Flames of War Firestorm Kursk - Day 2 Game 3

‘The Tigers are Burning’ was the Pravda headline after the battle of Kursk. We now know that Soviet claims for destroying Tigers was wildly overstated – they claimed to have destroyed far more Tigers than the Germans actually brought to the battle in the first place! However, a few were destroyed in action, but could we emulate that in our third Firestorm Kursk Game?

Bryan had gone to the trouble of researching two possible scenarios to add a layer of period flavour over the game, dependent on who was attacking.

Happily for the historical development of this still early stage of our Firestorm campaign, the Germans won the die roll to attack, and, heavily leaned upon, ‘chose’ the Southern Sector for this attack - again!

We are planning to keep the Prokhorovka option in the Firestorm for our all day grand finale at the end of the year. 

In this scenario, the Germans are allowed a platoon of 2 Tigers plus escort Pz III. 

However the wrinkle is that in the smoke and maelstrom of deadly armoured battle accross the undulating and smoke wreathed battlefield…

one of the Tigers belonging to the Abteilung commander is missing somewhere on the battlefield, cut off by the rampage of the attacking T-34s. 

The Mission victory for the Germans are to find and rescue the CO’s Tiger, seizing an objective and rolling 4-6D6 at each objective until he is found. The CO’s (Tiger Ace) Tiger then comes into play for the game, in search of any remaining objectives.

An additional wrinkle is that, taking advantage of the smoke, the single on table Tiger has hidden movement, its true location not being revealed each turn until the Soviet shooting stage!

To further complicate matters, most of the battlefield is wreathed in smoke – giving the Germans a -1 penalty to their shooting. This penalty does not apply to the Soviet T-34s, presumably because infantry are pointing out the German targets to them.

At the start of the game I’m not sure that the German Players, Peter and Caesar, were fully clear on the scenario, or even if I was myself!

However they charged on regardless – easy to do inside a Tiger! They had made up a force of 2 platoons – the Tigers and a PzIV platoon, each a formation of 60 points, no Air no AA. As well as the CO being a Tiger Ace, one of the PzIVs was a Panzer Ace, with a ROF of 3 – useful!

The heroic Soviet defenders of the Motherland, Bryan and I, also had a 60 point formation each. I had 2 platoons of 3 Hero T-34s, 2 SU-85 and formation commander.

I paid 6 points for the T34-57 command card, uparming 3 of my T-34s with this enhanced main gun used by Special Tank Company 100. Its AT is upgraded from 9 to 11, but firepower downgraded from 2 to 4, presumably because of the experimental nature of the gun and ammo. But overall a wise investment when out Tiger shooting!

With the objective laid out biased towards the eastern end of the table, opposite which the Germans had deployed their Tiger platoon (or half thereof) this is where I deployed by T34-57s



supported by my pair of SU-85s.

Bryan deployed in the middle of the table, facing Caesar’s less daunting PzIVs.

Whilst the first German move seemed fairly cautious, the hidden movement of the Tiger revealed then revealed it to be nose to nose with my T34-57s!

Surprisingly, both platoons survived this first exchange of volleys unscathed – clearly nerves were high and barrels cold!

However out in the middle sector Bryan was gradually swamping Caesar’s PzIVs, despite the efforts of the Panzer Ace…

Attention inevitable focussed on the Tiger, however...



and whilst I managed to get some 57mm hits on it, the 4+ firepower conversion made it seem hard to knock out, even if it was concentrating its fire on my SU-85s.

The Tiger and its faithful escort ploughed determinedly on for the objective and duly found the lost CO 



– German firepower on the table had just doubled!

The game seemed lost to the heroic strivers for Worker’s and Peasant’s Rights, but Commissar Bryan encouraged us to play on for a couple more moves…

And right is indeed might as a 57mm round finally knocked out the CO’s Tiger!

Our next game will conclude Day 2 of Operation Zitadelle with a game set on the Northern Front – will the gallant Red Army continue to hold the line for a second day?

So to what extent is our Firestorm Campaign emulating history? Well with 3 games under our belt - 2 games for each day of battle, so this is midday on the 5th July 1943 - the Germans are attacking resolutely, taking ground but failing to achieve a breakthrough. Pretty historical I'd say...