Battle of Königslutter am Elm - 5 Jul 1984 - AAR

 

Played through the Königslutter am Elm game in 8 turns over a total of about 3-4 hours. A bit of a blood bath but a useful outing for the rules.

AAR

The Soviet 1/62 Gds Tank Regiment took the northern route from the Lappwald through Süpplingenburg to Konigslutter. They hit the minefield in front of Süpplingenburg head on, and the combination of Chieftains and Harrier ground attack managed to take out the mine-clearing tanks and lead companies. 2/62 GTR then came up, pushing through and round the wrecks of 1/62, and inflicted enough damage on 3RTR BG to push them back from Süpplingenburg, and on through Schickelsheim to join a final defence at Rottorf.

On the southern flank the MR/BMP Bn of 62GTR took the lead, and had slightly more luck with the minfields. But the RGJ BG dug into Wolsdorf and Warberg held the BMPs off until reinforced by 3/62 GTR and stonked by repeated 2S1 and BM27 missions. A BMP assault was finally needed to clear the RGJ out, who then fell back through Rabke to join the final defence of Konigslutter. By this time the RRF BG was the only capable fighting force, whilst the Soviets still had 2/62 and 3/62 going strong, and elements of M/62 and ENDEX was declared.

FRAGO Rules

It was evident pretty quickly that the Attack-Defence model that I'd used in the BAOR/Corps game didn't work too well here - mainly as most combat was ranged and so the attack/defence model meant less. I'll probably recast to Anti-Armour/Anti-Infantry next time - which is what an earlier version had.

The dice per platoon model worked well though, and happy with the attack values for most combats, and the assaults worked well. Indirect fire seemed a bit week, should at least suppress every time. Ground attack/helarm also seemed a bit weak, but air defence did its bit and took a Harrier and TOW Lynx sortie out.

I massively over-allocated the LOG/Activation tokens, both sides barely using half by turn 6. Will significantly scale down next time. From turn 6 I zeroised the tokens and went onto the A1 roll which made for more thinking about allocation but still a bit generous. The model felt good though.

The old paper Heroics and Ros buildings were better than the small 6mm ones, and the 1/1000th. Also the 6mm trees better than the 1/1000th ones. I wouldnt mind trying with some 2mm or 3mm tanks though.

The overall scale and effect was pretty much what I was after though - this felt like a Brigade game, not a company or platoon one. So iterate the rules and try again, perhaps at Bn level whilst I have Waterloo on the main table, and do another Bde game in the new year.