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A first campaign in Graviteam's classic wargame Picture it for yourself. It's late winter 1942-43, just after the German disaster at Stalingrad. You've been recalled to the Eastern Front from your cosy staff job in Berlin, and assigned to the command of a battalion-sized battlegroup in your former division, 2nd SS Panzer Grenadier Das Reich. No sooner have you arrived, than you're pitched into the deep end, as your kampfgruppe is already fully committed. Your first mission is to throw the Reds out of a small riverside town and sieze some crossings. So get a grip of your command, study your maps, and make a plan with your staff. And make it fast - there's a war on out here, you know! That's about how I felt, taking on my first campaign in GT:OS. In fact, my first mission, apart from a couple of quick battles, mainly to try out the modern AFVs in the WW2 battlefields. True, playing Steel Armor - Blaze of War (SABOW) has taught me some basics, but that just scratched the surface of the sophisticated command interface of Graviteam's magnum opus. So it was with a mixture of excitement and trepidation that I approached my first campaign battle. I confess that I am rather more interested in western front action, preferably including Normandy, or North Africa at a pinch; though I've read my Guderian and my von Mellenthin, Craig's Enemy at the Gates, even Plevier's novel Moscow. And I know well enough my BTs from my KVs. But GT:OS's WW2 experience has remained firmly rooted on the Ostfront. So having picked up the base game and no less than 8 DLCs in an epic BundleStars sale, I knew the time would come when I went east. And this is that time. The campaign and the mission I know enough about the Eastern Front to be well aware that T-26s and BT-5s or 7s aren't too much of a problem for 1941-era German tanks and A/T guns. But if the Red Army of Peasants and Workers brings along some T-34s or KV-1s, it's not quite so much fun, playing Wehrmacht. So I decided to run with a later campaign, settling on what's described as the 'Kharkov Defence Operation, 2-15 March 1943'. I think this one comes with the base game. The missions ('operations') in this campaign swap between playing for each side, and I opted to start, not at the Soviet beginning, but at the third one - Pavlovka. Its entry featured a picture of Tiger tank, which I took to indicate that I might actually get to play with some of these beasts. I know that 8.Kompanie, SS Panzer Regiment 2 had some Tigers as early as February, some months before the formation was elevated from a Panzer Grenadier to a Panzer Division. One of 8.Kompanie's Tigers is quite well known from photographs - 812, delivered in 'panzer grey', given a temporary white winter paint job on arrival, and later treated to what's interpreted as dark yellow stripes over the grey. And at some point christned 'Tiki', as seen below. According to the excellent Mig Jimenez colour profile book Waffen SS Colors, 'Tiki' is a contraction of 'Tiger kind' (tiger child) and was inspired when the Kompaniefuhrer said to the new Tiger's crew, 'That is now your child, take care of it!' As usual, a GT:OS (or SABOW) mission kicks off with the sort of 'operational' level screen shown below. I've chosen to use NATO unit symbols and to colour-code friendlies as blue, enemies as red (the latter all shown as question marks at this stage, as the enemy strengths and dispositions are so far unknown). While at this map, you can, within limits, elect to move any deployable friendly forces - which excludes those in the grey margins of the map, which are 'arriving' but not yet deployable. the screenshot was actually taken after I had made my moves (indicated by the blue arrows). The 'briefing' is top left. In armies, commanders are given orders, not briefings, and these typically contain a lot more information than you get in any GT:OS (or SABOW) briefing I've ever seen. It's more of a general directive, which may be adequate in some situations but lacks much of the info I should have as a commander in this situation, like who I am, what forces I have, what artillery and air support is available, what's known about the enemy and so on - Ground, Situation, Mission, Execution, Service/Support, Command & Signals in NATO format. You are left to glean as much as you can of this by studying the map. Which is quite a lot, and thus ok up to a point. And it may be hard to script more formal orders for the dynamic GT:OS campaign. But this rather lacks the sense of person and place which you get from a more role-playing approach to a commander's...well, role. That being as it may, I was about to discover how, from this so-so start, GT:OS grabs you by the proverbial short and curlies and immerses you neck-deep in an authentic-feeling and beautifully-rendered battlefield, in the role of a company-to-battalion-level commander in a desperate fight against a determined, unpredictable and at time invisible enemy. They told me GT:OS was this good, and I was about to find out that they did not lie. My mission is to kick the retreating Soviet 104 Rifle Brigade out of