Sorry, Germany, No Oil for You.

Okay, so when I said the character of the blog was going to change over these last few weeks, I really didn't mean for it to go dark... life intervenes sometimes, and I've had a devil of a time finding the mental bandwidth to get this post finished.

That doesn't mean Mike and I weren't playing during the downtime, though. In fact, we got most of the way through an OCS scenario, and we've started The Mighty Endeavor's campaign game. Mike and I will be talking about TME in our next posts, but this one is about the Edge of the World scenario Mike and I played over three evenings.

This is the first scenario listed in the Case Blue scenario book. 25 turns, one map. The engagement starts small and builds over time as the Germans (and Russians to some extent) keep feeding units into the battle for Grozny and the oil fields nearby.



The black circles indicate the Axis victory areas.

We chose this scenario as a warmup as it's essentially the Drive for Oil scenario we'll be playing at WBC-W in miniature. The Germans are coming in from the northwest, and to win are trying to take Grozny, the oil fields next to Grozny, and Ordzhonikidzi in the south. The Russians win by denying the Germans and at least contesting Grozny. Anything else is a draw.

Originally, we'd chosen sides on the assumption that I'd be defending in Drive for Oil, and attacking in TME. As it turns out, I'm not going to be able to make it out to WBC-W as early as expected, so our TME game at WBC-W is off. But it's certainly educational to be defending against a strong, but resource-starved, enemy.

Mike and my experience with OCS to this point has been Sicily, DAK2, and Tunisia. All somewhat older games in the system and supply in those games is a bit more plentiful than it is in Case Blue. The first thing we realized is that it's a severe adjustment getting used to the restricted supply in this game.

As an example, it takes 1SP to fuel a panzer division until the end of your turn. It costs 1/4 SP (1T) for each step that attacks. The Germans start with 1SP on the map, and can expect to get about 2SP/turn. (each turn you roll two dice, < 4 you get 1SP, > 10 you get 3SP, otherwise 2SP. Which you have to truck into position.) Over the course of the scenario, the Germans get 5SP on full trucks as well. That's 56 SP or so for the entire game. Better be careful how you spend it.

In contrast, the Russians start with 5SP, have the same odds on arriving supplies, and don't get any with reinforcements. So, they should end up with 55SP during the game. About equal. They'll probably spend 6-8 SP building hedgehogs to protect Grozny and Ordzho, but don't have much armor at all that requires fueling. Defending is also cheaper (max 1/2 SP, or 2T in defense). So, the onus is definitely on the Germans to time their fights well and make sure they've got supply when and where they need it.

In our game, Mike sent the 23rd Panzer Division south to take Ordzho. I early on decided that attempting to do anything with Pyatigorsk in the west was a waste of time and let Mike spend the supply taking the town. If I recall, he basically surrounded the town and let them starve which they eventually did. Sort of a non-event, but still it tied up his units for a while. And time lets me build up defenses.

The general flow of the game went something like this:

After the panzers reached Ordzho, there was a fair amount of bickering over the Russian supply line extending south. At one point, I'd mistakenly let him block the supply line and I rolled extremely poorly for out-of-supply attrition. The roll would have eliminated the entire garrison. Mike let me reroll as this was a learning game and that would have caused major problems for me early on. Thinking back, though, I don't believe I'd checked for eating off the map, and I believe I had enough supply in the town to do so.

The remainder of Mike's forces headed further east to try to take Grozny. He mostly funneled the reinforcements that came from the north this direction as well. My goal here was to create a defensive line north of Grozny using the rivers where possible, but avoiding encirclement. The rail line east is a major supply route for the Russians and must be protected. Fortunately, the Terek river is impassable near Grozny except at the two road bridges and the one rail bridge at Gudermes. ZOCs do cross rivers, though, so the stretch where the rail line comes close to the south bank of the Terek must be protected.

During the middle section of the game, Mike repeatedly failed at taking Ordzho (in significant part because my bombers kept getting DG results on possible key attacking stacks, and in part due to bad die rolling) and pushed all the way down to just above the north bank of the Terek at one point. I had been rather frugal with my supply, though, and managed some (rather expensive) counter-attacks to push him back to Chervlennaya and further. This relieved the pressure on the rail line to Grozny and put him in a severe bind.

