Not strictly a club game, but we had a BKC 2 game chez moi, set in 1941 Ukraine with Antti, a long-lost club member. We decided to have a go with the BKC campaign rules and see how the glorious march of the panzers / glorious defense of the motherland would go with them. The rules are basically a script, where you start with one player attacking (deliberate attack). Depending on how well he does, the next scenario will either be more attacking, or maybe a counter attack. The game has some 11 different kinds of scenarios, and the campaign rules are a nice way to create scenarios that are based on a longer narrative.

Anyway, I’m playing the Russians (as usual) and I chose to build my battlegroup around the heavy tank regiments with T-35 heavy tanks and the accompanying infantry regiment. Antti chose to build a motorised infantry group, with some tanks. In the campaign system both players start with the same number of points in their pool, but you don’t necessarily have all of them to use in any scenario. In the first battle I had 1000 points, Antti had roughly 3000. Not good for me.

We used google maps to find terrain from the historical area where the heavy tanks “roamed”, nearl Lviv. We were all set for the Battle of Sukhota.

Well, it went fairly historically, my tanks were either dive-bombed or shot up by artillery. I did manage to shoot down a Stuka before the dastardly invaders bombed my AAMG truck into atoms. My plan was to sit tight in trenches around the village, cleverly hidden in corn fields, and slow down the advance of the Germans just enough so that they couldn’t win a quick victory. My tanks were initially dug-in between Sukhota and Gai-Sukhota, but I was planning to launch a devastating counter-attack into the flank of the advancing Germans. Which I did…

The nice thing about the BKC mechanics is that you never know how many actions your troops are able to do. I was able to lunge with my tanks out of my AFV pits, drive into position, and as I was about to start shooting the enemy away, my troops stopped as I lost a command roll. Oops. Next turn the Germans made scrap metal of my precious heavy tanks and the accompanying T-26s.

The rest of the game was basically my grim defenders staying in their trenches, refusing to retreat, the Germans having to dig them out with frontal assaults. I lost 500 points from my force and did not get any reinforcements, so I have now my original pool minus my losses. Antti got 1500 points of reinforcements for the next games.

Anyway, nice game, excellent terrain accessories by Antti – I admire the effort he has put into the 6 mm telephone poles and split fences, shame about my unfinished roads. Will have to finish them for the next game.