Graviteam Tactics : Mius Front.
[SUB]It’s not really a victory dance, he’s sort of kicking the wounded Russian soldier to death… Shooting him would be wasteful, obviously.[/SUB]
What happens at the end of battles when two tired forces get into close combat range is interesting to watch. The game’s animations aren’t perfect at describing what’s happening, but with the context of leadership and fatigue and support you can spot some interesting behaviour.
This is at the end of a pretty small engagement really - the Germans had two infantry platoons, a weakened Engineer platoon and two StuG IIIs against three infantry platoons, (one of which was strengthened with an extra SMG squad), a lance of Armoured MG Cars and three 45mm AT guns. Numbers were slightly in the German’s favour, but the Russians were dug in at points and on the defensive.
Right at the end of the battle my right wing attack had essentially run out of steam right in front of the final Russian position. I had dead and wounded lying just a few feet from the Russian trench line, but three of the five infantry squads had lost their leaders and their men were neatly split between hiding from MG fire or just straight running away.
At that point my ground was being held only by the Engineer squads in the middle. They’d found and knocked out an armoured car and some of them were using it for cover from MG fire as they were now getting absolutely pounded. They were also losing leaders and men, but they hung in there long enough that my left flank finally arrived, featuring the two StuG.
My infantry on this side had got hung up clearing a wood on the secondary objective, but they had been following the StuGs from there, so they showed up quite rested and with their Officers alongside, into a fight between two exhausted forces with lots of missing and ad hoc leadership and this turned them into supermen.
When I gave the order to attack and the infantry spilled out from around the StuGs, they threw in smoke and grenades and cleared the left corner of the trenchline in seconds, then shooting the Russians who tried to run back to the secondary line. The Russians who had pushed forward in the middle against my engineers now found their right flank open and my supermen went bonkers, running into their middle, shooting, smashing people with the butts of their weapons and, as above, even kicking the enemy to bits.
It looked like I was going to waltz in on my left and roll the whole Russian line down when the final AT gun revealed itself. Smashing the track of one of the StuGs, which was pointing across the line and therefore unable to fire anymore, because it doesn’t have a turret, so couldn’t point its gun at any targets.
The lead StuG was then also immobilised, before the mortar team attached to the left side put several rounds on the AT gun, killing the crew. This StuG was pointing toward the enemy, so it was able to keep firing, but its right side was also exposed to Russian infantry and those guys did their best to kill the assault gun, hitting it more than 15 times with rifle grenades, anti tank rifles and Molotov cocktails. Amazingly the StuG crew survived, despite the post-battle hit report looking like this:
Without the StuG’s the attack eventually bogged down, but some of the troops on the right side had rallied and I was able to push up both sides while I told my almost-shattered Engineers to stay put. I didn’t quite capture the main objective, but the Russians weren’t really defending it any more either, so I was awarded a strong victory.
One of those victories where I thought I was solidly on the way to winning, then became convinced I was seconds away from being routed, then felt I was going to walk to final point uncontested and then had no idea what was happening.