As we moved into the second half of the game, things were turning my way. While I still felt I was hanging on by a thread, Mike was getting some pretty bad die rolls trying to take Ordzho, and spent a large amount of supply to no real effect. He was starting to see that it was taking him nearly 3 turns to recover from a failed assault on the city enough to attempt again. Time was running short for him.

Meanwhile, there wasn't a whole lot happening over at Grozny as Mike was using most of his supply trying to take Ordzho. I was fortifying my defensive line when possible trying to create the best defensive position I could. I'd also placed hedgehogs in Grozny and Ordzho to help out with the defense.

We called the game at the end of September. (That was after 16 turns, with the full month of October – 9 more turns – to play.) It was pretty clear at this point that there was no way Mike was going to be able to reach the Axis objectives given my defensive position and his supply situation. He probably had, at best, three more attempts at Ordzho before even getting to Grozny, and I was able to fly in enough supply to keep the garrison there eating off the map, thus alleviating any severe supply issues.

So, what did we learn?

First, I'm not sure Mike should have sent the Panzer Division as the primary assault force on Ordzho. They're 1/2 strength attacking the city, and cost supply to maneuver back into position should an assault fail. (Which they inevitably will given the likely hedgehog being built there.) Granted, the Axis doesn't have much non-armored attack strength in this scenario, but I think it needs to be sent down there when available. Even if it takes 10 turns. In fact, I'd probably take Ordzho last – screen it with whatever is available and concentrate on Grozny.

The Axis armor is better used, in my opinion, in forcing the Russians to stretch out their defensive line north of Grozny. They can reposition VERY quickly and the Russians must protect the rail line heading southeast to Makhachkala. One Panzer Division can head east, while the other either heads down the road north of Ordzho threatening both cities or heads to the north edge of Grozny looking for weakened spots caused by the defensive line being stretched east to protect supply.

The Russians, meanwhile, need to fortify with hedgehogs and use their air superiority as much as possible. Protect the supply lines and fly supply into Ordzho every turn. You'll be trucking supply up from the South Box as much as possible, and shipping the rest via rail. Counter-attacks are going to be expensive due to the number of multi-step infantry divisions you've got, but you'll need to pull a few off to relieve pressure on critical points. The bridge crossings over the Terek cannot be lost or you're in for a world of supply hurt. Finally, do whatever you can to delay and bleed supply from the Axis. He's got a tighter budget than you and time's on your side

We did play one rule wrong that I can recall. Units can either enter or leave the South Box in a single turn, but not both. That slows down the amount of supply the Russians can truck north from what I was doing early on, and pretty much guarantees using rail cap every turn to get supplies into Grozny.

Over those three nights of play, I estimate we put in 9 or 10 hours of real play time. The first night was broken up by a bit of teaching session for Chris and Doug who'd stopped by to watch, and it always takes a little bit to get back into the flow of play after being away for a week. This scenario does give you a real feel for the issues the two sides are facing in the overall campaign, however – long distances to be covered by the Axis with little fuel, and loads of Russians to slog through once you get there. The Russians are making do with poor-quality, limited mobility troops (some have only 1 movement point in combat mode) but there's certainly a lot of them.

As the scenario starts with a small number of troops on the map and builds up, it's a great way to get your feet wet with Case Blue. I'd estimate 10-12 hours of play time if done in a single sitting, and possibly less once you get to the point of knowing how it'll end up a few turns early as we did.

More OCS

Eric and I continued our WBC-W warm-up with more OCS. This time it was the Edge of the World scenario from Case Blue, which sees the Axis charging forward with 3 panzer divisions and, pretty much, no supply. This makes it really hard to use those panzer divisions as they can't even move without supply.

In order to win the Axis have to capture Ordzhonikidze, and some oil fields near Grozny. If the Russians control any of those and still control Grozny, then they win. Any other result is a draw. The big limitation for the Axis player is supply, with only 2SP per turn (normally), so he has to run an offensive on little more than fumes. Of course, the Russian is defending a couple of cities, and the one thing you need to take these is supply. Hmm, a conundrum, indeed.

