Kumanovo (1912) - the calm, then the storm

We progressed to scenario #3 of "Bloody Big Balkan Battles!": Kumanovo. Scenarios 1 & 2 saw the Greeks attack northwards towards Thessaloniki and the Bulgarians attack southwards at Kirkkilise. For #3, the Serbs get in on the act, driving south into Macedonia.

Historically, the Serbian enveloping attack with three corps was pre-empted by an Ottoman attack with a smaller force trying to envelop the Serbian centre before it could join up. It didn't work: the Serbs held, then concentrated and counterattacked next day, and the outnumbered Ottomans were defeated.

The scenario tries to capture this in a 12-turn game divided into two halves by a Night Interval. Both sides start with most of their forces lightly dug-in. The victor has to hold the town of Kumanovo itself plus 3 of the 5 other objective villages. The Turks start in possession of K+3, i.e., enough to win. Thus, they have no real need to advance against dug-in MGs and repeating rifles and superior Serbian artillery, especially when the players had recently experienced how deadly modern weapons are in the first two scenarios. Consequently, in our game, both sides sat tight for the first 6 turns (bar some minor Turkish probes against the Serb right flank), exchanging artillery fire from their earthworks. This didn't bode well for it to be an exciting game.

Then on Turn 7 it all kicked off big-time.

The Serbs had to attack or lose, so once their reinforcements were on the table, they emerged from their trenches. Here we see three big 9,000-man Serb brigades advancing across the plain against Kumanovo (foreground), whose be-fezzed garrison is being pounded by a row of Serb batteries on the opposite hillside (top centre). To the right of the guns, a blue counter marks the Serb-held objective village of Cetirci, of which more later, facing the entrenched Turkish centre (top right of pic). Out of shot top right, three Serb divisions advance to try and take two objective villages on the Turkish right wing.

How did it go? On the Turkish left, dire Serbian dice nullified their massed batteries' attempts to pummel Kumanovo. The Turkish defenders had no such problems and their own batteries and supporting infantry inflicted heavy losses on repeated Serb assault that were ultimately unsuccessful.

On the Turkish right, things went better for the Serbs, who eventually scrubbed away virtually all the Turks in front of them. However, they ran out of time and could not quite reach the now undefended objectives.

In the centre, the Turks actually attacked, trying to take Cetirci. The pic below shows their first assault. The defending Serb brigade was already spent, disrupted and low on ammo from the preliminary exchange of fire. Despite this, they held on, repelling the Turkish assault with heavy losses!

Figures are Irregular Miniatures 6mm (and some Heroics & Ros in the background). Serbs painted by Irregular Miniatures (a service they no longer offer, unfortunately). Turks in the foreground by Dave W; those at the back by me.

But it couldn't last. A fresh Turkish unit followed up and swept the Serbs out of Cetirci. The Turks were then able to press on and roll up the Serb gun line above Kumanovo.

The end result of this most sanguinary struggle was a clear win for the Turks, holding one objective more than they needed for victory.

Reflections:

Don't tamper with the scenario (i). As written, the Serbs deploy first and can be anywhere up to the mid-point of the table (24" in); the Turks can then deploy anywhere in the other half, at least 6" from any Serbs; Turks get to fire first on Turn 1. I felt this could result in the Serbs being "set up" and too easily ambushed by cunning Turkish deployment, so I made the Serbs deploy only up to 12" in instead.

In doing so, maybe I caused the 6-turn calm before the storm. Of course, the Serb players could have taken a cautious option and deployed at a safe distance from potential Turkish ambush. But the incentive to deploy further forward is that it would put them closer to the objectives they need to take. (Then again, it might have made it to easy for them to scour Kumanovo with fire without leaving their rifle pits.) Still, we should probably play it again as written and see if the first few turns are a bit livelier as a result.

Don't tamper with the scenario (ii). The scenario provides a Scenario Option under which an additional Turkish division arrives overnight (one that conceivably could have made it historically but didn't). Looking at the scenario beforehand, I felt the Turks would need that help (plus we had seven players, so more troops was better in terms of people having enough to do), so I decreed that we'd use the Option. Those reinforcements enabled the Turks to counterattack in the centre and may have contributed to holding Kumanovo as well.

Luck plays a part. Ben's dice were comically bad, several sets of snake-eyes at critical junctures, including (I think) once after saying "I can't roll snake-eyes again". This despite swapping dice with other players a couple of times, and they are all the same type from the same bucket anyway. Credit to Ben for keeping his morale high and soldiering on to the end regardless. A couple of different dice rolls could easily have changed the course of the game and produced a different result.

Welcome, Jeremy. We had a visitor from Hong Kong, Jeremy, who we gave command of the Serbian left. We also attached Mark S to his staff as technical advisor, as Jeremy hadn't played BBB much before. We hope to welcome him back as and when his travels bring him back to Oxford.