Summer in the Ukraine

Yesterday me and Sören played a game of Big Chain-of-Command set on the outskirts of Kiev during operation Barbarossa.
The idea behind this scenario is that Infanterie-Regiment Grossdeutschland is taking part in the encirclement of Kiev (which they did historically), and is tasked with taking control of a suburban area just outside the city.
At the same time as the IRGD task force is approaching their objective, a similar Soviet force is moving up to defend the area.
Sören had painted up a very nice infantry platoon from IRGD with some armour support. And I used my new summer Soviets, so it was actually the first time any of these figures were used in a game.

Terrain

There was an urban area in one corner of the table, where the Soviets could enter. The rest of the table was fairly open countryside with farm buldings, crops and small patches of wood.
There was also a river with a couple of bridges running down the length of the table.

The table - Soviets to enter from the right in this picture

Mission

This was Sören's first full game of CoC, so we decided to keep things simple and did a basic encounter scenario. We just entered our Patrol Markers from our respective table edges. There were no terrain objectives, and the mission was simply to force the opponent to withdraw.

Forces

As we were doing a Big Chain of Command scenario, we had two platoons each. Sören used a standard German Barbarossa rifle platoon and an armoured platoon consisting of a PzIII with the short 50mm gun and two early StuG III.
I used a standard Soviet Barbarossa Rifle platoon and a full strength tank platoon of 5 T-26s.
We rolled quite low for Force Support, so there was not that much stuff we could add. The Germans added a sdkfz 222 armoured car and a satchel charge (both assigned to the infantry platoon), while the Soviets gave each infantry squad leader an SMG.

Early Game

The Germans gained initiative and deployed a squad in the table centre (obviously headed for the cover of the built up area and the juicy Soviet Jump Off points over there). The German Armoured platoon entered in the centre of the table as well and headed for the BUA too. The Germans at this point had a series of remarkable Command Dice throws and generated a huge number of Chain of Command dice and double moves. While this was very nice, the huge number of CoC dice meant that there were not that many actual command dice available to deploy and move troops.

The Grossdeutschland Regiment rushes forward

The Soviets had more average command dice and entered most of the tank platoon opposite, but not in LOS of, their German counterparts. A couple of Soviet infantry squads deployed into houses in the BUA to prevent the German squad and StuGs to just roll right over them.

Soviet infantry and tanks deploy in and around the BUA to counter the attacking Germans

Mid Game

The German infantry squad heading for the BUA sprinted into a large stone building, where it was engaged by a Soviet squad in a nearby wooden building, and settled in for a firefight.
Meanwhile the German armoured platoon trundled up to support the fight in the BUA and caused some casualties to the Soviet infantry.
But at the same time, the painfully slow Soviet T-26s managed to trundle forward far enough to be able to fire on the German squad in the stone building while still being out of LOS of the German armour.

The German armour moves up to support their infantry in the stone building in the foreground

The Soviet infantry deployed another couple of squads in farm buildings outside the BUA, while the Germans countered by deploying their remaining infantry squads on both flanks along with the sdkfz 222 armoured car. (At this point, the game got so tense, I forgot to take any photos for a while. Sorry....)

Both the Soviet and German infantry in the BUA were taking casualties while the Soviet infantry in the farm buildings on the flanks were being pounded by the German armoured car and a tank that rolled into position to engage. The Soviets lost two squad leaders, and suffered some loss of morale.
At the same time, one of the German squads was getting seriously depleted in spite being in good cover. But that was not surprising, as it was being fired on by several T-26s and two Soviet squads. But it did not go down and gave as good as it got. Brave lads in that German squad....
The other German squads started rushing forward, but had quite a distance to go.

Late Game

The end game was quite sudden and brutal.
The German tank commander decided on a bold gamble. He advanced into LOS of the Soviet tankers and then used some Chain of Command dice to fire repeatedly on the T-26s before the Soviets could react. This could very well have worked, but the Germans were quite unlucky in their die rolling; every round fired hit the T-26s, but caused little damage in spite of the decent German guns and the poor armour on the Soviet tanks.

The decisive armoured battle with the seemingly invulnerable T-26 in front, shrugging off the concentrated fire of the PzIII and the StuGs

With all those hits and the poor armour on the T-26s the Germans really should have knocked out at least one of their targets. But luck was with the T-26s. Especially one of them that was in an exposed position and took seven or eight hits from all German AFVs with only a damaged gun sight and some shock as a result. The guys in that crew needed a bottle of Vodka each to calm their nerves after the battle....
In reply, the T-26s, with similar guns to the Germans, scored several hits on the German platoon commander's vehicle and knocked out its main gun as well as killing the driver. The platoon commander was now a sitting duck unable to shoot back or get out of the way. Ouch.

The German platoon commander's tank is knocked out, and things are starting to go pear-shaped for the Grossdeutschland...

The StuGs then opened fire again on the T-26s, but once more did no real damage.
Finally, the T-26s fired a final volley that knocked out the German command tank and one of the StuGs as well. The final StuG was damaged.

One of the StuGs go down as well, finally repelling the Germn attack.

The only remaining AT weapon for the Germans was the brave sdkfz 222 armoured car and an explosive charge carried by an infantryman. The German infantry was in pretty good shape, except for the one squad in the BUA, but the other units were too far away and dispersed to have an effect for quite some time.
The Soviet tanks had suffered no complete losses, and although the infantry had taken a beating with two squads badly depleted, the Soviet infantry platoon's morale had held up quite well.

But, with the loss of the German armour, we saw no real prospect for the Germans to force the Soviets back, so at this point we decided to call it a day. The IRGD were repulsed and did not take this gateway to Kiev today.
There are gloating victory bulletins in Pravda celebrating this glorious victory, and Comrade Stalin is ordering big shiny medals for everyone.

Meanwhile, back at the Wolfsschanze, Adolf is foaming at the mouth and plotting revenge......