I started by dashing forward in an almost reckless manner, pushing past the first unit or two, heading one panzer division towards Ordzhonikidze, the others along the northern route towards Grozny. I got to Ordzhonikidze in the third turn or so, and immediately found that I had nowhere near enough strength to do much about it. Eric had added several units to the defenses, and I just bounced off.

However, I did manage to cut his supply line and forgetting about the attrition part of trace supply, Eric didn't move units forward to give them a supply line. Come the supply phase, when they couldn't trace, and not eat SPs on the map, he had to roll on the attrition table. He rolled, and it came up '12', killing all the steps. At this point I suggested that he change his move , and move his reinforcements to give a trace supply route to Ordzhonikidze, rather than move them into the town, which he did. I managed to cut his supply line once more, but he was able to force me back once again to re-open it.

From this point on the game kind of stagnated as I waited for strength, in the form of an infantry division, to arrive. I tried another attack, but lost out again, so decided on building up a bit first. I rebuilt my infantry division, more artillery and built up supply, and commenced the attacks. Which all went horrible wrong. I missed the artillery roll (needed a 6+), rolled defender surprise in the attack (with +1 modifier, I needed 6-8 to avoid surprise, 9+ to gain) and a 4 in the attack. My follow on attack to cut him off again also failed. Eric's counterattack rolled well, gaining surprise and his artillery managed to kill another step. I'd spent 4SP, and lost 3 steps, for no gain, something the Axis player just can't afford.

Elsewhere I tried to cut off Grozny, but Eric was easily able to gain trace supply again, as I'd very little in the way of supply to move my panzer units again. (At this point I had 2T of supply left on the map.)

The next few turns were building up for me, recovering steps and SPs, as Eric started to push forward. He left an infantry division out by itself near Grozny, so I tried an overrun, but even with a +3 modifier I couldn't roll the 9 required (i.e. needed to roll 6+) to get surprise, and I was forced back again. Another 1SP for nothing. He's starting to roll forward, threatening to wrap around my flank, so it was time to start considering falling back.

At Ordzhonikidze I've at least managed to cut him off, but we've identified that he's flying in 2T of supply per turn, less than he needs to eat off the map, so I have no way to force him out via attrition. 4 turns after the disastrous attack turn I'm still rebuilding (each infantry division step requires 2 Pax, and at an average of 1/turn, plus movement), but he's now threatening my flank, looking to cut off the units over the river to the east of Ordzhonikidze. I attack, but once more roll like crap and lose the combat.

As this point I call the game, as it's clear I'm not going to get anywhere near the victory conditions, and I am, in fact, going backwards, as the Russians get stronger and stronger. We've completed 16 of the 25 game turns, taking 3 evening sessions, around 9 hours or so.

This one seems to be a real hard row to hoe for the Germans. Other than the availability of 3 panzer divisions, all the advantages are with the Russians. The Germans have no supply, no air and all the work to do. The Russians just sit there and accumulate steps, SPs, reinforcements, sniping at the Axis forces with their air units as opportunities present themselves to prevent the Axis attacks. All the while they're building up their hedgehogs, just to make things harder. So, how does the Axis crack this one?

Eric suggested that building an airfield near the front might be an idea, as that would allow the sole Axis fighter to project a patrol zone over the leading attacking units, rather than skulking at the rear. This would have the double benefit of preventing the Russian bombers from having free rein to DG the Axis troops, and also threaten the air resupply of Ordzhonikidze. However, I'm not sure how much difference that would make, as with several Russian fighters it just requires one good roll and the Axis fighter would go inactive and he could then pound away, but it wouldn't hurt to try.

Perhaps only making really big attacks is the way to go, but with only the two full infantry divisions it's still going to be hard work, and that takes more time to organize, although time doesn't seem to be too much of an issue for the axis. These units are also very easy to hit by air, so will spend most of their time in DG status.

We really need to have another go at it, but that's the downside of these big games, it's a lot harder to get them to the table to play them often enough to figure out how to approach it. I might have to try it solo. If nothing else I need to figure out how to attack these Russian cities for WBC-W, which isn't too far away now.

