The Adventures of Kampfgruppe Klink

Started by bigjackmac, 31 December 2014, 05:05:18 AM

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bigjackmac

Thanks Phil, and I agree, he's doing great and we're having lots of fun.

Lemmey - I kind of like the idea of Greece, I just don't know much about it.  I think Too Fat Lardies have a scenario book for it, I'll have to take a look.  And a buddy of mine was telling me I could get away with using my 10mm French for the Greeks; what do you think?  I've got 10mm Brits, so no problem there, but not a lot of early war vehicles.  Hell, the next scenario for France calls for two French 75s, but I only have one...  Similarly, I don't know much about Crete, other than the horrendous Airborne losses by the Germans.

But the big hold up for the desert is, what do I do with my infantry???  I need some scenarios or concepts; what happened and how do I model it? 

Thanks guys!

V/R,
Jack

Duke Speedy of Leighton

Germans. Wore great coats?
It wasn't all tanks, Germans had mech inf.
Foot could be on garrison duty...

For Greece. It's French uniform with Bren Carriers, a hard fight on both sides.
You may refer to me as: Your Grace, Duke Speedy of Leighton.
2016 Pendraken Painting Competion Participation Prize  (Lucky Dip Catagory) Winner

Ithoriel

Tanks take ground, infantry hold it ... in theory at least!

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

Ace of Spades

My compliments on the campaign Jack, really impressive!

In fact it impressed me so much that your adventures pushed me over the edge and make postpone my ACW plans and go for a Blitzkrieg campaign too! Not sure yet what rules I'll be using (probably our own we've been using for years now) but the order went out for a basic German force plus their first opponents (Polish troops). Both sides well enough equipped so I can play several scenario's and shift troops around a bit. The core unit for my Germans will be a Schützen Kompanie Gepanzert and they can take different support units depending on the mission. What will be available for the next mission will depend on what survived and/or can be substituted.
Really looking forward to playing this; thanks for the inspiration!

Cheers,
Rob
2014 Painting Competition - Runner-Up!

bigjackmac

Thanks guys! 

And glad to be of service, Rob, and looking forward to your battle reports!

V/R,
Jack

bigjackmac

All,

It's 1615 on 15 May 1940, and KG Klink, attached to the 7th Panzer Division, is on the move.  The 7th Panzer Division has broken through the French front line and is on the road to Flavion; this morning the division was stymied by French resistance on the main axis of advance, but KG Klink reconnaissance elements discovered an undefended ford of the River Moiste north of the city and seized it.  Lt Wehner immediately seized it, and both the French and Colonel Klink dispatched forces to secure it.  There followed an extremely intense fight which saw two enemy tanks knocked out, an entire French infantry platoon eliminated in close combat, and four Iron Crosses handed out (including a 1st Class)!  Rommel immediately sent his panzer grenadiers streaming into Flavion and his panzers around it, while KG Klink pushed south from its ford, then being ordered to reduce a French strongpoint on Hill 81 on the eastern outskirts of Flavion.  Colonel Klink ordered his infantry company commander, 1st Lt Tausch, to take three of his platoons, some heavy weapons, and a section of Stug IIIs and take the hill.   

I am playing this game, the seventh of KG Klink's campaign during the Fall of France in 1940, in 10mm, using a mix of Pendraken and Minifigs UK troops and equipment, on a 6' x 4' table, using Great Escape Games' "Iron Cross" rules.


The battlefield, north is up.  Hard to see elevation (as I put the hills under the mat), but Hill 81 is at far left, while Hill 37 is at center top right.  There is a north-south running dirt road, several patches of woods, three houses (from top to bottom, the yellow house, the gray house, and the red house), numerous cultivated fields (no effect on movement/cover), and a large rubble pile at center (not sure why it's there, but it was in the Skirmish Campaigns scenario book map, so I put it in there, too).


The opposing forces, with French on top and Germans on the bottom.  The forces are relatively equal, two or three rifle platoons, a section of AFVs, a mortar, MG, and ATG.


The Stugs move up to the rubble pile (bottom center) and engage French defensive positions atop Hill 81 (top center).


And German mortars and machine-guns (bottom left) pound the French left (top center/right).


But things don't really heat up until the anti-tank guns come out!  Here the French 25mm ATG (bottom right) fires on the German Stugs (top left).


And the German PaK-36 (bottom center) pumps rounds into the flank of a French H39 (center top).

To see the whole fight, please check the blog at:
https://blackhawkhet.blogspot.com/2019/07/kg-klink-france-game-7.html

I'm looking to play out a few more of these games so that I can close out the Fall of France, I really want to get to the Eastern Front.  I hope you enjoyed the batrep, I'm working on more, though the next one will be back to the Cuba Libre blog for more dogfighting.  I also have an update on some 6mm WWII stuff I recently completed as well.

