Well Gateway has come and gone, and so how our super-sized Kursk game. I had some responsibilities with the convention, so Harold was on his own. Kudos to him for pulling it off. It was a lot of work and I should have helped him more.
In the end, there were over 100 tanks on the board, platoons of infantry on both sides. Ironically, both Harold and I spent a lot of time setting up the scenario. And what we thought would happen, didn't. Something about the plan not surviving contact with the enemy.
Using Glantz's book on Kursk, we modeled the force after the corrected units in Glantz's book. The idea was to recreate Leibstandarte's thrust down the rail line to Prokarovka. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for Leibstandarte, the Soviets attacked at the same time.
Everything was going fine with our scenario, until the Soviets popped up with some infantry in a farm house. The German commander shifted his SS-panzergrenadiers to his right flank and assaulted the farm house. The farm house became the focal point of the battle.
Leibstandarte halted, deployed their artillery and began to engage the Soviets at long range. At the same time the SS infantry took the farm house. The Soviets tried to push their infantry into the farm house and the fight was on.
The problem is (for the Soviets) this is the fight the SS were designed to fight. Any player of Flames of War knows, digging out Fearless Veteran infantry out of buildings takes lots of infantry with support (artillery, tanks, etc). The Soviets have that, but they also have Leibstandarte's tanks and artillery to deal with.
A few turns later, the Soviet 5th Guards Tank Corps was a burning wreck. Victory to the Germans.
Photos can be found here:
Prokorovka Photo's
To quote James Dunnigan, "Playtest the dumb stuff!"
Tim, they call him...
