Fought At Leipzig
2221 days 3 hours 53 minutes ago
Training Exercise in Leipzig
View Linked Report - CLICK HERE 50 POINTSThanks to recent victories, the training of the Solidarity Division moved south into open fields on the left bank of the Elbe
After the humiliating defeat of the Soviet First Solidarity Tank Battalion in the first exercise, the Soviet commander insisted on a second test. Because the T64 is an open country tank, and because High Command wanted the division in place where it could be used as reserves, this exercise took place in farm country south of the Elbe.
The brand new T64Bs of 2nd Solidarity Tank Battalion were still detraining, so the 2nd used War Reserve T55s found in a nearby depot. All hits and damage were scored by the judging team as if these were T64s. (put a different way, it was cold, I brought the wrong box of tanks down from my car, and didn't feel like walking back outside to get them. nearly 5" of snow fell last week in Pgh; not a record, but certainly a surprise).
Our forces. The two pictures are his units - T55 battalion, T72 battalion, artillery recon, and his little dogs too. I have 10 tanks and 3 BMPs
We played Annihilation, and Brusilov set out a bunch of T72s after I was deployed. Can hardly complain, because I do that all the time. Consequences of it are above - 7 T72s fired scoring 6 hits and destroying 5 T72s; magically bounced one.
I returned fire after adjusting tanks somewhat. Essentially I fired 8 shots (5 T64, 3 BMP-2) and hit 5 times. Killed three T72s and bailed 2 more. A failed morale check raised the score by 1.
Brusilov kept the pressure on while maneuvering the T55s. He barely squeezed in a template from his 2S1s killing a BMP-2 and hammered my surviving T64s with his T72s AND the Spandrels. I managed to save a couple hits, but still lost two T64s. Leaving me with 3 T64s and 2 BMPs, if you are counting.
My Turn 2 saw me kill his T72 battalion commander and bail 2 more T72s with missiles, and he promptly remounted. Turn 3 saw Brusilov effectively miss (I rolled high saves for his two hits), giving me another chance. I drove my surviving T64s into the T72s to get the tree between them and his hill. Managed to kill one T72 and bail the other. If memory serves, that company finally lost morale. Then he declassified how much stuff was in the T72 battalion that wasn't dead, making the loss of T72s not important.
His turn 4 saw the BRDMs finally make it around the big hill and machinegun my surviving BMP-2s who burned or bailed, and then the bailed survivor left. He pumped fire at my Battalion commander, which I save but for one missile that tied and bailed me. His Spandrels finished off my remaining company. A close reading of the rules shows that a battalion commander can carry on, and on, and on, and once bailed he passed every company morale check but could never pass a remount. No mercy, as they say.
Meanwhile, one T55 company tried and failed twice to climb the hill to the left of the BRDMS you see above. Finally, on the third attempt, one mounted the hill, eliminating concealed+GTG from the equation, and tossed a '5'. Mercy killing, I'd say.
Game over, Brusilov's East Germans winning, 5-2
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BrusilovWins
looks like the snow came early this year.
Another nice report. Looks like it was a fun game.
a report brief
The camou pattern is one I remember seeing on exercise pictures back in the ’80s, and the winter version again on Finnish tanks later. It’s intended to be whitewash which I use a paintbrush to apply because…they used whitewash brushes to apply it over the basic green and later over their version of three-color.
The grey comes from a medium grey also seen in some pictures, and the whole thing gets mellowed with a black/brown mixed wash to simulate oil, hydraulic fluid, soot and diesel. I paint the simple variants so that I can tell platoons apart.
I recently discovered that Cat B units in the western military departments had their own color patterns with red earth and dark grey/black. That’s where the camou on my T64s and the T55s come from. Units in these areas frequently had mixed organizations – T55s or T72s in the MRR, T64s or T72s in the tank regiments, and T64s in the Motor Rifle independent tank battalions
You can see a lot of them by picking a tank, putting it into your web search, and then hitting image.
As a historical note, the Soviet norms (equivalent to our field manuals) called for camouflage going into combat. We think they didn’t do it regularly (until they started applying their version of very expensive Chemical Agent Resistant Coating which gets ruined by applying the wrong solvent) because of expense. But they did do it sometimes, and the order of precedence was tank regiments, BMP regiments and (rarely) BTR and support. The intel guys had three theories, none of which have ever been proven…
1) the unit that did it was going into an exercise and part of ‘Blue Force’. Everybody knows NATO uses camouflage
2) the unit was designated as a Forward Detachment/OMG, and was expecting to try to penetrate a nationality boundary in low light conditions where you could see the camou and be confused. (Don’t be silly, Bob, the Soviets never camouflage their tanks)
3) the Polkovnik who commanded was going up for Generalmajor, knew his stuff was weak, and was trying to make up for past sins by hitting every norm every exercise.
Since you’re the Polkovnik, you can pick your reason(s) and since Ivan and Yakob are doing all the work, chose your own arrangement of the colors. But from what I’ve seen a lot were simple, irregular, lines flowing in the same direction, with a less strong color (possibly) going at 90 degrees the other way. At least before the factory applied stuff started c. 88
Nice looking T55 camo. Congrats on the win.
Noble victory my lord
Camo looks good.
Pact fighting Pact? Win all around!
I really lke the ‘tiger’ camo. Is that historical? If so, I want to copy it for my OPFOR Russians.
Good report. Flows well. I like to large amount of pics, too.
Enough training for you lot. Back to the battles.
Awesome camo schemes. Back to the front comrade. A new offensive awaits us. Nice job my friend.
Snarky battle report – 0 stars