Yesterday we played our large scale fight of Stalingrad.

The Grain Silo in 1/56 is huge

The battle itself was massive with at one stage up to fifteen players fighting for the grain silo.

The grain silo, railway line, and workers cottages in the foreground.

The silo from the other side, with tram line, and factories.

The southern flank of the battlefield

The south-west side of the battlefield

The two bridges and surrounds that I fought over all day. The fight over the rail bridge was to extend for the full battle with a real David and Goliath encounter.

The buildings which I was commanded to control and prevent Russian forces reinforcing their centre. The German Southern Forces were to push forward and take the Volga River landing points.

The game was extremely well researched, with each side having a full briefing booklet which included Orders of Battle, force locations, and terrain and game “special rules”. Above is the Russian version.

The Russian General, Russian Commissar and German General.

The quote of the day came from Comrade Commissar, “It takes a brave man to be a coward in the Russian Army, a perversion of that of Joseph Stalin:

The overall situation at the start of the game. I was in command of the 274th and was ordered to prevent the Russian 271, 10, 13, 133 brigades from reinforcing their southern flank.

The game was extremely well organised (more on this in another post) thanks to Rob, the table well set up and stocked with purpose built terrain like the grain silo by our host Drew from the Wargames Holiday Centre Australia. The game was played in great spirits and everyone had a great time.

You may have noticed that there are no troops on the table. I have over a 150 of my own photos and heaps more from others still to come in, so the next post with battle report may take a few days. With the large scale of the battle it was impossible for me, as a Sector commander, to have more than an overview of what was happening in the other sectors.