Scenario Work In Progress

[kohlenklau]

[kohlenklau]

Want to playtest? PM me with your e-mail address.

[kohlenklau]

I have a few playtesters and feedback is coming in. Should be another week and it will be released. Also, the couple mini-mods at the same time.

[kohlenklau]

OK. Playtest feedback is rolled into a few small tweaks. I have tagged my mods and compressing everything into an RAR with a read me file. Uploaded to cmmods. I hope it proves enjoyable.

[Erwin]

Got it. Hope to play it later this week.

[Buzz]

Opened it up with your tagged mods.

Have not fired it up but looking at the battlefield.

"Trying to make it evoke a sense of doomed apathy." You got it

Looks like like a serious coflicy has taken place in Vitebsk and it is not over yet. Happy to hear you dialed down the troop density as playing this in Real Time should be a handful of fun for me.

Thanks kohlenklau.

[kohlenklau]

The released version of the briefing as it evolved from earlier in the thread...

2320, 26 June 1944

You have been sent under secret orders to rescue German Army Private Wilhelm Reinhart of the 206th Grenadier Division currently surrounded at Witebsk. He is the sole male survivor in a Bavarian family who have given 9 "gefallen" for Germany. Reichsminister Goebbels advised Hitler that returning Reinhart to his mother in Munchen would be a clear message to all Germans that their sacrifices are deeply appreciated by the fatherland.

^

Feldwebel Horvath is off-map to the north but is tasked to bring Reinhart to "Adler" before midnight. Provide cover to their escape route through Witebsk, across the Dvina Pioneer Bridge at "Spatz" and on to one of two available exit points: "Falke" leading to the Fieseler Storch airstrip or "Geier" leading to an E-boat waiting at the docks. Travel on foot if necessary. You have exactly 40 minutes before the last bridge over the Dvina is blown sky high.

^

Your small team of crack troops is a detachment of KG Skorzeny zbV. Around you, the ragtag remnants of the doomed LIII Army Korps desperately resist within the ever-shrinking pocket of Witebsk. Expect stragglers to be continually flowing in from the northern side of the kessel. Demoralized and low on ammo, their ability to shore up your defenses will be greatly suspect.

^

The Soviet commander is under pressure to end the Witebsk siege and get his forces headed west. Expect a mixture of probes, assaults and artillery fire. His intentions are fairly clear: seize the remaining bridges outright or obtain positions which make any further evacuation or movement a risky affair. The last few minutes have been calm but now the men have reported hearing Russian voices from the ruins just a stone's throw from their own foxholes.

^

Utilize any and all means at your disposal to carry out this mission! Deploy your team where you think they should best be positioned. You have 1 truck and 2 foxholes you can move around as well. Remember that your dependable Feldwebel Horvath is not yet on the map but will EVENTUALLY show up at Adler with young Reinhart.

^

Hauptmann Muller looked across to Otto. Light from a burning kubelwagen reflected off his friend's grizzled face as they smiled grimly at each other. They knew that this could be the end for them - a crazy mission to save some mother's son from this hell-hole. Muller's team was expecting to see the lad in less than a half hour. He peered at his crumpled map again - they had been briefed that there were two possible extraction routes - an E-Boat at the riverside or a Storch at the airfield - most likely the last plane out of Festung Witebsk.

He could hear the sounds of a fierce firefight, the crack of high velocity tank rounds and detonations coming closer. Would they make it out of here alive? He had given up hope long ago, had grown fatalistic and had withdrawn into himself. Why us, why here? He had no more answers, only wanting to save as many of his men as he could. He cursed his commander under his breath again, cursed this damn war, cursed those back in Berlin - one boy's life against all his men - they were like sons to him.

The radio cracked - it was Horvath, with sounds of shots in the background - 'we are moving slow, ETA Adler...maybe 30 minutes, we're having to break back through the lines - they are everywhere!' Another burst of fire and the radio fell silent. He looked across to Otto again, who was peering out into the flame-lit darkness. He gripped his machine pistol tighter as Otto stiffened, then screamed 'INCOMING!!'

EXIT REINHART OUT OF WITEBSK: 1000 points

TOTAL POINTS: 1000

[kohlenklau]

Designer's notes:

Category: Fictional

Best played as: German vs AI

Scenario length: 40 min

Mission type: Soviet Attack

Date/time: 26 June 1944, 2320

Weather: Light Rain

Temperature: Warm

Wind: Light from the West

Ground: Muddy

Map Size: 352m x 320m

Designed by: kohlenklau

This fictional scenario was inspired by "Saving Private Ryan".

I cannot imagine what the final hours in Witebsk were really like. I dialed down the troop density a great deal to make the game playable.

Creating Witebsk in the map editor was fun and I give myself a good solid "B" grade. Using old maps, period photos and google earth and still the map editor itself has certain limitations and then compounded with my own inability, time constraint, lack of creativity/talent, at a certain point, you just see the map as good enough and playable. Realism I try to sprinkle in but there are of course areas which look highly sterile and unrealistic. I hope overall that it came out good.

Victory note: I decided to put Reinhart in as a truck driver. I think it is the only way to have a single soldier with a name which will not change. This then leads to you not getting the full exit points if you leave the truck behind. So, if you exit Reinhart but without the truck by the end of the scenario, please consider that you have indeed achieved a total victory even if the points result in a minor victory at the end screen.

My sincere thanks to BenPark, Umlaut, Juju, Kieme, RepsolCBR, AlexUK and others for assistance such as mods, advice, playtest and forum feedback. Narrative part of briefing by AlexUK. If I left anyone out, I apologize.

kohlenklau

16.7.2014

[tdogg]

Played through this, it was cool to have a small intense action scenario with a fictional story driving it. The house fighting near the bridge of my extraction route was great, my pixel truppen got some clean Fausts on target. My only complaint is that if your gonna have a guy like skorzhany in the story, I would have loved to have seen his name on a squad with elite rating. The guy did pull off a nice spec op style rescue of Mussolini.

Good mission though, definately worth a play through.

I played your other one with the trenches, like the sunken trench design on the map. Good intense action, but I could only hold one trench and ended with a minor defeat.

[kohlenklau]

tdogg,

Thanks for taking a moment to post your comments. I am glad you enjoyed it. I guess in the end I decided to not actually say Skorzeny was physically there in Witebsk but it was a detachment of his overall unit. I wanted to use all the names from the movie "saving Private Ryan" so the Captain was Hauptmann Muller. Part of the corniness of it I suppose.