Hungary WWII tank action: Ősi 1944-45

More progress on kicking around our WWII rules ideas, significantly modified since last month's outing. Previous trials were in Poland 1939 and France 1940. This time we went Late War and visited Hungary 1944/45.

To be precise: we fought the battle of Ősi. This began on New Year's Eve 1944 and ended in the small hours of 1 January 1945. I got most of the details from Norbert Számvéber’s new book, "The Sword Behind the Shield", about Operations Konrad I, II, & III trying to relieve Budapest.

Rules-wise: a success. We comfortably finished the game despite it being a first time with the rules for most of the players, who were soon just using the QR sheet and needed minimal intervention from the referee. Obviously some gaps still, and some slightly clunky bits that need smoothing out. But definitely a fast playable game.

Scenario-wise: a bit rubbish, on two counts. The first is simply that this is really a straight attack-defence situation with very little for the defender to do. The Soviets have 3 infantry battalions with just one tiny SU-76 unit, facing initially two and eventually three German armoured Kampfgruppen. All the Soves can really do is hunker down in the towns and make it hard for the Panzers to winkle them out.

KG of 1st Panzer Division storms Ősi. 

I'm rather proud of my 1/300 Heroics & Ros Germans and their 3-colour camo schemes. 

Soviet infantry by Irregular Miniatures are suitably resilient 

to serve as 69th Guards Rifle Division, keeping the red flag flying.

The second problem was my own scenario design, in that I specified victory conditions that let the Germans ignore the towns and still win! And also - as I was worried about how hard the street-fighting would be - I underrated the Soviet troop quality. So my poor Soviet players were justifiably (if good-naturedly) complaining about being set up. We changed the objectives half-way through so the Germans did have to go in and mix it in the built-up areas, while the Soviets also managed some night infiltration to retake a hill, so people went away happy after all.

Despite the scenario's limitations this was still a successful night in terms both of game development and of entertainment value. Having said that, we may yet go in a radically different direction, kick the current rules approach into touch and revert to a much more directly BBB-based version ... to be continued.