Operation Winter Storm CoC AAR

I have begun playing the new(ish) CoC scenario booklet  "Operation Winter Storm" which portrays the ill-fated German attempt to relieve the encircled 6th Army in Stalingrad. The first scenario in the book is "the 0:430 to Kotelnikovo" which has a German train stopped by Russian partisans who are attempting to blow up the train!. 

This is the board facing south

The Russian partisans...

And the German panzergrenadiers

This view shows the German JOP's and the Russian eastern JOP's

The western Russian JOP's

The German train...I used a paper model from here

The Russians start by deploying their MMG

With a good view of the train

The Germans bring out a sniper to try and counter the MMG

The Russians' strategy is to bring out as much firepower as they can bear to create cover and let the engineers get to the train (a poor strategy as it turns out)

The panzergrenadiers deploy on the train...

and cut the partisans to pieces

The MG32 team deploys as well

Another panzergrenadier section charges (and breaks) the weakened partisan squad

The rest of the partisan forces deploy

but make little headway (disregard the stray casualty in front of the train!)

The Germans return fire very effectively

The Russian 60mm mortar is probably the most effective unit in the partisan force...they will eventually do away with the MG42

the panzergrenadiers make the ridge line and take out a Russian JOP

HANDGRANATEN!!!

The Russians have had enough...their morale falls to zero and they quit the field

The board at the end of the game. 

The Russians took very heavy casualties (16 KIA) and the Germans suffered few (6 KIA, most of them form the mortar). Trying to overpower the panzergrenadiers was not a very good idea. Being patient is the key with partisans, perhaps the Russians will have more luck in the next scenario "Kotelnikovo Station"...stay tuned to find out.