WW2 6mm gaming on a 24cmx24cm gridded table - a full game battle report

Introduction
I have been testing out some WW2 grid based rules to play on a 24cm x 24cm table with some 6mm bases.  The journey on why I created these rules and some initial testing is in this blog post.
This post is a full battle report using the latest rules that are available here.

Note: The Scenario and Troop section are identical to that in the previous blog post so if coming from there just skip to the Game section.

Scenario
It is not historical and I came up with it quite quickly. I decided it would be 1943 and I would have a road with a village defended by the Germans.  And some wheatfields.  This is what ended up as the battlefield.  There are not really hedges in Russia so even though they are hedges on the table, think of them as some sort of cover – ditches, rocks etc.
Each square is about 30mx30m so the whole board is 360mx360m.

Setup - Russians attacking from the left, Germans defending on the right.

Objective: Soviets need to clear the village of Germans.

Troops
Germans (Regular)
1 MMG team
1 Gruppe with Zug leader
2 Gruppe

Soviets (Regular)
1 HQ squad (with leader)
1 MMG team (Maxim)
5 Squads

The Germans have the edge in command structure but morale wise they are equivalent.

The Game
This time I am going to focus on the middle and right flank to push through and hopefully take out the village from that side.  The plan starts off well with 2 activations for the Russians so advance all the bases in the centre and the right flank.

Moving up the centre and right flank Russians.

Whenever one side gets activations the other side then gets to activate.  In this case the MMG spots the advancing centre sections and fires. The MG fires misses them entirely (zero successes on 2 dice and also on the 1 die at the adjacent section).

German MG fires at the advancing Russians for no effect whatsoever.

A random event sees a Russian sniper line up a German section (snipers are 2 dice rolled against a random base).  And misses....
The Russians activate again and move up the units on the left flank.  They spot the guarding German Gruppe and fire and pin it.  Pinning means the unit can either half-move OR fire at closest target until rallied.
The Russians are going to attempt to apply pressure everywhere and then focus their efforts on where a weakness is exposed.

Left flank platoon (of two sections) advances and pins the defending Gruppe at top right.

The Germans get an activation and fire again with the MG.  This time they manage to pin the central advancing MG.

The Russian MG is pinned (brown marker)..

The Russians put the pressure on the left flank Gruppe, but all they do it continue to pin it.

Russian left flank continues to pin the defender.

The Russians also activate their pinned MG and fire on the Zug HQ Gruppe in the building, suppressing them.  Suppression means no firing or moving until rallied, and rallying from suppression carries a small chance of routing.

The Russian MG manages to suppress the Zug HQ Gruppe (green marker = suppression).

The Germans return fire with the MG and destroy the Russian MG! First kill to the Germans.

The Russian is destroyed. 

Germans activate again and successfully rally the HQ Gruppe.  Germans losses: 0 Russian losses 1.  but it is about to get interesting...

German HQ section rallied.

The Russians activate two sections (including the HQ section) on the right flank and charge the German Gruppe in the woods.  The German section does not get to fire back as the Russians charge in - the Russians are known units and the Germans should have fired at them when activated if they wanted to stop them!  Anyway, the close combat results in a tie so all units are locked in melee (Germans rolled two dice and Russians three and all dice showed zero successes).  An activation is needed to perform another close combat, there is no specific "close combat phase" each turn.

Right flank Russian sections charge the German Gruppe in the woods.

The following German activation sees the MG continue to focus on the centre Russian sections, pinning them both.

German MG pins both centre Russian sections, the melee from the previous activation can be seen at the top right.

The Russians activate the close combat and rout the opposing Gruppe.  Winners can advance 2 squares and do so - straight into close combat with an occupied house of the village.  It is a tie and so locked in melee.

Note: I forgot, but the winner of close combat is supposed to lose a base to represent casualties..  I did not do this and so the Russians had both their sections available for the close combat on the house when it should have been one left for the advance. 

Russians win the melee with the Germans in the woods and then advance into melee with the Germans in the village.

The German MG continues its unrelenting firing on the centre sections.  Nothing like someone with focus!  Another Russian section is routed.

Another Russian section routed by German MG fire.

The Germans get an activation..Cannot activate the same base twice in a row so fire at the Russian units advancing on the other flank and routs one (about a 1 in 7 chance)

The forgotten flank sees one Russian section routed.

A random event sees a German base activate as a Veteran unit.  The random base happens to be the one that just fired.  It fires again.  Acting as a Vet it gets one more dice to roll that is enough to rout the other, and last, Russian section on that flank.  That flank is clear, the centre is nearly free of Russians and it is only on the Russian right flank they are making a bit of progress.  Things are not really looking great for the Russians.

...followed shortly after by the other one.

The Russians continue with the close combat in the village. It was not to be (at least for the Russians).  They only just lost and are forced to retreat 2 squares and are suppressed.  Note: one Russian section should have been routed but forgot this rule too.  Surprising I cannot remember the close combat rules about winners and losers removing a base - my close combat rules have been unchanged for 6 years and are lifted from Take Cover!! that I used to play for 10 years prior to that! 

Russians lose the melee in the village and retreat suppressed (the green marker = suppression)

The German HQ, fresh from victory in the close combat can advance 2 squares which they do to enter into close combat with the Russian section with the Company leader.  They are successful.  They decide not to advance as they would be close to the other suppressed unit and their luck may not hold out to another close combat.

German HQ Gruppe advances and successfully routs the Russian  section and leader in close combat. 

This is an example of a close combat roll - top is the 3 white dice for the Germans (1 for the section, 1 for charging, 1 for leader) Vs 1 red dice for the Russians (1 for base, 1 for leader, -1 suppressed).  The dice are a special order arranged by the author of the Goal System series of rules..

The Russians have lost over 50% of their bases and so need to check force morale.  They roll 2 dice instead of 3 as the overall force commander is lost. They roll 2 successes means all units are pinned and must also all retreat 2 squares.  I call the game at this time as a win for the Germans - the Russians are not going to really be able to take the village with the couple of sections remaining.

Russian force morale roll

Verdict
That was very fast, the whole game was about 5 turns.  For these games with only a small number of bases on each side, I am finding the dice based activation quite good (after tweaking it 4 times over 5 games!), at least compared to my favourite of card based activation.  I think for these rules I will keep using the dice based activation and leave the card based to games with more bases/figures.
I know at the end of the last post on the rules I was talking about going 8x8 etc. but during the last week I am inspired to not only get back to my 15mm ancient games, but also play a few more of these 12x12 WW2 gridded games with these rules.  On Friday I spent my lunchtime modifying my half-baked company battle generation spreadsheet (based on Platoon Forward).  It hangs together just and will now generate some games for East Front for these rules.  So hopefully you will see a few more battle reports based on these rules.