Combat Commander – After Action Report – Scenario 44 – Stalingrad of the North

Welcome to another tale of warfare and adventure on the Combat Commander ladder, which affords me the opportunity to play one of my favourite games with a bunch of really cool people.

The ladder is run by the ineffable Patrick Pence, he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials fame.

And Youtube fame is a lot better than celebrity fame!

Take that to the bank.

“Time waits for no one” – Folklore

Why am I including my favourite phrase about Time in this post? And when I say “favourite,” I mean the phrase that popped out at me when I googled “Time quotations?”

You’ll see.

The November ladder scenario takes place toward the end of the massive Soviet-German battle of Stalingrad in January 1943. It’s taken from the Combat Commander: Stalingrad battle pack, and it does not include all of the special Stalingrad rules because it takes place outside of the city.

This month was my first repeat opponent in my time on the Ladder!

Andrei F was my opponent in the May 2022 scenario and it was nice to face off with him again.

Scenario 44, Stalingrad of the North, has the Germans trying to break through the Soviet encirclement to rescue a German contingent located in the vital transportation hub of Velikiye Luki.

(Keep in mind that you can click on a picture to blow it up)

The Soviets (brown – Me) are the defenders in this scenario while the Germans (grey – Andrei) are the attackers.

There are at least 9 rounds/Time triggers in the game, as the Time Track starts at 0 and Sudden Death is at 9.

Some really interesting special rules in this one.

The area on the other side of the road, inside of the red oval, is the town. It’s impassable to Soviet units.

All of those Germans on the Time Track at the top of the picture are the units in the town. Once a German unit crosses that road, those German units go to the next space on the Time Track from where it currently is. The next Time Trigger will bring them out in the town on the board edge, suppressed.

At that point, the sides of the map switch, with the Soviet side of the map becoming the right side while the German side being on the left.

Nobody can exit the map except German leaders and the German reinforcement units.

Also, the entire hill is a Level 1 hill. There are no cliffs and no higher elevations. It’s really flat.

Finally, Rout orders do not exist. They are considered Command Confusion cards.

I essentially have to keep the Germans out of the town or, if I can’t do that, keep the reinforcements from getting back to that side of the board and exiting.

How did I do?

Keep that quote above in mind…

And let’s begin!

It’s an interesting dilemma for the Soviets because they have a lot of ground to cover (the Germans can do an end around if you leave either of the wings open) but the Germans have a lot of troops and Heavy Machine Gun that can just rip them up if they start up too forward.

So I set up my Soviets to wait until the Germans got up onto the hill, making them lug that HMG and mortar. I did set up one unit, in the south, ready to fire on them when they did start moving.

And yeah, ready to take a shit-ton of fire back as well.

Which they did!

Andrei admitted later that early on, he had no Move cards. Just Advances and Fire cards. Advancing into the road isn’t very helpful.

In the first attack, the mortar didn’t do anything to them (they are in a building), and Andrei split his fire from other units into multiple attacks.

The second attack…Time Trigger!

The Soviet squad did panic, though thankfully I had a nice Recover card waiting (I set them up to hinder any German movement and ended up with Two Recover cards and nothing else useful).

Andrei did Advance Lt. Lauerbach and Sgt Biermann, along with their men, into the road, though, since my unit was broken.

Of course, that didn’t last long…but I still had no Fire cards!

The Soviet Recover order did trigger a sniper who broke Lt. Von Karsties and maybe break up that fire group, but he quickly rallied and it didn’t do anything.

More fire brought some actual fire (a Blaze) into the north, a breeze that made it spread, followed by a German sniper that broke Lt. Gulkevich in the north!

But with a second Soviet Recover, that didn’t matter (though the blazes had actually displaced a couple of my units.

Sgt. Biermann took advantage of being out of line of sight to move onto the hill.

And the German fire group sent massive amount of bullets and a mortar shell at my lonely exposed guys again. The first shot, the mortar, resulted in a “to hit” roll that caused another Time trigger!

The fire attack roll resulted in another German sniper hit of a squad in the Foxholes facing Biermann’s men.

With Soviet units scattered all over the board, there were a lot of juicy places for sniper hits.

Once the mortar had fired, the HMG and other Germans opened up…and another Time trigger!

Andrei had run me out of Recover cards.

After a few discards on both sides, Andrei fired again with his mortar…and another Time trigger on the to hit roll!

Holy shit!

The fire attack wasn’t too bad for the Soviet unit, but it would still take a high roll to not break.

Would a 12 do?

Yes, another Time trigger on the Soviet morale check!

They did finally panic, and with no Recover card, I Advanced them out of the building and out of the line of fire.

Discretion was the better part of valor. They had done their job, holding out for 5 rounds.

I had also moved Gulkevich and men in the north, since the blazes were now blocking any northward movement and clearly Andrei wasn’t going that way anyway.

Of course, with the Soviet squad having retreated, that’s when I started drawing Fire cards!

At least there was a German squad up on the hill for my guys to fire at.

Not much of an attack, only 5 strength, but it uses some cards and makes them duck a bit.

Did I say not much strength?

Well, there is a lot of strength when you draw a 12 for your fire attack!

Yes, the second Soviet fire on that German resulted in another Time trigger.

This time, Andrei finally gave up the Initiative to prevent the trigger from happening.

Biermann, stuck in Wire, finally got to Advance out of it and onto the hill with his other men.

And he stumbled into a minefield!

