Engineer-Sapper Battalion (SBX13) The assault Engineer-Sapper battalions were formed to capture or destroy enemy strongpoints and fortifications. They were equipped with a large variety of explosives, grenades and satchel charges.

Wearing the prototype SN-42 body armour, the sappers could close with the enemy protected from shrapnel and small arms fire. Engineering Assault Brigades The complexity and breadth of Operation Bagration greatly increased the demand for Soviet engineers. The need to break through increasingly sophisticated enemy defences and assault across rivers, swamps, mountains and vast forests presented an enormous challenge. Developing an engineering capability to support the massive offensive of Operation Bagration was a daunting task to say the least. Stavka (Soviet Supreme Headquarters) required immense engineering support.

The mission to provide the proper mix of trained engineering personnel capable of building roads and bridges, clearing minefields and obstacles, providing demolition experts, assaulting enemy defences and assisting river crossings to secure critical bridgeheads rested with the engineering assault brigades. These brigades contained four or five separate engineering-sapper battalions, a flame-thrower company, a motorised engineering and intelligence company, and a light transport company. The battalions specialized in bridging, demolition, or assault depending upon the situation faced by the particular Soviet Front the brigade was supporting.

The assault Engineer-Sapper battalions were designed to use explosives, grenades, pole and bag charges to take or destroy buildings, trenches, bunkers, and fortifications. These would include previously identified enemy firing points, earthen and concrete bunkers. Once attacked and neutralised the assault battalion would be removed from the line and used against another enemy defensive position.

Engineer-Sapper Battalion Contains: • 4x Command teams • 1x Komissar team • 20x Pioneer SMG teams • 8x Faustnika teams • 4x Optional machine-gun figures • 2x Pioneer Supply trucks

In Flames Of War The new Inzhenerno-Saperniy Batalon (Engineer-Sapper Battalion) is featured in our third Operation Bagration battle book River Of Heroes. This box set gives you all you need to get your batalon started.

The Engineer-Sappers use a number of special rules including Sapper Body Armour which protects during assaults. Sapper Body Armour The engineer-sappers wore body armour to protect themselves during close combat against the enemy in trenches and bunkers.

Their steel body armour also gave good protection from knives, bayonets and spades wielded as weapons, as well as grenade fragments and ricocheting bullets. A Pioneer team from an Engineer-Sapper Company rolls a die when hit during an Assault. If they score a 6, they are unharmed, but still count as hit for the purposes of requiring a Motivation Test to Counterattack.

If they roll any other score, they are destroyed and removed from the table as usual. Other types of team An Engineer-Sapper Company is unusual in that the coposition of the company can change from game to game. Each Assault Sapper Platoon can replace up to two Pioneer SMG teams with teams from the following list:

• Pioneer MG team • PTRD anti-tank Rifle • Maksim HMG • 82-BM-41 mortar • Pioneer Faustnika team The teams swap one team for another single team. Each Engineer-Sapper Company cannot have a total of more than four teams of each type listed above. You must choose the composition of your Assault Sapper Companies for each game before deployment begins.

SBX13 comes with models for Pioneer Faustnika and Pioneer MG teams. The other teams come from the appropriate packs in the Soviet range. Designed by Evan Allen Painted by Jeremy Painter and James Brown