Crossing the Chir in Slow Motion

Once a year, the wargame fans in our gaming group head over to Doug's place in Sunriver for a week long gaming gathering hat is referred to as WBC-West. It's our own little version of WBC. Minus the hundreds of attendees. And the competitions. And trophies.

But it's got lots of wargaming. So that's good.

This year, we're trying an experiment and having WBC-W in May. August was proving problematic for a variety of reasons.

One thing most of the attendees do before heading over is lock down a schedule. Which games, against whom, and when. Practice games are held to get the rules cemented in our head and verify that, yes, we do actually want to play this for real. After all, if you only get to do this once a year, you don't want to waste a full day playing a substandard game or botching critical rules. And you certainly don't want to be stuck as odd-man-out when everyone else is playing eight-hour games.

So, at this point the character of Two Sides will be changing a tad until late May. Mike and I have entered practice mode. We're planning a “monster” game this year to finish off the week – four of us will be playing the Drive for Oil scenario of Case Blue, the OCS game covering the 1941-1943 adventures of Army Group South. Mike and I will also be playing The Mighty Endeavor earlier in the week.

So, our schedule for a while is pretty locked in. This week, we played the Case Blue version of the Chir River Battles scenario that originally appeared in Enemy at the Gates. It was a nice refresher – 3 turns, and you're playing on less than a letter-sized portion of the map. In fact, it's small enough that we played it twice (once from each side) in around 3 hours.

The next couple weeks, we'll be tackling the Edge of the World scenario, also from Case Blue. It's the “intro” version of the scenario we're playing at WBC-W, so it's a perfect lead-up. We're also going to be using the sessions as an OCS trainer/refresher for anyone else in the group interested in OCS. I'm also going to try to write up an OCS instructional manual as a post on here in a couple weeks.

After that, Mike and I will spend a session going over the first few turns of The Mighty Endeavor to get an idea of how we want to approach that. So, for those of you following along at home, here's what we'll be covering on the blog for a while:

This week - Case Blue, Chir River
Next week - Case Blue, Edge of the World
Apr 1 - Case Blue, Edge of the World part 2.
Apr 8 - Either Edge of the World, the Finale, or The Mighty Endeavor.
Apr 15 - Either The Mighty Endeavor (if we didn't play the week before), or something else we haven't decided on yet.
Apr 22 - No gaming – I'm at Disneyland all week for our daughter's 5th birthday party. (though Vassal's always a possibility.)
Apr 29 – Unknown game to hit the table.
May 6 - No gaming this week as WBC-W is the entire next week, so I don't get a night away the week before :)
May 13 – WBC-W.

Besides Case Blue and The Mighty Endeavor, games it's looking like I have a shot at playing that week include Friedrich; some large 3-player game which could be Clash of Monarchs, Here I Stand, Savannah, or something else; Through the Ages; Combat Commander; Command & Colors: Ancients; and a host more possibilities. I intend to post session reports on most, if not all the games I play either here or on my personal blog.

Okay, enough context. We played the Chir River Battles mini-scenario last week. How did it play out?

First time through, Mike took the Russians, who are on the attack. The initial setup is illustrated here:



The brown circle indicates the Russian supply source, and the blue circle the German. The red circle is the hex the Russians must occupy by the end of the third turn.

You can't see the contents, but you can definitely tell the Russians have two large stacks – right next to the supply source, and another stack in a salient just NW of Nizhne-Chirskaya. That's also where the bulk of the Russian artillery is stationed. You can also see that the Germans are rather weak in the NW sector, and that right next to the German supply source is the 11th Panzer Division, waiting to counter attack.

Mike worked from the position of Russian strength, and pushed hard straight south with the idea of breaking through, then shooting west. I used the 11th Pz Div to counter attack exposed points and pulled back the survivors of the initial onslaught. I ended up creating a defensive line on the west side of the Tsinla river and points north. Mike nearly had enough to get to the goal, but wouldn't have been able to fight off the garrison once he got there. So, a minor German victory here.

