Escaping an Encirclement - Preparation

In One Hour Skirmish Wargames, John Lambshead presents some ideas for skirmish campaigns. Among these is an enticing map campaign entitled, 'Escaping an Encirclement' which features a German force cut off by one of the Soviet spearheads that broke through German lines, north and south of Orel as part of Operation Kutusov.

The German goal is to escape beyond the railroad tracks on the west edge of the map - meanwhile the Soviets have patrols scattered in the area that must be dealt with.

The Germans should have a force between 25 and 50 points (which, depending on any special abilities and weapons, could range from a half-squad to two squads). The Soviets get 6 'patrols' - four equal to 2/3 of the points of the German force, and two with the same point value.

The Soviet forces are allocated to points on the map, other than the one marked '1'. Which means three of the locations are empty of patrols.

My German unit is as follows:

Description	Points	Rank	Name
Army Motivation:4	4
Leader(3), SMG(2 shots)	8	Feldwebel	Frege
Leader(2), SMG(2 shots), Bruiser(2)	8	Unteroffizier	Hegel
Sniper - Deadshot (2), rifle (1)	3	Gefreiter	Heidegger
MG-42 gunner - MG-42(2 shots), range infinite	2	Obergefreiter	Husserl
Grenadier 1 - rifle (1), two grenades (2), tough(2)	5	Grenadier	Carnap
Grenadier 1 - rifle (1), two grenades (2), tough(2)	5	Grenadier	Schiller
Rifle 1	1	Grenadier	Schopenhauer
Rifle 2	1	Grenadier	Fichte
Rifle 3	1	Grenadier	Leibnitz
Rifle 4	1	Grenadier	Stein
TOTAL POINTS	39

Inspired by Mark, Man of Tin's latest adventures in personalized wargaming, I gave each figure a name (as you can see in the list above), which is taped to the bottom:

I majored in philosophy as an undergraduate and so I just grabbed a bunch of German philosopher names. Some are philosophers I am familiar with, others were just names chosen for no particular reason, so don't read too much into them. 

And here is the force under Feldwebel Frege (standing with SMG in the back):

I have also pre-generated the six Soviet patrols, which took a bit of effort.

Because I only have 16 TSSD Soviets, I am reusing the figures for the various patrols, but by playing around with motivation, leadership ratings, and special abilities, I was able to make six distinctly different patrols.

The biggest challenge of the campaign will be if a depleted German force encounters one of the full point Soviet patrols.

Because I already know I want to take the southern route - crossing the road to (2), then making my way through the village, solely because I don't have any real marsh terrain -  I may limit the blank chits, for no patrol, to just one, in order to guarantee at least three games make it to the table (or perhaps none, since this is the more populated part of the map). Even without an encounter, having names for the soldiers should help inspire a narrative of some kind.