This Thursday the theme at the Wollongong Wargamers was Flames of War, and Operation Spring Awakening, late March 1945, had been requested.
The table was laid out to represent the undulating country south east of Lake Balaton. Hungary rather than Russia so a reasonable road net was laid down. This was necessary if we were to have any sort of game given the apocalyptic levels of mud involved with 2 tank armies moving during the spring thaw!
I was the Russian player and got to deploy all my platoons first. I decided upon a forward defence with my heavy armour, keeping my T34-85s in ambush. My motor rifles would dig in around both objectives.
Ed and Daniel, pictured, would command the Germans.
They made good use of the road net...
But, by dint of good use of movement orders, actually made pretty good progress cross country too, despite the mud. Damn!
My decision to deploy forward turned out to be a mistake!
I was finding out the hard way that my guns couldn't penetrate a Tiger II's front armour!
Bagged a couple of Panthers though!
With the Tigers rapidly approach the near objective it was time to deploy my T34-85 ambush...Because the wily Germans had been advancing in echelon, I found it hard to find space to deploy the ambush that would expose the Tiger's side armour...
Three of them got a shot, and killed one and bailed another. Retribution was swift however. The rest of the T34-85 company got out of there!
Meanwhile the German PanzerGrenadiers were creeping up the flank of my infantry:
But by this stage this was the least of my problems!
It was time to charge in...
and hope for side shots at close range!
But the mud was a double edged sword, and the Soviet tankers weren't up to clever Blitz moves! What few side shots there were missed!
By Turn 5 the Germans were all over the objective and had wiped out all my armour. A very convincing win to Ed and Daniel!
Lovely set up and collection, this sort of action shows off the advantages of the scale rather well. I know your group have taken to represent hills in 2D, but to my eye, this particular scene begs for a bit of 3D relief because of the number of small hills ….. downside, things can slide down slopes and be frustrating with so many base.
ReplyDeleteThanks Norm! Yes there were a lot of small ridges and they deserve proper representation. But its hard to run a road net over model hills - I don't like using latex because of the off gassing...
DeleteA fine game there Ralph and only one that I became aware of in the past few years. The actions in Hungary tend not to receive much coverage. IIRC the was a 2nd Battle of Balaton?
ReplyDeleteThanks Steve! I think there were 3 major actions in that vicinity at that late stage of the war: the first was 'Spatlese' in Dec '44, then 'Konrad III' in Jan '45, then Spring Awakening...
DeleteGreat looking game.
ReplyDeleteThanks John very kind!
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