We turned it around and I took the Russians. My idea was to attack west through the German weakness, then push south. I was slightly hampered by warm weather in the first turn keeping the Chir from freezing. I wasn't as committed as I should have been, and ended up not being able to reach the goal. Another German victory.

Mike differed in his approach with the Germans and took a forward defense, forcing me to fight through his troops early – something I wasn't consistently able to do. His approach gave me the opportunity for overruns where mine specifically avoided them. It will be interesting to see which defense works better once we figure out the Russian offensive plan.

When we talked about it afterwards, we realized that with the supply structure in place, there were two things neither of us did that look to be necessary to win this scenario as the Russians. First, you have to blow through the German lines at the rail bridge just south of Oblivsk. That's the only way you're going to be able to create a supply line long enough to pull off an attack on the VP hex. Second, neither of us used what might be the best Russian unit on the board – the 8th Gd Tank Brigade stationed in the middle of the line. (It's the 8-4-8 red unit you can see in the middle of the setup.) That's the key unit, I believe, as it's got a 16 MP move mode that can project strength pretty much anywhere on the map.

So, Mike attacked too far south, and I attacked too far north. This scenario is a nice little puzzle, however, and a great refresher or learning scenario for OCS. There's no air units or other strangeness – just straightforward give and take.

So, if you've got that Case Blue sitting around and you're wondering how you're going to tackle it, head over to The Gamers Archive and snag the Chir River Battles scenario and give it a go. It'll be a well-spent evening.

No cheer at the Chir

One of the sessions in our upcoming WBC-W game-athon will be a 2-day, 4-player 'monster' game. After some discussion, we settled on one of the games from the MMP/Gamers OCS line, and choose the 'Drive for Oil' scenario from Case Blue (BGG entry). (OK, that's not such a huge monster in the grand scheme of things, but it's a start for us.)

So, as part of our preparations for WBC-W, and Case Blue specifically, Eric and I will be spending the next few weeks getting back into OCS. Last night saw our first foray into Case Blue, with the Chir River training scenario. This was a scenario that was a part of the original Enemy at the Gates OCS game, and which (along with a lot of others) was not included with the enlarged version of the campaign, Case Blue. (I've never understood why they weren't converted and included with CB.) Anyway, several devotees of OCS have started converting these old scenarios to Case Blue, so, it seemed a good place for Eric and I to start, as it's only 3 turns long, with a small group of units and portion of the map.

The scenarios sees the Russians attacking to the SW of Stalingrad in the middle of December in 1942, trying to gain a foothold over the Chir River. The Axis have a lot of crummy units holding the line, but with a full panzer division to provide mobile backup. The Russians win if they break through the Axis lines and capture Morozovsk (to the left from the Axis perspective), and the Axis win if they prevent that. Here's the opening situation from the two perspectives:





I randomly got the Russians, and my plan was to force a gap in the center/right flank area with the two infantry divisions (212th and 93rd Gds), where they only faced a couple of Alert battalions, using 5Mech Corps to drive through the gap. From there, drive to Morozovsk, whilst trying to protect my flank from 11Pz. The second part was to use the existing bulge into the Axis lines, and 1Tk (stacked under the 12-2-2), on the left to also force a gap, threatening to pocket his entire frontline, leaving them out of supply, and forcing him to also protect his right flank of 11Pz as they try to stop my main thrust.

A grand plan, but it went awry from the first roll. I started with an overrun of a minuscule Alert battalion by my 1Tk units in the bulge. However, despite a +1 action rating modifier, I managed to roll a 6 column defender surprise shift (needed 6+ to avoid defender surprise), which meant I lost one of the attacking units, although I did remove the Alert battalion. Further, after moving in, we spotted that this would leave 1Tk unsupplied, as the HQ couldn't throw that far, so it had to pull back. (Frozen march is 6MPs, and a frozen minor river is +3MPs, so it can't throw across the river.) In all my following combats I rolled another couple of defender surprise results, and a single attacker surprise. Fortunately, my combat rolls were generally very good, so things mostly balanced out, as without that things would have looked pretty bleak. However, by the end of the turn I'd surrounded several units, cutting them off from supply.

