In a previous
entry, I commented this summer's plan at our local club to play a large Stalingrad game extending over several evenings. Today we have initiated our trip to Stalingrad and had a first battle to test how
Troops, Weapons and Tactics performs in an urban battle environment.
I was in the Soviet team; we had a couple of infantry platoons (3 squads each, mixing rifles and SMGs), and HQ sections (with an officer, comissar, 4 SMGs and a sniper) and a T 34 moving in a fairly crowded urban table 6' x 5' sized (note: we borrowed some Warhamer 40K and Fantansy buildings while we finish the terrain that we will use in July's game, so don't be surprised to see in photos below a lot of neo-gothic architecture and painted skulls, etc furnishing some of the building walls, windows and doors).
The victory conditions for the Soviet team was to exit the table with at least 10 soldiers through the entry point of the German units. The enemy had a SPG and I estimated a similar number of squads as we had.
The first decision was how to treat the buildings for combat purposes. There were issues related to the size, height and condition (ruined totally or partially, for example), as well as the location of doors (to get in) and windows (to fire to incoming enemy units) that were important.
In the end we agreed
- To split the large buildings in "sections" clearly marked, that could be occupied by 1 squad;
- All squads had to spend 1D6 to enter a building and an addtional 1D6 to deploy inside ( = to put small arms and LMG fire outside the building squads needed to deploy);
- Any unit moving upstairs or into another section of the same building had to spend 1D6
- Location of doors and windows was abandoned; as in TWT the fire is executed by firing groups (usually a LMG team and a rifle team), players had only to indicate which side of the building were located each group.
