April 2001
Here are a few photos from the epic Battle of Lovaysk, the third and final battle of my fictitious Drive to Rostov! 1941 WW2 miniatures campaign. Said campaign included our combined miniatures collection, and was expressly designed to generate fun and interesting tabletop battles rather than faithfully represent history. It turned out to be a good lesson in what works, and what doesn’t, in a miniatures campaign.
We fought the battles with 20mm miniatures. (To be fair, the miniatures are a mixture of 1/87, 1/76, and 1/72 scales. 20mm is sort of the average.) We used the Command Decision 3rd Edition wargaming rules, in which a single stand represents a platoon or battery.
Read the final summary of the campaign at the bottom of the page. I wrote it in 2001, directly as the campaign ended. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the purple prose therein.
Soviet commanders, left to right: Polkovnik Zudek, General-leytenant Liduacsky
One of the pitfalls of refereeing a campaign...
The Drive to Rostov! Campaign Summary & Awards Ceremony
A commemoration of the end of a long campaign.
This is the epic story of a short week in October 1941, as German, Italian and Romanian forces fictitiously fought their way towards the key city of Rostov.
Our Players
Italian Generale de Divisione Venturoso
The less said about this strutting peacock, so much the better.
Apparently he developed a taste for high living in rear-area bunkers, and could not be bothered to show up at the front, so he was most likely promoted to an even higher rank of incompetence. To actually be fair to Oronzo, our campaign stood still for probably a year or so, and life and other interests caught up with him in that intervening time. Cosi รจ la vita! (That’s life!)
German Generalmajor Junkers-Peake
A stalwart and cautious fighter for the Greater German Reich, the Generalmajor quickly and efficiently assumed command of the Axis drive after Venturoso was “recalled.”
German Hauptman Schwartz was his somewhat bloodthirsty second in command.
Soviet General-leytenant Liduacsky
Our commander was regularly bombarded with STAVKA communiques hinting at death by shooting for all officers who did not do their best to defend Mother Russia.
Soviet Polkovnik Sergey Zudek ably assisted the General-leytenant as his anti-tank defense expert.
The Three Battles
1st: The Battle of Mius River North, October 1st.
Two Green Soviet tank battalions made up of BT-7’s and T-26’s momentarily held up the advance of the vanguard of the Axis attack of approximately 14 battalions, including motorised infantry and armoured units. A couple of Soviet tanks were lost in exchange for damage to German armoured cars and Italian Semovente assault guns. Dismounted German Panzergrenadiers took damage from accurate heavy artillery fire.
2nd: The Battle of POKROVSKOYE
The vast crushing mass of battalions that had fallen upon Mius River North now descended southward to cut off the village of Pokrovskoye on the Soviet side of the Mius River. The Soviets were defending with the equivalent of two infantry battalions; and, if that wasn’t bad enough, the local commanders were not completely briefed by the General-leytenant, who could not be present at the battle. The Soviet commanders did not know that they could be attacked from the flank, and they set up their trenches to expect an attack from across the river. The result was somewhat comical. The harried Soviets realised almost too late that German tanks were attacking their right flank, while a mass of Italian troops arrived at their front, and Italian cavalry moved behind them around their left flank. It was a rout, but it could have been worse. The Soviets broke morale as a battalion group, and fled back down the road to Lovaysk. The rub was that the Italian cavalry unit in their rear was not in position on the road to block the rout, and thus allowed the Soviet infantry to escape. But the Red Army lost all the supporting weapons for their infantry regiment in this action. It was following this debacle that Generale de Divisione Venturoso faded into obscurity, and Generalmajor Junkers-Peake took up the torch.
3rd (and final): The Battle of Lovaysk, October 5th to 6th, and still going....
The Axis attacked down the road from Pokrovskoye with a combined armour-infantry force of about seven battalions in strength. The Soviets held the village of Lovaysk with a combined armour-infantry force of about six battalions, albeit with a disadvantage in troop quality. What followed was a slog through the muddy morass of the Eastern Front, with no air support available because of rain, and movement at only a fourth of normal cross-country (and this was reduced to one-eighth movement when rain was falling, which it often did). Over a series of weekly or biweekly meetings at Comrade Zudek’s dacha that went on for a couple of months, we fought 80 turns of battle with no clear result in sight.
The battle was peppered with notable moments. A German 88mm flak gun got a bead on a T-34 tank that was nosing out of the village, and only got a glancing blow on it before the weather turned bad and visibility dropped. The Soviets blunted various German platoon- and company-sized attacks with infantry, anti-tank guns, and occasional fire from Green tanks in the town. The Soviets held a psychological trump card in the form of an SMG-armed NKVD battalion lying in wait in a central patch of woods neighbouring the village. Hauptman Schwartz repeatedly assaulted this terrain feature; repeatedly his infantry was sent packing by automatic small arms fire. Perhaps the single most devastating attack of the game was achieved by sheer luck (but this should in no way diminish its importance). Comrade Polkovnik Sergey Zudek conspicuously nailed a whole German infantry battalion with a deviating Katyusha multiple-rocket-launcher strike. The 8 x 8” template landed squarely on the battalion as well as other various stands, inflicting over ten hits. This single artillery strike has to be the most potent I have ever seen. It seriously compromised the German attack.
The Battle of Lovaysk continues, even as it fades into history...
Now that the campaign is over, let us present the awards.
(All participants and audience members are instructed to get a beverage for the toast at the end of the presentation.)
Generalmajor Junkers-Peake
Is awarded the Italian Rostov Campaign Medal for the continuation of a lost cause.
Hauptman Schwartz
Is awarded the Towards Rostov Campaign Shield for showing up and getting really muddy.
General-leytenant Liduacsky
Is awarded the Special Defense of Rostov Star for conspicuously halting the enemy on the third try. And he achieved the 1941 Defense Medal for continuing to fight with Green tanks that could only fire when stationary.
Polkovnik Sergey Zudek
Is awarded the Red and Gold Star of Stonking for putting serious hit on the enemy without even knowing it.
And finally, our toast:
Good campaigning, gentlemen!
Here’s mud in your eye, ha ha!
Thank God it’s over!
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