Then Eric went into action with 11Pz. They came storming forward, and overran the mech unit holding the pocket, gaining surprise for another 6 column shift, and promptly vaporized. So went the rest of the turn, with Eric gaining attacker surprise in 4 out of 5 combats, for 6, 6, 5 and 2 column shifts (4 at +2, i.e. needing 8+, 1 at +1, i.e. needing 9+). By the end of the turn 5M and 1Tk Corps had pretty much ceased to exist, and for no loss to the Axis.

It was pretty clear that there wasn't going to be any Russian win in this game. With there still being a gap in the Axis lines, I pushed my remaining strength forward, attempting to take out part of 11Pz. Once again I didn't have much success, although I did successfully overrun the 11Pz artillery unit that had been left exposed, and managed to clear Surovikino, to create a better line of supply to the units on the left, and once again surround some of the Axis front-line units.

Once more, however, the dice didn't go in my favor as Eric's attrition rolls were 4 and 5, meaning both stacks survived, one with no loss, the other with a single step loss. (The first needed a 8+ to die (AR3, 2-5 no loss, 6-7 1 step, 8+ 2 steps), the second 6+ (AR2, 2-3 no loss, 4-5 1 step, 6+ steps.) Elsewhere, he just rejigged his line, with little (or no?) combat.

In the final turn Eric won initiative, and chose to go first. He started a withdrawal, and pulled everyone back, knowing that with a single turn to go, I had a lot of ground to make up. In the pocket, one of the isolated units still survived, as the AR3 stack only lost a single step, but the AR2 stack lost its final step.

However, there was still a chance! Eric had left one hex in his line protected by a single Alert battalion, and I threw what I had left against it. But it was not to be, as I couldn't muster the '6' required on two dice to get the exploitation result to allow the units to drive through the gap and have a chance of overrunning Morozovsk, although, thinking more about it, I wouldn't have had the MPS to do that, anyway.

This had taken around 1.5 hours, so we set it up again, and switched sides.

This time it was Eric's turn to suffer from the dice, as his very first roll saw the best weather possible, not what the Russian player wants, leaving the rivers unfrozen. (In my version I did well on the weather rolls, having frozen rivers each turn.) He pushed a little in the bulge area of his left, but didn't risk any attacks across the river, settling for setting up for the next turn. I pushed 11Pz forward to blunt his attack in the bulge area, successfully pushing him back, but at the cost of a panzer battalion.

In the next turn the weather became frozen, and Eric pushed forward. He attacked along his right flank, all the way to the end, hoping to turn it and set himself up for the final turn. I moved 11Pz across to protect, and removed his leading units in combat.

In the final turn, I won initiative, and chose to go first. I pushed all my units forward, in what I considered to be a very 'gamey' tactic, taking advantage of a gap in his lines to put all his lead units out of supply. If this had been part of a larger game, rather than a focused scenario, I wouldn't have done this, as I fully expected most of my forward units to get blasted, and wouldn't have been prepared to give up so many units for such a short-term gain. Sure enough, that's exactly what happened, as Eric over-ran all those Alert battalions I'd pushed forward, but they'd done their jobs, as he didn't have anywhere near the range or capability to get close to Morozovsk, so the Axis won, once more.

In the post-game kibitzing we discussed how the Russian player should tackle this puzzle. We agreed that there are a few items that appeared critical, and which we learned through play:

• Rail bridge at 30.31 - without it the Russian HQ can't throw supply far enough to allow an attack on Morozovsk, so removing the LW division protecting it is vital
  
• 8-4-8 armor unit - neither of us used this unit effectively, but with its big movement and combat strength it should be used in the drive/attack on Morozovsk
  
• Get the Katyusha across to the point of attack in the first turn, or at least use it to DG 11Pz
  

OK, it's a very limited scenario, but it served its purpose. We got back into the OCS groove, and very quickly too, with a minimum of rules referencing, as either one or the other of us remembered the specific rule in question. We're planning to do the Edge of the World scenario over the next few weeks, which should have us ready for WBC-W. Not having played OCS for several months now, I'd forgotten how good it was, and how much I liked it.

I am _so_ looking forward to the WBC-W OCS session, the highlight of the week for me.