We played Squad Leader's Scenario 5, Hill 621. As this is the first
game in a decade for most of us, we decided to split the command of the
forces between 4 players. Seow Buay and myself drew the Russians and
Terence and Shyue Chou led the German defenders. We were joined later
by Augustine, who lent his weight to the Russians. (Hey, we have 36
squads to control!) Command was divided up as follows:
Russian (north flank): Augustine
Russian (main): Seow Buay
Russian (armor): June Hwang
German (infantry): Shyue Chou
German (armor): Terence
During set-up, Seow Buay deployed his HMG with a leader in the two storey building on Board 3. This proved to be a good strategy as it commanded the entire frontage, and caught a German leader as it tried to move to rally a stack of broken squads.
The Russian infantry attacked on two axes. The main thrust headed directly against the hill while a secondary force executed a right flanking move. Half of the initial German forces were demoralised at the start. The situation was further aggravated when a key German leader was caught by machine gun fire while attempting to rally the German forces. Bad die rolls conspired against the Germans as their artillery requests failed to materialise.
German armour reinforcements on Turn 2 prevented the collapse of the German position. The Russian main thrust was cautious, but was still able to infiltrate the German line and position a platoon at the foot of the hill by Turn 5. The Russian flanking action was more gung ho and this resulted in more casualties. But it paid off when it managed to get into position and wiped out the remaining German infantry strongpoint in front of the hill.
In the meantime, arriving Russian armour engaged the German tanks supporting the line of resistance. The lead Russian T-34 took a direct hit and exploded into flames as it tried to smash its way into the centre of the German lines. After this setback, I decided to avoid forcing my way through the centre of the board and instead deployed two tanks on northern and southern hills on Board 3 to provide long range fire while the remaining tanks tried to infiltrate to the north, out of sight of the ATG and German tanks. Heavy casualties were sustained by both sides but the Russian advantage in numbers resulted in the complete elimination of the German tanks.
At about this time, German assault engineers arrived to take up position just behind the hill crest. BIt was also growing late, and we agreed to end this, our first SL game in a long while...