Subject: Fw: SPWaW after-action report (long) Henri H. Arsenault wrote in message ... OK, here is my first Steel Panthers World at War after-action report. IN fact, the battle isn't quite over, but it's 30 moves... Anyway, to tell the truth, although I was impressed with the game being made available for free for Windows with major improvements, my early polaying bought back memories of the things that I did not like about Steel Panthers: because of the objective-based nature of the game, there is little room for maneuver, and all games end up as mostly a slugfest for the objectives, last man standing wins; and each move takes a long time, as in SPIII. So I began a random scenario last night with the intention of playing a bit to see how it went, then move on to something else. But I gotta say that I was riveted to the computer till midnight, when I had to go to bed. I chose to play the Germans against the Soviets in 1942 on a large map, with most of the options on. Since I am lazy, I chose to let the computer not only choose my units, but to place them as well, and I started the game without checking where the computer had put them, which was a mistake. I had a fairly balanced force, with 13 tanks (9 STUGs and 4 R5s presumably captured fromthe French), about a dozen infantry units (without any transport) plus 3 anti-tank rifles, two machineguns and a couple of spotters and two 88 AT guns, as well as three on-map mortars without transport and a few off-map artillery. The bad news was that the computer placed the two 88s in some woods so that one of them could see no further than one hex, and the other was not much better located, and I had no trucks to move them; neither one fired a shot during the battle. The rest of the force was not badly placed, with most of the infantry including the two MGs to the North and most of the tanks near the center, along with the 3 AT rifle units and the spotters. From the map, it seemed that this would be a meeting encounter, because there was a large unresolved victory hex area on a big hill smack in the middle of the map, with smaller victory areas to the North and South, with each side controlling a victory area far behind their lines.The big hill in the center was practically devoid of cover, but the victory area to the North was in a forested area with large clearings, and the one to the South was in a clear area South of a large hill, but in rough terrain. No Russians were visible, and it seemed clear that the first one to get to the top of the center hill would have a major advantage, but I was worried about racing there with tanks only to be met by a firestorm of antitank fire, so I moved my infantry forward as fast as I could towards the hill with the tanks right behind. My largest infantry concentration was near the objective to the North, so I moved them East and SE so that some could be diverted South if the situation required. For the moment, I did nothing about the objective to the South. I used the group movement and objective flags to quickly move all my units, being careful not to disperse the infantry, who lacked radios and who would become out of command if they strayed too far from their leader. When I reached the top of the center hill, advancing Soviet BT7 tanks became visible to the East, and I kept advancing while firing, in order to get to a hull-down position on the hill. Most of the victory hexes there were on the Eastern slope, but I felt no hurry to expose myself there. This became clear as more and more of the Russian force appeared. It turned out that the Russians had 20 tanks in thee area, mostly BT7s and a few T34s. Without any kind of cover, my infantry in front of my tanks began to take casualties at an alarming rate, but I had spotted a few Russian infantry units approaching with the Russian tanks, and I did not dare to leave my tanks holding the hill without infantry. To the North, I had no trouble taking the victory hexes, but then Soviet infantry supported by a Maxim MG and a few tanks showed up and a firefight broke out. I had diverted four STUGs North towards that area from the Center, and they were quickly involved in the fight, exposing their backs to the Russian tanks advancing to the big hill some 20 hexes or so to the South. Both tank battles showed that the STUG and R5 cannons were not very effective even against BT7 tanks, to say nothing of T34s: I bounced more shells off Russian tanks than Steve McQueen bounced baseballs off the prison wall in Von Ryan's Express! Once in a rare while, one of my tanks did manage to brew up a Russian tank. Fortunately the latter were not much more effective than my own tanks, and most of my tanks on the hill were hull down, which meant that only turret hits could cause harm. As my infantry was being whittled down by the Russian tanks now occupying most of the victory hexes on the hill, I decided that I needed to test the effectiveness of infantry against tanks, and I approached the enemy tanks with infantry and assaulted them; on the hill, the results were mixed: i got one tank, but my infantry took more casualties, and when one of them reached 50%, they broke and ran towards the rear, followed by the rest of the platoon. Actually I was surprised by how many infantry casualties both sides could