Camp Cromwell 17/03/2005

Mahrajah at Camp Cromwell

Breakthrough Scenario: US Armoured (Barrie) attacking v. German Grenadier (Steve) defending.

German deployment:
Right flank: Infantry with infantry guns. Left flank: Infantry with Pak 40s. MGs in reserve. 105s in rear. Prority air (H129s).

US deployment:
Main force: HQ Shermans, Honeys, Shermans, Scotts. Flanking: Engineers. Limited air.

The Honeys attacked the German right with the Shermans in support. The H129s came often and earned their keep, but did not make a knockout blow. The 105s were annoying, but not that effective. The infantry guns failed to hit anything. But stilll the Grenadiers hung on and Shermans subsequently backed off and made a high speed circuit around them to get something within 40cm of an objective by turn 6. The Honeys fell back from the infantry counterattack, got bailed by the Luftwaffe & 105s, but were saved by the Germans failing tank terror to assault. The Honeys recovered and the infantry were mown down.
Meanwhile, on the other flank the US engineers had turned up. They were badly mauled by the Luftwaffe, but enough survived to drive off the German MG platoon which had come on from reserve.
Finally the USAF arrived for the first time (all previous arrivals were intercepted), and they came in force with 3 planes and took out 2 of the Pak40's the Germans were relying on to the cover the objectives.
The Sherman's rushed the objective. The last Pak 40 took out 2 of them, the Luftwaffe another 1, but there were still Yanks on an uncontested objective giving the US victory.

The USAF only showed up once, yet when it did, the destruction of the Pak40's was a decisive blow on the Huns. If they still had those guns the Shermans on the objective probably would not have survived and the result would have been different.
The Yanks had lost no platoons so it was a 6:1 victory - a misleading result as of 5 platoons they had 2 below half strength and 3 on half strength - it was very close run thing.

Mahrajah at Fort Floriet on Tuesday:

Coreen vs Nick : 1500 pts cauldron (rolled on the table) US Infantry vs German Infantry

The Germans chose to defend. The German infantry dug in, along with infantry guns and stug IIIs. The US surrounded the Germans with a big bag of tricks -- shermans, artillery, M3 GMCs, mortars, recon pltns, etc. Because of the terrain and the deployment quadrant, both the artillery and the shermans were deployed immediately in front of the German reinforcement area.

The game started well when the shermans took out the stugs at long range (killing a stug and the command halftrack)

The game went into a nose dive when Coreena rolled for her first reinforcement, and got a tiger, right behind the shermans.

The tiger took out a sherman. The shermans moved close to the tiger so they could rush it next turn, and covered the beast with smoke. The artillery turned around and did the same.

The tiger, not wanting to get shermans surrounding it, backed into a town. It survived its bog roll, but only just (saved because it was a heavy tank). The Germans also got 2 more platoons of reinforcements -- another platoon of infantry, and 88s.

The Americans decided they were up shit creek, and the only way to survive was to rush the objective. The artillery poured smoke onto the tiger, while everything else advanced on the center. The tiger tried to come out of the smoke -- and bogged!!! (Nick was seen dancing around the table in an unseemly manner!). Nick launched an assault, taking out the dug in Germans on an objective. However, it required two platoons of infantry, the shermans, and the recon platoon to clear the objective. The recon platoon didn’t survive the assault, nor did one of the infantry platoons, but the Germans were forced of the objective. In addition, the two German teams closest to the objective were forced to surrender, as they couldn’t get away from the Americans.

The tiger unbogged, and destroyed a sherman. The 88s got a sneak shot through a gap between terrain and took out another sherman. But the Germans couldn’t retake the objective.

Overall, a 4:3 victory to Nick. It could easily have been a loss if the game had continued -- although the Americans were prepared to deal with a tiger, the deployment location meant the American AT guns and TDs were in no position to get to the tiger, and the tiger was slowly eating through the rest of the army.

MEANWHILE...on table 2, German paratroops dropped on Russian infantry. The paratroops lost a fair bit on landing, but took a town and holed up in the town. From the town one platoon poured fire into the Russians, doing spectacular damage. The other German platoon took an objective -- in the middle of a bog. The Russian reinforcements arrived -- 4 matildas. The Germans suddenly discovered they had nothing that could take out a matilda -- they even seemed to be stuka proof (top armour of 2 makes it hard with bombs). Eventually the stukas killed two matildas, one more was bailed by a 37mm with steilgranite, and the Matildas failed morale. But those matildas were tough -- if the Russian AA had managed to get to cover the matildas it would have been very different!

Next Generation

Between you there are a few young ones getting old enough to fight FOW. (James Oakes has his own pair of Tigers and a square head already). Friday night Juniors sessions are proposed – perhaps once a month starting April 1st.

Next week

I'll be at Fort Floriet Tuesday night for my first Mahrajah battle.
Camp Cromwell on Thursday (no one seems to want to change the night).