Well, it certainly seemed that way. We had another bash at the Spearhead Leningrad Campaign last night although I was over an hour late due to the morning's train debacle - sorry chaps! Id did try to call Mark to warn him - apparently he was using his iPhone to listen to Abba hits so missed the calls. Remember when phones were used simply to communicate with people...
The idea of the campaign is to take the area surrounding Leningrad and then the city itself. Whatever forces the Germans can scrape together (I was left with two trucks and a rusty bike as Jono threw everything at the Russians the previous week) faces off against 4 Russian divisions. The task is to take 4 hills in 12 turns before turning into the city. This is impossible.
The problem with this is that the German tanks are not as good as their Russian counterparts and one Russian infantry division is dug in - in a forest. This gives them +2 against anything shooting at them and +1 vs. infantry charging. So your tanks get blown up and your infantry die in droves.
Not only that but the Russian artillery is monsterous - 150mm minimum. As the Germans have to be in the open to charge the hills, they get blown to bits by the artillery before they can close assault (which they do at a disadvantage anyway).
I lost 6 stands of engineers in one round of shooting for example. Holy Cow!
And in retuirnthe German artillery is also generally pants - 105's mainly. This meant I generally needed 11 or 12 on 2d6 to force a suppression on dug in troops and Russian tanks in the open - which was very rare.
So the original plan (sit back and let the artillery wear them down) was never going to happen - the artillery was too weak and time was against me. Throwing lots of troops in just meant they got killed quickly. Then the Russian reserve came on - T34's and T 26's and a KV1! The KV 1 was sent ahead and it took 3 rounds of direct anti-tank fore (Pak 35's and 38's) to kill it - by which time my other infantry regiment was being shelled and shot to pieces (the first having routed after suffering 3 rounds of heavy artillery fire.
In a desperate attempt to save the second infantry I threw in the Panzers - which lost 4 tanks to artillery as soon as they were spotted.
At that point we jacked it in as it was pointless continuing. Ian then revealed that he had an untouched Infantry batallion and tank regiment (including any number of T-28's and T-34's by the look) which would have massacred any of my troops trying to take them on. They weren't even needed.
I saw that Russ on the other table (same scenario) had many more troops on the table and was suffering a similar fate. His 5 battalions were being wiped out in a similar manner.
So the upshot was that we will refight the battles but with the Russians only having 3 battalions (not 4) meaning that only 1 tank regiment should be available. This should at least make for a more even fight (except on our side as I still have to use the reduced forces that Jono left me).
Ho hum!