take before they broke: some Russian units did not retreat until they were annihilated, and very few broke before reaching 50% casualties. To the North, the forested area where the battle was taking place favored infantry, and after driving back the Russian infantry with my larger infantry force, they went to the aid of my four tanks, which were bouncing shell after shell off three Russian tanks. The infantry managed to destroy them with the help of the tanks, while the situation to the South evolved into a new threat for them. In the meantime, seeing no action to the South, I decided that there were no Russians there and I diverted four infantry units fromthe center to take the objectives there, since it was only about 15 hexes away. When they arrived there, they took the four victory hexes without oposition, but then four Russian tanks appeared over the adjacent hill and began to pound away at the infantry. Without any nearby friendly tanks, the infantry took heavy losses, and two units were destroyed before they could get to cover. Bolstered by this result, the Soviet made the mistake of initiating a close pursuit of the remaining infantry, but the latter were retreating into rough terrain, which offers reasonable cover for infantry against tanks. As a result, my surviving infantry managed to take out three of the four Russian tanks, thus no doubt earning an Iron Cross first class, and the fourth tank was soon after taken out by a rear shot from one of my tanks on the big hill. This apparently ended the battle in the South. In the center, I was sweating bullets as my infantry was becoming useless, two of my tanks were immobilized, casualties kept mounting, the Russians occupied most of the victory hexes on the hill, and the number of Russian tanks kept increasing; I had nine tanks on or near the hill, but I could see about 20 Russian tanks in the area, and I was worrying about my shots bouncing off and about getting flanked and pulverized by this force which outnumbered me by more than 2 to 1. Now the PO made a mistake no doubt due to the fact that it was occupying most of the victory hexes on the hill and its forces to the North were taking a beating, and my occupying the victory hexes there, it decided to divert about half its tanks to the North, while the battle there was reaching its peak. This not only reduced the pressure on my tanks on the hill, but it exposed the left flank of the moving tanks to my tanks, who immediately began to fire at them. In the meantime, my three AT rifle teams had managed to get to the top of the hill, where from cover in some craters they blasted away at the Russian tanks on the victory hexes. They were supported by one infantry unit, who disposed of a couple of pesky snipers and some approaching Russian infantry while the AT rifle squads slowly whittled down the Russian tanks one by one. But eventually they were forced to retreat. For a while, my tanks in the North had to fight on two fronts, cleaning up the Russians there while keeping an eye on the rapidly approaching Russian tanks. When they managed to clear out the Russians in the woods, I began to reorganize them to face the oncoming onslaught; this turned out to be more difficult that I expected, because the infantry had become dispersed and many units were out of command. So I had to juggle my command units around to round up their stray sheep, which I was fortunate to have the time to carry out, and by the time that the Russian tank vanguard arrived, I was waiting for them with four tanks and a half-dozen infantry in the woods. Menwhile the battle on the hill was shifting in my favor as the Russian casualties mounted, and suddenly, the whole Russian morale seemed to collapse almost at once; this is probably due to the morale rules that can cause units with low morale to break when nearby units take casualties or break. Russian tanks were abandoned and the remainder headed for their rear, with my units in hot pursuit, tanks shooting into the rear of enemy tanks while infantry assaulted the tanks that they could reach. This is where the situation stands after 9 moves out of 30: the Russians have mostly retreated from the field and I control the three disputed objective areas. However the enemy still owns the large victory hex area far to the NE, where an unknown number of enemies may be waiting; more than half of his tanks, although they have retreated, are probably being rallied in the rear and will no doubt fight again. I have no recon units and the enemy base is in a fairly wooded area, which could be dangerous if he has a number of well-placed AT guns supported by infantry there. So after gathering my forces and choosing a reserve, I will have to go find out if any more surprises are awaiting. But caution is the order of the day. I have the initiative, but I own most of the victory hexes, so the Russian PO wil have to decide whether to hunker down and attempt to give me high casualties as I attack the remaining victory hexes, or wqhether to attempt to regain some of the victory hexes. If I were Mongomery, I would claim victory based on the fact that I have achieved over 70% of my objectives, sit on the victory hexes and wait for the enemy; if I were Rommel, I would throw caution to the winds and try to exploit