Grumble Jones March Scenario - GJ055 "Die gepanzerte Bestie"

The March 2018 Grumble Jones scenario was inspired by an article in the #59 APR-MAY 2018 edition of World at War magazine. 

One of my guilty pleasures is going to the Quincy Mall bookstore to grab the latest copy of this outstanding magazine. Excellent writing, pictures, and especially maps make this an excellent source for scenario ideas. I highly recommend this magazine to the ASL community.

Ahhh....the KV-2...a beast from the east. In 1941, there might have been a more terrifying tank for the German Wehrmacht to encounter. I have always been intrigued by this tank and particularly the difficulty the Germans found in combating them. The KV chassis was already ahead of most German designs at the time and would go on to support the Stalin series of tanks, which would be some of the most deadly tanks at the end of the war. 

You can only imagine the fear one of these behemoths would have instilled in a German Army more used to blowing up T-70's and BT-7's.  So while reading my latest copy of World at War, I cam across an article entitled, "Lone Tank-The KV-2 of Katauskiai. And lo and behold a scenario was born! The article is outstanding and goes into great detail regarding the stand of a single KV-2 against the 6th Panzer Division. By the time the 6th Panzer Division eliminated this KV-2 it had lost the following: 12 x trucks, a battery of 50L AT Guns, an 88mm AA Gun and dozens of troops.  Of course finding a way to duplicate these kinds of actions in ASL is never easy. The Michael Wittmann or Audie Murphy style heroics are not easily duplicated in ASL scenarios. They do happen in the course of many games, but they arise organically from the chaos of the dice rolls as opposed to be set up to occur by SSR. I have tried to mirror the historical action as much as possible and give the KV-2 as much chance to survive as possible, while also giving the Germans a 40% chance of winning. 

Of course ASL is subject to the vagaries of die rolls...so it could happen very easily that the 88mm rolls a snake eyes and it's farewell to the KV-2. But hopefully, the law of averages will prevail and this scenario will play out very closely to the historical outcome.  At any rate, I hope it catches the flavor of encountering one of these unique tanks in the heady days of June 1941.

As always these monthly "Basement Quality" Scenarios are offered for fun only and as a thank you to the readers of this blog.

Remember to open pictures in a new window in order to maximize the size. 

And as always, the PDF's for this scenario can be downloaded from The ASL Scenario Archive (just search on Grumble Jones).