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We had a total of 8 members in attendance for the kick-off of our Slaughter at Ponyri CG playtest. Dan Plachta, Scott Thompson and Dave Kocot represented the Russian team against me, Jim Cotugno and John Lehman playing the Germans. We were joined by Mario Goldgorin who has been on a long hiatus and did a fine job as Jim Cotugno’s designated dice roller, and our special guest star, Slaughter at Ponyri designer and map artist, Don Petros.
As planned, the Russian team came prepared with a set up, and we went to work getting the map set up so the Russians could get their pieces on board. While they worked on that, the Germans rolled up their leaders and pulled counters. At about 1:00 the Germans started their set-up, after which we had our usual St. Crispin's 'gamer's lunch', and began rolling dice around 2:00 PM.
The Germans entered in three groups and stayed fairly spread out to mitigate the effects of the Russian Rockets and OBA, bringing in about half of their available turn one forces. The initial objective was to scout the Russian forward positions, looking for weak spots, safe avenues of approach, and traps. The Germans took the option to purchase a Heavy Armor Group #3 (Ferdinands), and those came in along the Elevated Railway. The Russians responded with fire from dug-in T34M43’s, spotted mortars, a flame mine and .50 cal’s in pillboxes.
Both sides wasted little time ‘unleashing the hounds’, with the Russians bringing down a Rocket OBA on John Lehman’s 292nd Infantry sector on the German left. Luckily for the Germans, it landed in a fairly unoccupied area, and only one squad died to a KIA. On the bottom of turn one, the Germans brought down their own Rocket OBA, which also took a bad drift, but burned an SU76 ‘Bitch’ and started some fires in the wheat fields and orchards behind the Russian MLR in front of my 18th Panzer sector on the German right. The German turn one Stukas were entirely ineffective.
We completed turn one and the Rally phase of turn two, and called it a day. We were all pretty pleased with our progress and pulled out around 6:00 PM. It was an excellent start to what promises to be a exciting campaign game.
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