my initiative to give a knockout punch to the enemy while he is off balance. But I am only Henri, so I guess that I will just muddle through... Henri Subject: Fw: SPWaW after-action report (cont) Henri H. Arsenault ... In my report last week, I had just reached the climax of the game, after the Russians divided their force of about 20 tanks because they occupied most of the objective hexes on the central hill, just when they were about to roll over me. This allowed me to shoot them up, and I had reached the point where most of the Russians had disappeared back towards their own lines, and I was considering whether or not to pursue them. I decided to do so, but cautiously: I moved the four tanks I had near my northern objective SE, and folowed them with some infantry, while the rest of the infantry in the area was sent East and SE, with the mortar squad sitting on the objective slowly moving East watching for any flank attacks (none materialized). The remaining enemy objective cluster was directly East of the Big Hill, so I moved my tanks there forward, shooting at the occasional straggler. The terrain between my forces and the remaining objective was mostly forested North of the road and mostly clear South of the road, so I quickly moved my R5 tanks South of the road to catch any opposition on the flank as my central force of mostly STUGs moved along the road. Suddenly a force of whgat appeared to be about 10 enemy infantry divisions supported by a few of the remaining BT7s launched a counterattack, almost catching me flat-footed. My four Northernmost tanks were in a heavily forested area, and the infantry was behind tghem, so in view of the incrfedible ability of infantry against tanks in covered terrain, I retreated the tanks a bit so that the infantry could catch up. My forward observers did not have a clear view of the area where the enemy infantry was, but fortunately the commander of the four STUGs could see enough so that he could direct some 105 artillery and 81 mm mortar fire into the bunch of enemies. To make a long story short, I beat back the enemy assault thanks to coordinated action by infantry, tanks and artillery, then continued to advance on a very braod front towards the objective, with the intention of enveloping it from the North with infantry and South with the R5 tanks, while my STUGs advanced along the road and just to the North, the latter heavily supported by infantry because of the heavy forest. Just when it began to look like a cakewalk, I discovered that all of my STUGs were out of ammo, and that the R5s only had MG shots left. Fortunately by this time, I was approaching the objective from 3 sides, and my infantry appeared to be in better shape than the Russians, although the latter still had three or four 12-man intact squads. The objective was surrounded by forest on 3 sides, so the terrain favored the defender, and one or two of my squads were badly mauled when they moved adjacent to a victory hex defended by Russian infantry on all sides. The Soviets had hjunkered down most of their remaining force on or adjacent to the victory hexes, so it looked like a bloody battle; but fortunately I still had quite a bit of artillery, and a few devastating barrages into the crowd sent a number of the weaker ones packing, which had an avalanche effect, and soon, a steady stream of retreating Russians was heading for the hills. As the game ended, I owned all the victory hexes and won a decisive victory. Russian losses had been terrible, losing more than 20 tanks and most of the infantry. My own infantry losses were moderate, but I didn't lose any tganks except for a couple of immobilized ones. The critical Russian mistake in this game was separating their tank force into two at the critical juncture, thus exposing the flank of their Northern phalanx in clear terrain to my main tank force on the hill as they moved towards the Northern objective, and doing so without infantry support, towards an area that was heavily forested. This was done to support a faltering combined attack in the area of the Northern objective, which involved a poorly coordinated combined arms attack in heavy terrain that happened to contain most of my infantry supported by four tanks, where the new tank support arrived too late. If the Russians had continued their attack on the central hill, they might have succeeded in pushing me off, not to mention possibly destroying most of my tanks, since they outnumbered me there by more than 2 to 1. In any case, the infantry in the centre was much too far behind the armor. A tense battle, and one that shows how difficult it is for a PO to properly coordinate a combined-arms battle and to avoid decisions that are bad. A few noticeable things from this battle: 1) it takes a lot of shots to destroy an enemy tank, so there is a strong possibility of running out of amo before the end of a long scenario; 2) If one hits an enemy tanks often enough, the crew will abandon it (a half-dozen Russian tanks were abandoned in this game); 3) Infantry is extremely effective against tanks in covered terrain; 4) Morale of units seems strongly affected by nearby friendly units breaking and retreating, and a domino effect can sometimes occur where a few retreating units panics the whole army. Henri