My First Play-By-Email Game

This is the first game I've ever played against another human. So far I've always been playing against the computer. I read somewhere about the Combat Mission ladder at the Blitzkrieg Wargaming Club, posted a message, and got a game with another relative newbie. We agreed to a small battle and had a pretty fun game.

The Setup

We played a 500 point battle, both with combined arms, mechanized troops. It was a meeting engagement on a clear, cool, breezy April day in 1942.

I selected a T34 (model 1942) to be my big gun. Without a lot of points it makes sense to have a tank, since it can provide direct fire as well as another machine gun, and is easily movable anywhere on the field. My infantry will consist mainly of a recon company. I picked a recon company instead of a regular motorized rifle company, because the rifle company comes with three ATGs and two maxims, while at the same time fielding fewer regular infantry soldiers. In this early stage of the war the ATGs may be able to do some damage to enemy vehicles, but I don't want to be spending my points on them. The recon company is cheaper and fields more actual infantrymen. In support I also bought two 82mm mortars and a maxim.

The lone victory flag is on my left, with decent tree coverage from both directions. The center of the map is mostly open, with a small rise on my side.

I select 2nd platoon to lead my infantry because their Lt. has morale and stealth bonuses. I figure the lead units are more likely to come under artillery fire and I want that morale bonus to help the men rally when they get nervous. I arrange the three squads and their HQ in a box about 30m apart and aim them toward the flag. They will steer a path by the trees on the left and behind the hedge that will shield them from the center of the map. 2nd platoon (with a combat and stealth bonus) forms up another box and will follow them out in a couple turns.

3rd platoon has two regular squads and one green one. The HQ, with the two regular squads will form a depleted platoon that acts as a reserve. I'll hide them away in a small cluster of trees in the middle and wait to see where they're needed. The green squad will join my overwatch group as security in case they get attacked. The overwatch group also consists of the mortars and the maxim machine gun, commanded by the company HQ. There's a nice clump of trees to the right that will have a great view of the whole flag area if I can get the overwatch group there safely.

The T34 will wait behind the hill until I see what kind of vehicles the enemy has. Then I will try to find him a hull-down position to fire from.

The Action

There is very little action for the first three minutes as my men move into position. Late in turn 3 the action is joined when I receive distant incoming MG fire on the left, and shortly after that spot an armored car in the same area. Within the next minute mortar shells are falling on 2nd platoon as they make their way forward. Everyone heads for cover with one squad turning back the way they came and getting themselves out of command range of their Lt. The mortar fire continues for a few minutes and though it doesn't cause a lot of actual injuries to 2nd platoon, it shakes some of them up and scatters them around sneaking toward cover. I eventually just tell them to hide and recover for a little while.

Around the end of turn 5 I spot a Panzer III in the far rear left. It follows the armored car to a position behind the trees on the left edge of the map. I push the T34 up to a hull down position to fire on them. They exchange a few shots but nobody is really damaged before I lose sight of them behind those trees. As this is going on a self-propelled gun is reported in the enemy's rear.

At that point I had also been watching occasional infantry contacts running into those same trees at the left. They are too thick for me to see what's arriving in there, but there are quite a few markers collected there now so I unhide my maxim to keep them from exiting those trees and order my mortars to open fire on them.

I try to reposition the T34 too see around those trees a bit and come to the critical point in the battle. My tank starts firing on the infantry in those trees. This wakes up the Panzer and he starts firing at my tank. The first shot lands short and the T34 ignores it and stays focused on the infantry. The next shot ricochets off his hull and that gets his attention. He takes one shot at the Panzer and gets a side lower hull penetration. The Panzer is then reportedly immobilized, but by next turn it looks abandoned.

At that point I was feeling pretty good. I was confident that the T34 would take out the AC if he ever showed himself. The self-propelled gun turned out to be a halftrack, but it was carrying a gun so I decided not to go straight after it, since it could get a lucky shot that stops my only tank. So I moved the T34 forward keeping a house between it and the HT. I positioned it so that he could fire away at the infantry on the left but be far enough away to avoid being close assaulted. He was also in position to hit the AC if it ever moved from behind those trees.

At that point I was pretty sure I had seen all his troops and nobody was coming down my right, so I started moving my reserve platoon over to the left to add pressure to the infantry push. I never managed to get all the troops over there very organized (at least partially because of continued mortar fire), but I kept enough of them far enough forward to keep pressure on his troops that attempted to come out of those trees. Combine that with the machine gun firing from overwatch and then the tank in close and eventually his men started to break and retreat.

One of my mortars retargetted himself on the HT in the distant left. Even though some of the shells appeared to fall right on him, he never seemed to be affected by it at all. Eventually he backed up at about the same time I moved the T34 around the building (to fire on an IDed MG34 LMG). My tank spotted him and knocked him out with a side shot.

With his heavy stuff down, and his infantry in retreat, my opponent decided to surrender. The whole battle really came down to the T34 vs. the Panzer. When I won that match I could then move my tank around confidently and use it to push back the enemy infantry. If he had won, however, I would have been subjected to direct fire HE from both the tank and the HT and mobile MG and gunfire from the AC. That would have been brutal. I had basically put all my anti-tank eggs in one basket. It's risky, but with infantry that has no effective anti-armor tools at all (molotov coctails? come on!) that's the sort of risk you have to take with early war Soviets.

My opponent wrote to me:

My only comment so far would be on the importance of caution with one's armor. Your tank/tanks are the queen of the battle, don't loose them early on. Once they're gone, the game is lost more or less. My opinion.. that may change with time.. LOL