Arrival at Kotelnikovo

The second scenario of the Chain of Command Winter Storm campaign requires a lot of wooden buildings representing the town of Kotelnikovo. At first I thought this would be a problem because my wooden building collection is limited, but then I noticed that while the scenario text states that the scenario should be played on a 4x4 table, the accompanying map shows a rectangular table. So by reducing the map to a square, leaving out some buildings, adding a few fences and assembling some extra papercraft buildings the result was a reasonably good match to the scenario map. I also put snow on the roofs of the buildings cut from wallpaper to match the snow covered ground.

On to the game:

After narrowingly surving the partisan attack on the convoy in the first scenario, Gummi Ente and his fellow truckers pull into the Kotelnikovo rest halt area while Soviet dismounted cavalry is infiltrating the town.

Favourable command dice rolls allow the Germans and Soviets to deploy most of their force and move them forward to occupy the buildings.

But then the Soviet MMG on overwatch fires at a squad of Germans moving towards the main rest halt area building. The German squad leader is wounded!

Both sides take up positions in the buildings, exchanging fire. A German squad surprises a Soviet squad between two buildings, killing the Soviet squad leader.

My buildings don't have lift off roofs so men inside are positioned in front of the windows/doors they are firing from.

In the ensuing static fire fight more leaders are wounded, bringing down force morale on both sides. The Soviet force morale however descreased more rapidly than the Germans'.

German platoon leader wounded

Soviet platoon leader and squad leader wounded

The hail of fire from the two MG34 per German squad is too much for the Soviets. More Soviet squads are pinned.

Concentrated Soviet fire on their objective (the main rest halt area building) finally overwhelms the German defenders. The German squad breaks and retreats from the building.

Increasing amount of shock inflicted on the Germans

Squad breaks and falls back towards the trucks

The Soviets weren't able to take advantage of the German squad vacating the building because their force moral got reduced to zero when another German squad wiped out the Soviet squad in one of the buildings.

Although the Soviets have two senior leaders in this scenario, we found it is a tough game for them because of the sheer volume of firepower of the 8 German MG34's (64 fire dice) vs 4 drum fed LMG's and 1 MMG (34 fire dice) of the Soviets.

 Of course the number of dice rolled is no guarantee that you hit something.

The possibly worst sniper of the Soviet Union did not manage to hit anything in the four shots he fired during the game.

Vladimir Boggerov, worst sniper of the Soviet Union.