Steel Beasts ProPE - Peeking Out of a Defilade

It's not the first time that I edit a Steel Beasts ProPE scenario to test something and I end up learning about something else.

In this case I wanted to explore something an acquaintance told me about how the Bundeswehr envisioned defensive tactics. It is not a secret that Bundeswehr defensive tactics look more like a series of well-timed counterattacks. One has only to read 90 year old Truppenführung to figure out this particular vision about the defense. But what surprised me was my friends' story about laying out a minefield.

A bite-sized scenario in which elements of the 10th Armored Division (Germany) have to stop a Company (+) of Russian mechanized forces. Note the minefields.

The scenario ended up being quite fun. My Leopard 2A tanks are more than a match for the Russian T-90s, but in this early run of the scenario I was caught off-guard coming out of a defilade.

After destroying two enemy T-90s, I pulled out of BP3 and took a 4 km route towards BP1. The forward observers near the center minefield started dropping indirect fire as soon as the Russians started to deal with the minefield, but in retrospect I should have had some main guns pointing at those troubled Russians. Instead, I was speeding like hell in a parallel route to the south of the enemy effort.

Some 500m south of BP1 and while approaching from the south, I notice a nice defilade provided by a forest-covered hill to my west. I didn't take advantage of it properly and rushed into it without deploying and a single Rusian T-90 destroyed my two Leopard tanks.

The lead element took it directly to the chin. Note how low the impact was: this indicates that the defilade was wasted entirely.

The wingman took it in the cheek. Again, low impact and most importantly the enemy round ripped through the left side of my tank.

I will post a video of the gameplay from this scenario soon. Stay tuned.

Cheers,