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Red Thunder Campaign: Battle for Rikonovo II (work in progress)

Rico

Rico

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So, basically this was something I was tinkering with in December and polished up in the odd spare moments over the last few weeks ... it's a reboot of the fictional Battle for Rikonovo, Red Thunder campaign I did back in 2015.
It's set over a few days in late June 1944 north of Minsk, east of Borizov...

Here's the full map. As you can see, it's not hex-based, but a zone control game -- idea is to keep a lot of things very simple and less campaign manager narrative driven -- but more left to the players and commanders.
Counters are mostly company-sized infantry & tank ... or arty batteries. It would be full FOW with simultaneous orders issued by CO's and played out by the CM.
Battles then set up on medium-sized Red Thunder maps ... usually in 30 - 40min max range, with whatever's in the map zone, will be involved in the battle.

IohYUoS.jpg


The situation is the following.
Vitebsk is surrounded and the roads are choked with columns of German rear area troops in full retreat towards Borizov and Minsk, crossing the Berzhinka river at the town of Rikonovo.

Red Army mechanised spearheads that have bypassed Vitebsk to the south are believed to be racing towards Rikonovo on both the north and south side of the Berzhinka river.

A Kampfgruppe from 5th Panzer Division is detraining at Borizov and elements are rushed forward to hold the enemy at Rikonovo for as many days as possible to allow for escape of as many retreating troops as possible, to allow for the evacuation of stores and several thousand wounded from Rikonovo ... and to gain time for the main forces of 5th Panzer Division to deploy properly at Borizov and hopefully slow down the Soviet advance north of Minsk.

The situation for both sides is confused -- German CO will try and cobble together a all-round improvised defense with scratch units and panzer troops arriving in dribs and drabs ... the Russian CO trying to push as hard as he can and capture Rikonovo as quickly as possible "off the march" before the German defense can solidify -- with his units battered and possibly strung out due to bad roads and supply problems ... has he outrun his air support and air recon?

Gotta give credit -- pretty map made with "borrowed" graphics from games like Panzer Corps, Unity of Command and a few others ...
 
A Canadian Cat said:
That sounds very interesting. One question will combined arms battles be allowed / used in the CM battles? Obviously where tanks and infantry are in the same area of course I just want to make sure that mixing units in a single CM battle will be allowed.
Click to expand...

Yes, whatever is available in the zone facing a front (something to be explained in more detail later) gets combined and used in the battle. There'll be a stacking limit per zone and artillery can fire over several zones range.
Tank and assault gun and arty units just contain those type of vehicles/guns -- infantry units have integral transport, AT guns, Hvy MG's and medium mortars (all able to broken down into threes)
 
It looks very nice with zone based campaigns rather than hex based, in my opinion...
 
Hoping to do some more testing on this over the weekend ... trying out a "chit pull" system for the reinforcements ... each side will more or less know what reinforcement units are due, but it'll be randomly drawn which units arrive when as they rushed up to the front ... Germans detraining, refuelling and fighting clogged roads ... and Russians strung out after a week of rapid advance and having supply and fuel problems over bad roads and blown bridges... not to emntion some of their units having taken casualties so far as well.
 
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