is above. Seeing that beautiful east-west fire lane I set the machine guns forward, planning to move them back after the Finnish Defensive Fire Phase. That was a fatal mistake. By the end of turn 1, the eastern two squads had surrendered and there was a Finnish half-squad behind the western stack in Z2 [and that squad managed to kill the leader and break the last squad in Z1 as they withdrew.
After the Turn 1 fiasco, I managed to stage a fairly decent withdrawal along the lines shown on the left. Problem was that I left a squad or so along each one of those lines without causing significant losses to the Finns. Delays, yes, but little actual losses. By turn six, I was defending with two squads in the building and two squads along the graveyard wall and that was it. None of them was going to make it off the board, especially with the bakery on fire on the S board edge, so when Voss slipped a full platoon to H10, the game was pretty much over. Still, it was a good game, and a very important reminder to protect one's machine guns. Nothing is more annoying than being shot by your own, now captured, guns. Next up, Scenario 5 - In Sight of the Volga. No Finns this time, just well led and armed Germans in Stalingrad. Should be interesting. |