Onslaught to Orsha
The Death of Army Group Center, June - July 1944
A Battle Study by Chas Smith
The Minsk-Moscow Highway, Belorussia, 23 June 1944:
The 16th Guards Rifle Division was one of three heavily reinforced infantry divisions that were to create holes in the German lines and allow tank forces of the 2nd Guards Tank Corps of the 5th Tank Army to make rapid and deep penetrations along the Moscow-Minsk Highway. The zone of the 16th was south of the highway, and along the Smolensk-Minsk Railroad. They were reinforced with the following units: 148th Tank Regiment (PT mineroller tanks), 63rd Guards Heavy Tank Regiment (KVs), 517th Tank Regiment (FT tanks), elements of several Self-Propelled Artillery Regiments, 2nd Guards Assault Engineer-Sapper Brigade, as well as numerous towed artillery units. The Soviet forces trained as a combined arms team prior to the attack, and were well prepared. In most sectors of Army Group Center, the Germans had relatively thin lines, and most armor and heavy artillery was stripped to defend expected areas of attack. The area of the highway had seen much heavy fighting in the winter of 1943-44, and the Germans expected an attack to come in this direction. When German intelligence detected the buildup of artillery and armored forces, as well as the movement of ammunition, their reaction was to ensure forces in this area retained significant combat strength. The 78th Sturm Division, already the most powerful ‘infantry‘ division in Army Group Center, maintained its structure which included the 189th Assault Gun Battalion (StuG), a Heavy Tank Destroyer Battalion (PzJgIII/IVs), 5th Nebelwerfer Battalion (120mm Mortars), and Army Antiaircraft Battalion 293 (mix of 88s/20s). These forces defended from probably the most dense network of mines, trenches, and bunkers in Army Group Center, including special rotating bunkers housing machine-guns.
Years of extensive on-sight research along with vigorous play testing by the veteran game designers at Heat of Battle brings you ONSLAUGHT TO ORSHA.
ONSLAUGHT TO ORSHA contains:
- Color 29x56" historical map featuring 1" hexes of the Smolensk-Minsk Railroad area
- Chapter OtO, that includes rules for new units, terrain types and vehicle notes
- Campaign Game, 22 scenarios and 2 Solitaire Missions
- 17 Page Map Study and Order of Battle
- And, over 180 new, full color counters covering vehicles and weapons not seen in an tactical wargame system are included for free!
ONSLAUGHT TO ORSHA will test your tactics like nothing before and is must have for any wargame collection.
And here are some examples of the new counters that are included for free!.
OtO Questions, Errata and Clarifications available for download.
Even with the expanded Quality control some things always creep in the final product that are unintentional and some things we just plain missed. The Questions and Answers and errata in this document (PDF, 118 KB) indicate the issues we know about as of January 2003.
Or you can download our PDF file (1.5 MB) of the affected pages with all the Questions, Errata and Clarifiactions allready incorporated (changes are marked with a yellow background).
Download the ZIP file (1.8 MB) and unzip the "bdoto" file into your VASL boards directory and you are ready to go!
Upon popular demand we also added a smaller OtO Map (1.25MB). The hexes are now about geo-board size. Download the ZIP file and unzip the "bdoto2" file into your VASL boards directory.
Please Note:
The map is NOT listed under HASL maps, to load the map —> New Scenario —> type "oto2" (in lowercase) and you're ready to go!
Our final teaser before shipment gives you two scenarios from OtO:
- OtO 2 "Bunker Burning" (PDF, 206KB) a 5 ½ Turn Russian Assault on the historical OtO Map
- OB 5 "Tangle at Tolochin" (PDF, 175KB) a 8 Turn Russian Attack vs a German Artillery Battery, featuring the K-18 ART Gun and Tigers vs. Shermans and IS-2 on 2 GEO boards
View the slideshow of the OtO components:
Click to open the OtO Slideshow -- (21 Slides, 2MB total - each graphic is loaded individually)
Preview of the Map:
This is part of the Color 29x56" historical map (PDF, 498KB) featuring 1" hexes of the Smolensk-Minsk Railroad area that the CG and some of the scenarios use.
ORDERING INFORMATION.
You can take a closer look at the cover at: Fischers Design Shop
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