Day after day in mid-January, the Soviets launched repeated attacks against the Italians of the Cuneense, Julia, and Tridentina divisions. Often the attacks never even made it across the frozen Don River to the fortified positions. On January 16th, they tried again, striking the Tridentina Division. . .
Attacker: Russian (15th Army Corps)
Defender: Italian (55th Battalion, 6th Alpini Regiment, Tridentina Division)
My intuitive sense of how good shots were going to be kept being thrown off by the LV hindrances.
Italians deployed all along the river's edge across the frontage, I picked the left flank as offering slightly better terrain for the attacker. Initial MG prep-fire was ineffective, but other than a fluke KIA the Russians got most of the way across the river on turn 1. Turn 2 a large brown amoeba prep fired and broke half the Italians in front of them on the riverbank, while the MG supports broke the others. Italian left flank started to redeploy in the backfield. The Italian sniper was ultra active and got 3 "1" results against the Russian 9-2 kill stack, with the final one finally wounding him. Thankfully by turn 3 their firepower wasn't as needed and the Russians started scaling the banks of the river. As the Italians were redeploying, some of the excess Russian squads broke for the middle of the board, and by turn 5 the Soviets were threatening both the 18V2 and 18P1 hill masses. End of turn 6 saw an Italian concession as the Russians had 13 VP on the hills with only a few Italian squads left in good order and more Russians pouring on behind.
The Italian FO missed their first radio contact DR and then got broken and then killed by a wound by subsequent Russian prep-fire.
2025-02-21
(A) John Garlic
vs
Mike Grogan
Russian win
I've played this scenrio twice, once as both sides. The Russians won both times. In this one, Mike set up a reverse slope defense and I was able to quickly cross the river and establish a bridgehead and hold until last turn advance onto hilltops. He was unable to break enough to deny the Russians.
2022-03-17
(A) David Ramsey
vs
Martin Barker
Italian win
The Russian's pushed hard with an illegal human wave on T1 but never really took control of the scenario despite making great progress and having 8 squads on the hills at times. The combination of Wire, trenches, minefields and OBA in the end was all too much. As featured on IR 64.
2022-01-15
(D) Asad Rustum
vs
Jacob Elmqvist
Italian win
Set up as the Italians rather far back with only a few units overlooking the river. Once the Russians had crossed the rivers the Italians has a magnificent lt.mtr bashing hitting the Russians hard. OBA was tough. After finally gaining radio contact the access chit was red and the next turn the second red chit was drawn. The leader got mad and threw the radio at the Russians.
Quite a few weather changes came about with snow increasing twice after which it disappeared. The Italians has some good luck not only with rate on the mortars but also with IFT rolls and although rolling the Russian SAN quite a few times, the Russians did not get payback through effective snipers.
In the final turns the Russian 9-2 rolled for HoB and became berserk.
All in all a very nice scenario.
