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P and I agreed to stop playing Edson's Ridge. The night rules and lack of units on map made it kinda boring. So I agreed to take the Russians in an RBCG and P wanted to try his hand at the Germans for the first time.

Russian plan of defense for the first day is built around the principle of slowing the Germans down and trying to make the Germans lose 1:1. After two turns, zero CVP dead Russians, 4 CVP dead Germans. My plan is built around denying him access to Vehicular Bypass Freeze by making it very difficult for his tanks to get into my infantry hexes. Therefore, an AT ditch on the west edge of the map (tanks can't enter those), two roadblocks on the northeastern edge. Partisans purchased as reserves in the factories and in the NE corner. First line submachine gun squads at the point of contact, with 1st line rifle squads in slightly refused positions. Lt Mortars on factory roof corners and a couple of MG kill stacks.

The day's objective is to let him have his 15 stone locations as needed to minimize Russian casualties, and get German casualties where I can. On Turn 1 Russian and Turn 2 Russian, 70mm offboard artillery hit near his A9 entry hex area, basically forcing him to direct his attention due east from his entry hexes to cross Tramvanaya street. Casualties so far have been 2 German 1/2 squads shot out by artillery and one German squad ambushed and destroyed when it attempted to close combat a concealed Russian squad.

Ok, here you go again!

Most excellent!

Day 1 (October 17) might be the most difficult one for me to play, since I am the Russians. If the German moves hard and fast he can gouge a huge chunk of ground away, and widen the perimeter so that in the next day the Russians are still too thin. In retrospect, I should have used 80mm artillery to stop the Germans because I think I'd have killed a few more (and it costs the same as 70mm, for the Russians), but I wanted to save the good stuff for later. Still, the 70mm has had the desired effect of keeping the German infantry from expanding the perimeter to the south, along the west side of Tramvanaya Street. So my artillery is definitely doing its job. I doubt, however, that I will get many more fire missions out of it. Two so far out of eight cards.

Wow! What a blast from the past ... I remember playing this one with the brother of a friend of mine in the early 90's in the spare room of the apartment my GF and I shared (I married her later and she passed two years ago .. ) We would play all night and try to keep the cat out of the room .. sneak out at 3am to get snacks and coffee from 7-11 ... Also had the KG Peiper game and the Pegasus Bridge one ... Still have the boxes, but moved so many times. Kept the pieces in a tackle box ...

I had an old Amiga, but .... sigh .. ... miss those times.

I believe ASL Annual '97 had the article "Road to Nhpum Ga" which included a mapsheet, and (4) Scenarios (A115 - A118). Focus on the below scenarios is on the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional) which was code name 'Galahad', but more popularly called Merrill's Marauders.

A82 Orange on the Walaubum
A53 Smith & Weston
A116 Tangled Up in Blue
A115 Blockbusters
A117 Maggot Hill
A118 The Water Hole
A83 The Last of Their Strength
J55 Matsumoto's Charge

Remember this one too ... I will have to take a look for it, probably tucked in a magazine in Mum's basement ... Have to stop moving around .. :_)

That's a good one. One of the few annuals that I purchased. I own all the modules, Red Barricades, Pegasus Ridge, Operation Watchtower, Blood Reef: Tarawa, Valor of the Guards (Stalingrad RR station and Department Store area battle) and Festung Budapest (all campaign games). I've also preordered three copies of the forthcoming Red Factories HASL, which includes both a reissue of Red Barricades, and also an additional adjoining map(s), rules pages, scenarios, and counters, for the battle for the Red October Steel Works complex. You can still preorder that last one at the Multi-Man Publishing preorder page (they own the rights to ASL).

The Red Barricades steelworks would have been a good target for siege artillery, as employed earlier at Sevastopol.

The ruins of the furnace hall proved impervious to regular artillery fire and Luftwaffe bombs, while underneath the concrete foundations a drainage gully ran to the Volga, providing a safe area with access to reinforcements and to the fighting above.

True but the Wmacht had no means to get guns the size of Schwerer Gustov and Grond to Stalingrad. Maybe some modified AP shells dropped by HE 111s? It's not like the Kriegsmarine needed any of those AP rounds designed for Bismarck and Tirpitz.