[Lt. Ketch]

It's been a while since I posted here and the depressing bit is that i's been a while since I've been able to play this campaign.

I'm currently just finishing up the deployment stage of my next battle, a defence in the snow and trees late 11/41 against the facist horeds (57 turns, 44 vis). I'm going to try to post some screen shots in the next 24 hours or so because the map is a little particular, i.e. hard to describe in great detail and a simple discription isn't adaquate.

I'm also looking for ideas as to a good idea on how to make this work. In inadaquate terms, the map is a terrected landscape with lots and lots of trees bisected about 3/5 of the way up by a road that angles NW. There are some clearings in the north and east (the side I'm defending). The Objectives are along the road and, on a hill about 400 - 500 meters north of the road and on a small hill in the south east cornern of the map.

My forces have changed little from what I listed at the beginning of this thread. The only changes were to three mortars to incorperate a dedicated Counter Battery presense in my forces. The 82mm mortar that was attached to the Rifle + company has been upgraded to a 152mm off board battery and renamed "Off Board CB 1." Two 107mm Mortars have also been upgraded to 120mm mortars and renamed "On Board CB 1 & 2." While this limits my total artillary support by three guns, the 82mm mortar was seldom used in an indirect role and spend most of its time trying to find a good place to fire from but was usally just out of range of where it needed to be. The 107mm were a bit of a loss, but seeing as I found out that mortars make great on board cb support, they probably would have found themselves doing that anyway. Now they have the additional range of the 120mm.

Support forces for this battle consist of 5 ski pioneer platoons (3 squads each), 3 shelter bunkers (SBUNK) (Armed with 1 rifle and space for 40) and 2 bunkers (GBUNK) armed with a 45mm ATG, 2 Maxim HMG and a rifle. While it may seem unusual to select such forces, hear my reasoning. My biggest fears in this battle are tanks and artillery. While the russians have a good selection of ATGs (the 57mm being the prime example of an ATG), the enemy could come through the trees and avoid any open areas where my guns would work. My thought was to use groups of infantry that can move faster then the ATG could that would be able to knock out the tank. The other reason for getting ski pioneers is that, with the exception of my own engineers (6 squads) and my scouts (3 mountain, 2 regular 2 para), my infantry doesn't have anything that can effectivly take out a tank (that makes a remaining 25 squads). Also, as I found out, my infantry can't move vary fast in the snow. The Ski pioneers should solve all of these problems. The bunkers are to deal with the other fear. Seeing as my lagerst squads only have 11 men in them, I can put a whole platoon in the SBUNKs and at least one full squad (or two scounts) in the GBUNKs (carry capacity 12).

My current idea is one of fall back, wear down and counter attack. The reason for this is that I won't know where the enemy is coming from but I do know where he is going. The amount of trees in the area has the high potential of masking the enemy's movements until they are relitivly close to the objectives. That is where the bulk of my forces is currently located, with the SBUNKs being right on top of some of the flags. This way I can fall back all the way to the objectives and take shelter while I call in friendly artillary support very close to my own men. My 107mm mortars and 76 mm inf guns shouldn't (hope, hope) be a threat to any friendlies in the SBUNKs while they are suppressing, routeing and killing any Germans trying to take the flags. The idea is then to counter attack and push back through any objectives they have taken. Think of All quite on the Western Front when it describes the attack on the trenchs. The enemy attacks, do damage and fall back to next trench, frindly artillery hits newly enemy occupied trench, rally and counter attack, clear trench and send them packing.

When I get my screen shots up, I hope that some of you will chime in on ideas, but if I can't I'll give it a try on my own.

Updates to follow.