Flames of War 12mil: The Defence of State Farm 144

 

For this Sunday's Solo game I wanted to visit the Ost Front - specifically, North Western Ukraine circa 1943. However I used my favourite mission from the Berlin book: Buying Time. To my mind this is the most historically sound scenario yet, as the attacker has twice the points of the defender.

I also wanted to go large and throw down all my newly painted Victrix 1:144th scale additions to my existing Dragon Armour and other 12mm AFVs from various sources.

The scenario is generic for that time and place - hopefully a reasonable facsimile of industrial scale collective agriculture carved out of coniferous woodlands on the western edge of the 'black earth' region.

The Red Army's core force would be the trusty T-34/76, somewhat under gunned at this stage of the war but hopefully some SU-152s would help out! There were plenty of Motor Rifles and lashings of artillery:

I initially resisted the temptation to have the German force full of big cats, but ultimately couldn't reach half the number of Russian points with my existing collection of PzIVs (and I don't have any PzIIIs in this scale - Victrix kindly note!) Hence the platoon of Tigers!

The Germans deployed first:

Then it was the Red Army's turn to move up to the start line: clouds of dust, the roar of diesel and the trembling black earth meant that this would be no surprise attack!

The diversionary feint moves forward maximising cover.

The main attack meets early and determined resistance - the SU152's armour is weaker than expected!

The KV1s forced the Tiger Ambush to sprung early!

With inevitable results:

At the point of the Red Army's main effort the diminutive SU-76s gamely tried to take over from the SU-152s...

At least they were a little more mobile and able to get in some side armour shots against the PzIVs.

However, having made short work of the KV-1s the Tiger's took an interest in the remaining Russian lighter AFVs. They made for messy eating!

Over by the State Farm the diversion certainly succeeded in tying down one of the Pz IV platoons.

But at great cost!

The Red Army's focus of attack was easy to identify when finally the Stuka's showed up!

At the same time the German arty and mortars was keeping the Motor Rifles consistently pinned down.

Having finished painting up another batch of Tridtsat' chetyres the Russians refused to reinforce failure and sent these reinforcements to the feint attack - it seemed to be doing better...

Now it was Frontal Aviation's turn to shine - they got a Tiger!

In retaliation the Stukas paid another visit, and dropped their calling card on the tail of the reinforcement column - welcome to the battle Comrades!

The intervention of the Tigers on the Russian main attack having proved... 

decisive...

The feint attack had no hope of reaching the far objective by turn 6. The defence of State Farm 144 had held - for today!