Thursday, March 26, 2009

Camp Cromwell 24/03/09



FOW:


Jim & Barrie's Grenadiers v. SteveJ & Rich's 7th Armoured in 2,500 pts Encounter Mission.

The battle started quietly as both sides dug in their initial forces on the objectives. The Germans pushed some infantry forward through the cornfields on the right while the Brits sent their large command platoon forward behind some hills on their right. The 3 tigers sat in open ground left of centre carefull to stay back from the 17pdr anti-tank guns.
But the reserves dice were not kind to the Germans. By turn 3 the Brits had all their reserves on the table while the Germans had none. Covered by a wall of smoke a swarm of Cromwells & Fireflies rushed forward. 2 Tigers were popped by Fireflies & the other failed morale. Ther German reserves came on piecemeal - first Stugs, then Marders, but they were no match for the massed Cromwells without the Tigers to help. The Paks 40s got a few but there was no way the Germans could stop the rush on their left.
But the Germans were not devoid of a plan - infantry had been moved up into a position to attack on their right & was waiting for reserves to arrive. Now with the situation on the left getting out of hand they couldn't wait for the support infantry & mortars - so the infantry charged out of the the cornfield in a desperate bid to pull the battle out of the fire. But their artillery support failed to pin their opponants & they were mown down.
Next turn the Cromwells took their objective to win the battle.

The Encounter Mission can be a chancy thing - in this case the difference between arrival times of reserves made things very hard for the Germans against opponants who seized the opportunity given to them & exploited it to the max.

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