Combined arms - Battle over the Crimea Campaign Turn 3,4 and 5

 

Reeling from the loss of the communications centre, the war in the air began to escalate, the inexperienced soviet air force now tried to defend their fleet and ground troops from the Luftwaffe.

 This campaign turn the weather was overcast, meaning airstrikes were far less effective with a -1 to destroy. Drawing from the deep reserves the Soviets threw their T28c's and more T26's into the grinder.

 Soviet Strategy was centred around control of waterways and choke points, Naval dominance allowed the soviets to quickly move reinforcements around the map protecting them from air attack with escorting warships and fighter cover.

The 3rd campaign turn began with a General offensive from the soviets, 3 land orders allows the infantry in the east to move south and board transports, in the north the Infantry at the factory used a move order to remove a blitz token (If infantry have a blitz token they cannot initiate combat) and the tank was concealed moving towards the airfield.

End of turn 3, Germany decided to reinforce whilst the soviets chose to battle. Seeing I was moving units into position still I chose not to initiate any battles.

Turn 4 saw a radical shift in the south as the assault fleet instead moved to secure the coms network as the panzers moved forward to recapture, no air orders were able to be played this turn, luckily for the soviets they got the scramble initiative card, allowing them to deploy 2 planes out of sequence without an order at the end of the turn. The Sturmovik's descended on the panzers threatening the communications relay, the Panzers decimated one squadron but lost to the second wave of bombers.

The Soviet tanks and infantry launched an assault on the defenders of the airfield and they were forced to withdraw but were not destroyed.

Turn 5 saw the Germans reinforce, the Soviets battled. First game out of the gate was Blood Red skies, we rolled for the scenario 'Bounced', the player with the largest number of planes is the defender and setups in the middle of the table with half of their force whilst the attacker setups 18inches away, the remaining defender planes are in reserve which you can see a little blue and red triangle in the bottom right of the board, that's where my reserves were.

The chase began straight away, the inexperienced soviet plans scattered into the clouds for cover.

The soviets counter attack out of the cloud cover

Soviet high cover finally came in and missed all their perfectly lined up shots, Soviets walked away as the loser after losing 1 plane and accruing 9 boom chits to the Germans 5.

The Planes then bombed and destroyed the Infantry unit next to the airfield, evening the odds for the ground battle.

Tanks vs Infantry battle near the airfield

The scenario we rolled for this battle was Surrounded, half the German army starts in the middle of the table whilst the soviets start off of the board and must move on in a first wave, remaining units left in reserve can come on any board edge so long as their opponent didn't use that board edge last.

Preliminary bombard hammered the German defenders.

The Conscript squad pushed forward scouting out the village, drawing German Infantry fire. The light AT set to ambush opened fire on the First T-28 that came onto the board, immobilising it but then being killed in turn by the Fusillade of MMG fire. 

The Truck rolled up the road and disgorged it's cargo of Naval infantry whom promptly despatched a Heer infantry squad.

Followed by another truck with a flamethrower team and a Naval infantry squad, the flamethrower despatched an MMG team whilst the Naval infantry assaulted and wiped out another Heer infantry squad before resolving into the shack.

Turn 2 saw the Flamethrower team move forward and burn the second MMG out of cover, before a squad of SS charged in from the Short board edge to get an easy kill on the AT rifle team.

The flamethrower team ran outta gas and was removed.

The two AT rifle teams used their ambush to open fire killing 2 SS men.

The Panzer III rolled up the road and took shots at the Naval infantry with its Hull MMG, whilst the main gun targeted A truck - But Missed! The BA-20 Armoured car with Flamethrower counter attacked and set the tank alight, it's crew bailing.

Finally with Soviet domination of the centre of the map and the single German unit in reserve failing twice to come on we resolved turn 3's air strike (destroying a truck) and called it a day. 

Rolling and failing to destroy the infantry unit, it retreated a hex and held the airfield. End of campaign turn 5 the Soviets and Germans both scored 2 VP's, Germany leads by 1.