Things take a turn for the worse

Well, it wasn't entirely unexpected after all. The Soviets, and their Green troops in particular have done a sterling job here I think, but in a similar vein to the actual historical battle as it turns out, the Soviets manage to make inroads into a small area of the town but in the end simply can't sustain the attack, and so fall back. Well, they don't here actually but they would have done had it not been a single battle, and a kind of test battle at that. But as I mentioned in a previous post, if I'd been playing this as part of a campaign I'd have pulled out and retreated a lot sooner in a bid to lick my wounds and live to fight on another day. As it is, the Soviets surrender here.

So as this was as much a testing ground for house-rules as anything I realised much later than I should have that one of the house-rules I had made was being completely ignored right throughout the battle, right up until shortly before the end in fact. I had previously decided that Green Infantry should SURPRESS on 1 hit, and be KILLED on 2 hits*. This came about because it seemed a little off that a Green unit would hold their nerve to the degree that a battle-hardened Veteran unit would. I don't know really, but it seemed like a nice little house-rule to me, and I still like it now. I forgot it though. So I adjusted all the Pins to Suppressions as seen in this next screenshot. Too late as I say, but still...

*Thinking about this after the fact, I'm going to have to give this a proper test before implementing it permanently since I've an idea this may just be overkill. Pin results(1 hit) are very common, which would mean Green units would be being suppressed left, right and centre. I now think it's going to be too harsh. I'm thinking maybe it's enough that they only roll 2d6 in the first place. 

An overview of the current situation along with hastily adjusted Pins/Supressions

I've zoomed in a little in this next one so you can see the main area of battle a little better. As was only to be expected, the central board 3 was the main kill-zone throughout. The stone buildings are now marked properly as victory points and you can see the small area in the north-western part of the central area that the Soviets managed to capture. This is all they managed in the end and surrendered shortly after due to mounting losses, and those hastily re-assigned Pins/Suppressions. 

Here's the final shot of the actual situation at the point the Soviets actually surrendered. I've added the little notepad that I was writing rules/house-rules on during the battle just in case anyone's interested. I quite like most of them. Some of the terrain modifiers need a little work I think. I don't like how pretty much everything is considered to be -1d6 modifier. Part of me likes the blanket simplicity of it, but another part thinks that a heavy stone building should give more protection than a light forested area. Attempting to adjust for it by making it a xd6+(-1) or (-2) etc... doesn't really work since it makes it so much more difficult to get any hits at all then, on anything. I'll have to think about it.

So here's that final screenshot.

Final situation in and around the area of Piepsk, along with house-rules

So that's it. Final thoughts are that this scenario seemed to be almost custom made for my little Crossfire (house)rules battle. The ASL boards are just about perfect for Crossfire in my opinion due I think in the most part to a good deal of them containing plenty of terrain features. Certainly the three boards that are used in this scenario seem to be almost ideal, and the scenario itself ended up being a really nice ratio of attackers to defenders, which as I've mentioned before surprised me no end. 

Really enjoyable battle, and it has to be said, a really successful experiment with the pseudo-Crossfire rules. I'm already thinking of attempting a mini campaign.