More adventures for the 98-point Soviet fleet

A commenter over at the FuroMini site suggested a German fleet to defeat the 98-point Soviet Fleet. To recap, the Soviet Fleet comprises one Okt. Rev. Battleship, two Kirov cruisers and nine Gromkiy destroyers. This happens to be all the Soviets I have, but it's also happens to be a reasonable build for a 100-point Soviet Standard Scenario fleet.

With only 100 points it's hard to build anything resembling a balanced fleet, but knowing the composition of the Soviet fleet is an advantage. Actually, simply knowing that they are Soviets is a big advantage because the Communists don't have a lot of options. They have no aircraft or subs yet.

So the German fleet comprised one Scharnhosrt, two Adn. Scheer, two Kondors and one JU-88. The commenter suggested that the aircraft would savage the Soviet DDs while the surface units dealt with the larger Soviet ships and objectives.

And so it played out, although it was a stiff fight. The Soviets attempted a control-the-objectives strategy, but the Germans were aggressive to at least deny objective control, if nothing else. As it turned out the air units were very effective at decimating the Soviet DD forces, even with some fortuitous die rolling by the Soviets which aborted an unexpectedly high number of German attackers and poor rolls by the Germans which left some destroyers crippled instead of sunk outright.

Because of this enough Soviet forces survived to get close enough to eventually take out both German pocket battleships, although at the cost of almost all of the rest of their number. The Scharnhorst, on the other hand, was virtually untouchable and ended the battle with just a single hit. A few mines were sown in the late game as last ditch attempts to do something but no mine hits were scored, even has the Scharnhorst deliberately risked one to claim the last objective on the same turn the aircraft finished off the last of the Soviet surface fleet.

The final German score was 298 points (98 for sunk Soviets, 150 for three objectives and 50 for last surviving surface fleet) The Soviets managed just 40 points for the two sunk pocket battleships.