Soviet Tank Battalion 22 June 1941 - 8 May 1945

[Shan]

I'm playing a similar Soviet '41-'45 long campaign and have completed a couple of battles so far. I must say I normally never play Soviets, I don't likemthat style of fighting, using huuman wave tactics etc... I prefer quality over quantity...

My initial force had about Batallion-strength: I tried to make it balanced: 2 rifle companies, 1 tank company, 1 57mm ATG platoon (3 guns), some arty and attachments. I was aware that morale + experience would be the main drawback - as a concession, I bought T-34s right away in '41 and later I added a KV-1 company, starting with an HQ and slowly expanding, battle after battle.

The initial battles were tough - I was mostly on deelay or defence, some meetings as well - I tried to let the enemy come, deploy my forces carefully and keep my tanks in reserve. This usually saved my *** - one line of infantry just isn't enough if a full Panezrabteilung with inf support is attacking, overrunning my men. My A/T guns proved to be very effective but not survivable at all. I also relied on 37mm AA guns to cover my rear - they hardly ever hit a plane and even though capable to take out medium tanks, they have only 5 shots of AP ammo and hardly ever manage to hit anything ...

I also bought a Katyusha battery later on... I find them pretty over-rated, especially when compared with the Nebelwerfer I'm used to!

Soviet arty is a pain - due to low experience it fires usually only after 3.5 turns (!) - for someone like me who until recently only played modern battles in WinMBT that't hard to adjust to... also, German counter-battery fire is a problem if your own guns fire once in a while and are swiftly taken out of action...

The T-34s and KV-1s, on the other hand, are life-savers: I hardly ever lost one of them, and if, then it usually got immobilized by slow, friendly arty fire while making a counter-attack. Also, the tankers are almost blind, so having scouts and M/C scouts in cooperation is an absolute necessity.

I tried to keep the tank company closely together to make up for the incompetent crews - this proved to be effective, even if 9 out of tanks firing opportunity fire miss, one guy in the company will be lucky and then its usually a kill!

After a couple of battles, I added a 2nd 57mm ATG platoon and a 76mm platoon - well, when they become experienced, they are great. Same is true for all units. Luckily I'm still in '41 and haven't had to attack so far... but I already got introduced to the deadly '88, securing the artillery batteries which I once tried to destroy in a counter-attack...

In general, so far playing the Soviets is much more fun than expected - I'm looking forward to see how things go when the Germans start to receive better tanks...