Pavlovka and grab some river crossings, which is clear enough. For this task, while the greyed-out oval-in-blue-rectangle symbols to the left in the map above indicate that tanks may be available to me later, for now, my forces are limited. And rather un-concentrated, to boot. On the left, I have five Grenadier platoons (unarmoured), roughly a reinforced company. In my centre, to the south east, I have have three Panzer Grenadier platoons (I have already moved them north-east, and the Grenadiers west, in the pic below, which I'll explain in a moment) . Actually these troops are Panzer Pioneers, assault engineers. If I'd not been in my customary rush, I could have checked out their detailed organisation, but I decided to see for myself, at the deployment phase. Suffice to say that they were, as expected, equipped with SdKfz 251 half-tracked SPWs (Schutzenpanzerwagen=APC), though not of the specialised 251/7 variety usually issued to engineer units, with their little side-mounted bridging sections. So, to a plan. Sensing that Division is unlikely to be happy if I wait out this turn till the tanks and other forces come up, I decide to launch concentric attacks from east and west, with the forces I do have. On the west, the Grenadiers will advance directly into the Soviet salient south of Pavlovka, with their left flank protected by the river Mzha, while the Panzer Pioneere, starting in my centre, will move north-east then north, from where they can either catch the Soviet salient in a pincer, or drive north towards the nearest Mzha crossings. Yes I know - I'm opening up the gap in my forces, but not by a lot, and I think this is preferable to butting up everything directly against the salient, where the main enemy strength might well lie. The player having made his initial moves, GT:OS then determines if a battle has taken place, which the player then fights. That is what has happened here - the large, unfriendly red arrow spearing into my freshly-positioned Panzer Pioneere from the Soviet salient indicates a counterattack is expected, and the flame symbol calls me to fight the resulting battle. Here we go! ...to be continued!

Steel Fury joins the Deutsches Afrika Korps! Graviteam's tanksim Steel Fury - Kharkov 1942, as its name indicates, started out limited to the Eastern front, about a year into 'The Great Patriotic War' between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. However, thanks to the efforts of modders you can now travel a bit further afield in time and space! This mission report is set in the sim's original time frame. But for a battlefield, we're bidding adieu to the Steppes and are off instead to the desert of North Africa. Here were fought some of the war's classic tank battles, between the Germans and Italians on the one side and the British Commonwealth and later the USA, on the other. By mid-1942, the war in the desert had developed into a see-saw battle as first one side then the other enjoyed the advantage. In 1940, Operation Compass saw the British fling back westwards a much larger invading Italian force. The following year the British 'Desert Rats', robbed of troops to prop up the war in Greece, were in their turn flung back east towards Egypt by the Axis forces, now re-inforced by Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps. At the end of 1941, the British Operation Crusader, after some fierce battles, threw the Germans back again. In mid-1942, after a lull, the Afrika Korps was one more on the offensive; once again the British were pushed back well to the west. The mission The mission I'm playing here is 'Gazala', which signs me up with the famous 21st Panzer Division, justly famous for its combat record with the Afrika Korps. As usual, I'm using the latest NTA mod and the current Mission Pack. I also enabled the Africa mod, which I'm assuming is needed to replace the stock SF terrain with something appropriate for (in the words of that RAF song) '...a very pleasant land, where miles and miles of sweet eff-all are covered up with sand.' Full details of all the necessary items you need to get NTA installed with all the bells and whistles are over at the Graviteam Steel Fury forum, here. Edit, August 2014 - the NTA mod has been discontinued but its successor, the STA Mod, is now available: http://stasf2008.eph...d-on-steel-fury This mission starts off with an excellent German newsreel compilation from the theatre, some of it in colour or colourised. The briefing itself is in the stock SF style. This has rather a lot on the regimental/divisional battle picture which is fine, but not much on the company-level operation that you're involved with. The map gives you some idea what's going on but it's no substitute for something in the format of proper 'oral orders' given to you, and the other platoon commanders in your Combat Team, by your own company commander. Despite the 'Gazala' title, the mission is set on 26 June 1942, after the battle of that name. By this time, the victorious Germans and Italians were pressing on east towards the Egyptian frontier, and the date is more appropriate for the fighting that took place around Mersa