Clumsy Biermann.

He and one of his units broke.

Plus, Andrei had finally drawn a Move card, so von Karsties and his men could try to get up on the hill as well.

First one squad got up close and personal with the Soviets in the foxholes.

They took umbrage to that and spat some bullets at them.

And another Time trigger!

Von Karsties also moved into line of sight and got attacked, breaking even though he was in a building.

But at least no Time!

Of course Andrei had a Recover card ready. He’s not a dum-dum.

All of the Germans recovered except the lone squad next to the Soviet foxholes.

Even with Time advancing quickly, the Germans were now in a position to lay a world of hurt on the Soviets and I only had 9 VP.

Kill a few Soviet units and Andrei’s back in the game.

And so it began.

Von Karsties and men advanced onto my formerly advanced Soviet squad, pummeling it to death.

Two German VP!

Now the big Soviet leader, Sgt. Kovalev, was the target of a huge German kill group.

He was not happy. The war (ok, scenario) had been peaceful for him so far!

After surviving one attack (with a Recover rallying the one broken unit) a second devastating German fire broke the entire stack.

And I had no Recover card ready.

A third attack broke one squad (I played Light Wounds, breaking it down into a Team and giving Andrei one point), killed the other team that was in the hex, but Kovalev survived with an 11 morale check!

The German draw deck ran out at the end of that, causing another Time trigger (I think that was the only one that happened due to a deck running out).

Two more rounds to Sudden Death.

I finally drew a Recover before Andrei could draw another Fire card, and Kovalev rallied along with this team.

The team wasn’t important, but without Kovalev, all of my other guys would have been activating on their own, making a defense really untenable.

Then all the Soviets fired, killing a broken German team and bringing the VP total back to 8.

On a subsequent German fire attack, I drew a Command & Control event, bringing me up to 12 points.

Yay, me!

At that point, Kovalev decided getting out of the sight of the HMG was a good thing, and retreated back a hex.

Funny, there hadn’t been a Time trigger in a while…

I also realized that there was a German squad in sight and range of at least my mortar and Light Machine Gun further back, so I decided to open up on them.

And promptly drew a Time trigger on the to hit roll!

I don’t think I’ve ever seen three Time triggers on to hit rolls, but there you are.

The mortar broke the squad, and then a really bad morale check on a low Soviet attack roll actually killed the it.

Back up to 15 Soviet VP.

Lt. Lauerbach decided to take advantage of a German sniper breaking the Soviet squad in the foxholes and advanced into their hex. On the same move, Biermann’s men (without Biermann, who can’t be activated by Lauerbach) Advanced out of the minefield.

While the minefield attack was terrible, one of the German morale checks was…you guessed it…a Time trigger!

This was insane.

It was Sudden Death, and here is where I made my only big mistake of the game (though I did make some minor mistakes).

Andrei drew a 9 (game ends on 8 or less).

Rather than give him the Initiative to make him reroll (it’s not hard to roll 8 or less!), I decided to let it stand so we would continue another round.

(The next card he drew was a 4, so I should have done it).

I can only say that I got a bit of bloodlust in that the game seemed to be going really well and I didn’t mind it continuing.

He was just about to kill one of my squads for 2 points, though that’s not much when you’re at 16 points.

A No Quarter action gave Andrei 2 more VP to bring me down to 12.

A lot of discarding ensued before the Germans could fire again.

The HMG and von Karsties fired on my poor broken and suppressed squad hiding back in a building.

The cads!

The German attack value was a 20.

And here came my favourite moment of the game. I literally laughed out loud (sorry Andrei and Ted, who was spectating, for the abrupt shrill laugh that erupted out of me with no warning).

I looked at the squad’s morale and said “wow, he’s dead automatically…well, unless I roll a 12 in which case he’s suppressed”.

And promptly drew a 12.

Which is also a Time trigger!

Actually, that shouldn’t have been surprising, given how the Time triggers were being given out like Halloween candy.

The game ended and I had a 12 point victory.

(Edit: Turns out we completely missed the second part of the “Germans in the town” special rule, which states that the Russians get 2 VP for each German reinforcement unit that doesn’t get out of the town or never makes it onto the board. So I actually ended with a 24 point victory!)

Poor Andrei was just beset with inappropriate cards at inappropriate times (not inappropriate like Codenames: Deep Undercover, but I mean just not useful).

And then there were all the Time triggers.

Really, three Time triggers on to hit rolls.

It boggles the mind.

Through it all, Andrei was a great sport and fun to play against.

I hope next month’s game goes much better for him.

Or at least not as fast!

Thanks also to my good friend Ted for spending a large part of his evening with us (we finished at 11:00 pm his time), spectating and offering some rules help as well.

It was much appreciated, and good to have somebody watching the game!

The win puts me at 16-14 in my Ladder career, which gives me leeway to lose next month (though hopefully not!).

The December scenario is from the Normandy battle pack, so there will be some nasty fighting going on!

In the meantime, if you enjoyed this narrative and would like to see what this is all about, why not join us on the Combat Commander Ladder? It’s a fun time, a great group of people, and you can get a lot of Combat Commander played if you really want to.

Somebody’s almost always up for a game.

And you might be immortalized either here on this blog or on Patrick’s channel?

What could beat that?

Neither can I!

See you next month.

Combat Commander Ladder – After Action Reports

To see all of my Ladder After Action Reports since May 2021, go here!