The Citadel: The Breakthrough- Breaking Through (Game 2)

 

We played the second game in the Citadel: Breakthrough a couple of weeks ago at the Abyss. Graham (the  Soviets) forced me to withdraw from table 1 with significant losses while he had none.....time for a different plan.

The Patrol Markers are the larger discs, Graham had yet to place his objectives, the one on the road was an error, one was placed further to the left and one in one of the houses. The photo is from the Soviet edge.

As you can see this terrain is wide open and we are playing the Attack and Defend scenario from CoCv2 as written. We had finally sorted the terrain interpretation in respect to the streams which offer light cover only but are not difficult to cross. As you can see there is a lot of open ground. The scenario requires 2 Objectives and the Attackers have to capture one of them (one disappears after the end of turn 1-attackers choice). So what to do? I was essentially missing 1 squad while the Soviets were intact with 4 Sections...so 2 versus 4. Neither player had a lot of support points and guessing that Graham likes to be in Hard Cover (there was none on the terrain). I felt he probably would go with entrenchments. 

Forces

Germans (FM 10)

1942 Panzergrenadier Platoon #1 (less 7 men)

Supports  9

Kubelwagon

sIG33

Soviets (FM 10 )

1942 Soviet Rifle Platoon #1 (intact)

Supports 4

4 Entrenchments

The Game

So off we went. I selected the Kubelwagon in case I got a chance to race across the table with the 3 man team and capture the objective on the left which was in the open. But this was going to be a difficult task without a heavy bombardment. For this reason, I went with the sIG33, it is a beast with a HE of 13d6. It has a gun shield so placed in the forest on my right flank it would be in Hard Cover.

As you can see Graham did indeed take 4 entrenchments and placed his sections with 2 LMGs in each while placing his other Sections in Light Cover behind the wooden fences. This was a lot of fire power in an attempt to take out the attackers.

I held off deploying the IG untilI got a double phase so I would get to fire twice at the entrenched Soviet Troops. In the interim I deployed my 2 intact squads in the stream in light cover. I did use them to fire and they had some success but they were primarily there to engage in suppressive fire. This was at some cost but as it was, the IG caused significant attrition on the entrenched troops so they were forced to withdraw....a German Victory........on to table 3.

Summing Up

Not a whole lot of effect on the Platoon Morale, but the Germans did manage to cause permanent attrition to the Soviets to make up for the German losses in Game 1.