V/R,
Jack

Techno


Duke Speedy of Leighton

Been a while since these guys saw action, thank you Jack
You may refer to me as: Your Grace, Duke Speedy of Leighton.
2016 Pendraken Painting Competion Participation Prize  (Lucky Dip Catagory) Winner

Norm

Thanks Jack, I really enjoyed that. I have the Iron Cross rules and the 7 days (though there is quite a bit of vehicle stat errata on the latter, downloadable from the company.

Love the idea with the beads, dragging around markers is an admin problem of the system, especially in small scales, when the markers can dominate,but the beads are a great solution.

toxicpixie

and a large rubble pile at center (not sure why it's there, but it was in the Skirmish Campaigns scenario book map, so I put it in there, too)

Some poor peasants cheese and wine store, now destroyed. How will they survive the harsh French summer with no cheese and wine?!

Nice to see you back on the classic European tour, fast jets and ATGMs can't hold a mans attention for too long :)
I provide a cheap, quick painting service to get you table top quality figures ready to roll - www.facebook.com/jtppainting

paulr

Lord Lensman of Wellington
2018 Painting Competition - Runner-Up!
2022 Painting Competition - Runner-Up!
2023 Painting Competition - Runner-Up!


bigjackmac

All,

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate the kind words, I hope you enjoyed it.  It's good to have Herr Klink's boys back on the table, want to close out France and get to the Eastern Front.  I'll probably split off the panzers and have it primarily infantry fights (much like this fight, a company's worth of infantry supported by two Stugs).  Maybe build the KG around a 10-vehicle Stug battery.  I do want to do North Africa, but, for me, North Africa just has to be bigger battles, so when I get to it (circa 2050) it will probably be in 6mm. 

Norm - Yes, the beads seemed to work alright, but I cracked myself up with the German mortar team next to a stack of cannon balls ;). In regards to your question about early war vehicle stats, I didn't find any so made my own up based on extrapolation/best guess from the late war stats in the book.  I think I used the Soviet T-70 as the basis for the H39, the PaK-36 had a penetration value of 6, the Stug's short 75 was a 5.  My only worry was that I gave the Stug 12 frontal armor, which may have been too much?

TP - Yeah, their countrymen soundly beaten, those peasants won't be getting any wine or cheese for another five years or so...  And don't worry, back to jets and missiles on Wednesday or Thursday ;)

V/R,
Jack

mmcv


bigjackmac

Thanks, MMCV!

Also,  I received an interesting question on one of the forums (why were the French tanks so slow to attack the German Stugs?), and hopefully I provided an interesting answer, which I wanted to share here.  So read the batrep first, but then come take a look if you're interested.  The reason I'm doing this is because I wish I was adding more tactical analysis like this into the batreps, but I get so focused on getting them written and posted that I'm falling down on that aspect.  My response:

1. The French tanks were a mobile reserve, and you don't want to commit your reserves before the action has developed.  The German Stugs were in a similar situation, with the caveat that the German commander knew he was going to have to commit them early as his infantry had to attack across open ground and the Stugs were the only units that offered the firepower to 'shoot them in,' particularly against a nearly equal defending force.  But that early committal did not win the battle for the Germans, it almost lost it for them!

2. The French anti-armor capability, while relatively numerous (two light tanks and an ATG), was not particularly capable, so the French commander knew they needed to get close and/or get on the flanks. Therefore the French commander adopted an ambush mentality that would allow the German armor to commit (hopefully overcommit), then pounce once the enemy armor was identified and fixed (as it was by the French 2nd rifle platoon, the Stugs' only alternative to remaining exposed at close range was to reverse, which, because of the close terrain, really meant quitting the fight).

3.  The last reason for the French commander to delay committing his tanks to the fight was that it is very difficult in real life to control units once they are committed and engaged, and the rules do a very good job at representing that.
It's the old ideas of getting inside your opponent's OODA loop, forcing him to react to what you're doing rather than doing what he wants to do, and that's exactly what the French commander did.

While the attack by the French 2nd rifle platoon was perhaps a bit too bold, and certainly unlucky (Sgt Wagner's vehicle being able to react and back away from the infantry close assault), it did fix the Stugs to allow the French anti-tank fun to be brought up, which resulted in the destruction of Sgt Wagner's vehicle. 

The French 2nd rifle platoon, despite the German 2nd and 4th Platoons' rushed deployment, was still able to threaten the remaining Stug, to the point it had to react to what they (and the French 1st platoon attacking the German 1st Platoon between the gray and yellow houses) were doing, thus staying engaged and being unable to react when the French tanks were ordered forward.

So I wouldn't say the French tanks were slow to respond, I figured they were right on time, coming within a micrometer of defeating the second Stug (one more morale marker would have finished him, or another inch of movement would have put the second French tank on the Stug's flank, which probably would have resulted in his shot penetrating instead of bouncing) which would have forced the German infantry to fall back (all armor KO'ed, two French tanks on the loose).

V/R,
Jack