SU-76i in 1902nd SAP – A Crossfire Battle Report

Dick Bryant has been play testing my SU-76i in 1902nd SAP – A Crossfire Scenario. In his first go he found the same flaw I had previously, i.e. the attacker just makes a hole and pours through. I Mused about how to solve that and suggested he try attacking from the short edge. Dick tried this with much better results.

Play test

This is how Dick described his second attempt at the scenario:

We played the revised scenario this past Thursday as a US-German affair, giving the US M-36 for the SUs.

The German defense was able to slam the US to a standstill. The Germans lost one stand to the German 10 stands + 1 Sherman tank! There was one flaw, however, that I didn’t notice until a couple of initiatives into the game. There is a end-to-end LOS across the table. This didn’t matter when the attack was across the long side but made a difference on the short end attack. See attached map. The German observer at the far end of the table and the two Pack 38s caused havoc on the US company A . Once they were seen, the US didn’t dare bring any armor on from their right. The attempt at bringing armor on in the center met with a knock out from a panzerfaust in the central house. The US attack from their left ran into HMG, mortar and small arms fire that decimated the largest platoon in the attack (1/B )and pinned and suppressed the other two platoons. Though the game lasted 3 hours, the moving clock got only to 1000 hours – so no armor for the germans though they did not need it. The Germans had to move only one of their reserve Platoons (see center of the map).

I learned that you cannot use a chess clock with my group – much too “talky”. You want to buy one cheap?

All in all , everyone enjoyed the game with the changes. One Thing more -You must unequivocally require bog-in checks or not. There is nothing stated in the scenario, so we tossed a coin and bog in rules were applicable. This did limit what the Us could do with its early advantage in armor but…..

I think that the scenario was fair in this iteration, though the Germans took advantage of the long line of sight to close down any US attack on the German Left. My grandson was running the Germans with one other person and the US had 3 players – I refereed. My grandson is noted for his extremely good dice rolls, hence my saying “Great Dice rolls does no mean great generalship!” As for me my dice rolls are such that players on my side wont use dice that I have touched!

Dick sent through an annotated map to show the action:

Table SU-76i from Short Edge Dick Bryant
Table SU-76i from Short Edge Dick Bryant

Comments

I’m glad Dick and his crew enjoyed the scenario the second time through. And I’m particularly glad that the assessment is that the scenario is now “fair” – particularly given the US forces got hammered.

I only play bogging down when I mention it in the scenario. In this case I’m assuming the terrain is tank friendly so did not include it as a scenario special rule. My assumption is based on the premise that the attacker would not try a tank “breakthrough” if the tanks were likely to bog down.

Regrettably I didn’t spot the LOS flaw on the map. I’ve updated the scenario and map. The long LOS is blocked and I took the opportunity to shrink a few more bits of terrain. I’ve flipped the map to short edge attack but retained a long edge variant mainly because I have the map so I might as well use it.

Having looked at the scenario again I also noticed the game time is very stretched out. 9 hours of game time with a 30 min clock move on a 5+ is very, very long. 6 1/2 hours would be normal. I have changed the moving clock to move on a 4+. So the game will move a lot quicker, in game time terms.

Check out the updated scenario: SU-76i in 1902nd SAP

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