As German panzers drove toward Leningrad, they bypassed potentially dangerous Russian armored groups. When these attempted to break out, handling them fell to infantry and anti-tank units. One such instance occurred at Luga, where elements of the German 269th Infantry Division were assigned to hold the western approaches to the German drive. Desperate to stop or delay the advance, bypassed remnants of the 21st Tank Division, 16th Rifle Division, and the 2nd DNO (a militia unit), were hastily declared Operational Group Luga and ordered to take the city.
Attacker: Russian (Operational Group Luga)
Defender: German (Infanterie Regiment 469 and Divisional Artillery, Infanterie Division 269)
13 turns
Players: 2 OBA: None Night: No
Unit Counts:
Squads: A:41.0 D:13.0
AFVs: A:12
KV-2 T-34 M40 T-28E M40 x 2 BT-7 M37 x 2 T-40 x 3 T-26S M37 x 3
AFVs: D:0
Guns: A:0
PTRD-41 ATR
D:6
5cm PaK 38 x 2 3.7cm PaK 35/36 x 2 3.7cm FlaK 36 o. 37 2cm FlaK 38
Misc Rules:
AFV crews may not voluntarily abandon vehicles. T-34 is exempt from Platoon Movement restrictions.
As one of only two scenarios from BV3 I hadn't completed I was happy to play this. As a big old school scenario, it was a couple turns of free moving before there was any enemy contact. No surprises it was the BT-7s scouting ahead who drew first fire. One went down to a 50L, but a pesky crew survived to draw the attention from my HMG stack (whose failed job it had been to torch the woods road). The other went down in German prep, along with a T-40 that had crossed the hedgerow in sight of a 37L . The remaining two were lost the following turn, while two of the three T-26S were blasted trying to sneak past the 50L. Meanwhile the first five stone buildings were captured with little resistance, a German HS being found and captured in the upper level of one of the buildings. This allowed the Russians to start some dreaded deployment. Turn 6 saw the Germans finally show themselves and make their stand as the Russians approached the northern outskirts of Luga. The rest of the game would see much fighting within about a half board's worth of space. But there were enough individual little battles scattered throughout the playing area to make this one of those classic games for the ages. In the middle of the game the Russians started to have some atrocious luck, with MAs malfing on two of their remaining four tanks (including the KV-2). Unfortunately for the Germans, they really had no answers for dealing with these four beasts, with most of their guns situated to protect the eastern half of the playing area. The T-28E would eventually be recalled for disablement, but the KV-2 was able to fix its problem. The German defense remained extremely stout however, not allowing the Russians to take another building until Turn 11. By this time the dice had decidedly turned, and casualties were starting to mount up for the Germans. But the Russians had been spread too thin, and too many broken bodies littered the battlefield, and the much-needed crack in the defense never materialized. We probably could've called this game halfway through, and in the end the Russians only ended up with 8 buildings, but we would've missed a hell of a fun game had we done so. Highly recommended.
2022-02-20
(A) Scott Sherer
vs
Jeff B
German win
Jeff pretty much laid out the details of the game. My original plan was to have at least a part of my forces swing around and assault Luga from the east, but a strong defense on Bd 5 put an end to that notion. I ended up getting bogged down in what I wanted to avoid...a frontal assault into well-defended stone buildings. As Jeff mentioned, Russian victory was pretty much impossible from about Turn 8 on, but it was still fun to finish and see how many buildings the Russians could get. A must play!
2021-06-28
(A) Kevin Duval
vs
Dwayne Duval
German win
Used Russian balance. Excellent defensive wedge setup with all Guns huddled together and covering every approach that the Russian AFVs first blundered into causing mostly burning wrecks, first getting caught & then trying to get away from. The Infantry could not make headway in attempt to remove pressure either. If we had instead played face to face with real boards and counters I would have at least felt some satisfaction in being able to flip the table over!