Matruh. Here's the map for the mission. Basically I am part of a roughly company-strength tank/armoured infantry team, with no air or artillery support. We've to carry out an attack on British defensive positions either side and behind a long minefield of the sort that so often protected the infantry in this sort of warfare. While in the map screen, I called up the orders panel and selected line abreast formation and 'Do as I do', which I interpret as 'Conform to my movements and actions' and should really be default behaviour - Standard Operating Procedure or 'SOP', as it's called. My mount was billed as a Panzer IVF1. This has the short-barrelled 75mm gun more suited to infantry support, its low muzzle velocity limiting its effectiveness in the anti-tank role. For some reason I ended up instead with what the British called the 'Mark 4 Special', the Panzer IV F2 (later renamed as the G subtype). Part of the German response to the T-34 and KV-1, this had a much longer 75mm gun and was a potent tank-killer. Needless to say I had absolutely no objection to being up-gunned in this fashion! I switched to the gunner role (F2) and then toggled on the internal view (F9) and to the gunsight view (Insert). I selected and loaded an armour-piercing round. Then I toggled back to the external view (F9 again) for better situational awareness and to have a better look around at our force. It comprised a mix of Panzer IVs like my own, lighter Panzer IIIs with the short 50mm gun, and some Sturmgeschutze (assault guns) with short seventy-fives. Amongst us were panzergrenadiers in light and medium half-tracked Schutzenpanzerwagens (SPWs). There was even a soft-skinned Opel Blitz truck, living rather dangerously! It was quite an impressive phalanx, each vehicle raising a dark plume of dust as it rolled north towards the enemy. I ordered the driver to advance and joined the throng. As we moved off, orders came over the radio. These were in German and it was helpful to have them spelt out in a text panel atop the screen. The others set a fairly fast pace but I could not keep up. My driver ignored commands to go faster, and I gradually fell behind. Perhaps it was just as well, but my platoon - which I took to be the pair of long-barrelled Panzer IVs which I could see nearby - didn't wait for me. I have no idea why. There is a game setting ''Always obey orders' which i had turned off as recommended for a previous mission; perhaps that was why. Either way, I felt like the Duke of Plaza-Toro in that Gilbert and Sullivan song: In enterprise of martial kind When there was any fighting He led his regiment from behind He found it less exciting. I ended up watching the first phase of our assault through the gunsight. And this is what I saw. In the centre, enemy mortar or artillery fire whacked into our leading elements. Slightly right, some troops debussed from a light SPW which then then rattled on ahead. To my front, some more Panzergrenadiers had also debussed and were crawling ahead. I wondered whether it would have been safer for them to have stayed in their armoured carriers. Other dismounted infantry were being helped forward by other Panzers, like these Panzer IIIs. Feeling rather left out and seeing no sign of the enemy tanks reported on the right, I stopped and rattled off some rounds from the co-axial MG at what might have been an enemy heavy weapon which I could see as a rectangular-looking blob which came into sight above dip in the ground. I walked my tracers onto him until I saw the ricochets sail skywards. My target might just as well have been a rock but the shooting made me feel a little better, if nothing else. What this Panzer IV was doing sitting in the middle of a battle with all hatches open, I didn't know - immobilized and abandoned already, perhaps. The enemy position seemed to be in dead ground ahead of me; I rolled forwards again but I could see nothing of them, apart from the odd tracer whipping past on either side. That the defenders could clearly see at least some of us was obvious from the burning vehicles which began to appear around me as I slowly ground forward, accompanied for a while by another Panzer IV which may have been one of my platoon who had decided to stay with me, after all, By now, I'd begun to catch up with some of my comrades, as they paused to fire at targets which I could not yet see, like this Panzer III ahead and left of me. As that Panzer moved off and swung right, I noticed his turret spin around, as if he were tracking a target. Then I saw it too! A single enemy tank, some way off, was moving quite rapidly from right to left. He looked like a Valentine, a small but heavily-armoured British infantry tank, successor to the famous Maltida that reigned as 'Queen of the Battlefield' until our eighty-eights tore them apart at Halfaya Pass in '41. I knew that the Valentine would be a tough target for the Panzer III's short-barrelled 50mm gun. This one would be up to me! I set the range on my sight and lined him up with the lower right corner of the middle triangle. A little adjustment for his movement and my first round would be on its way. ...to be continued!