Camp Cromwell 17/11/05

On the Desert Table:

2 x 1500 pts Hold the Line
Mark I & Peter W's US Inf + Mariusz's Polish Armour
attacking
Jim & Barrie's DAK + Steve's panzer grenadiers.

The deployment was as two platoons side by side on a 8' front with 4 objectives, 2 to be taken to win. 1st platoon to fail morale pinned.

Steve's faced a swarm of Polish armour with very little - he had only 5 platoons so there was just 1 grenadier & the 88 ambush on table to face them. The 88s got smoked by the US 105s most of the game & when they did get a shot in they missed. The grenadiers inevitably got over-run by Honeys. The reserves came on only to be picked off as well.

On the other flank the yanks were held off and a reserve DAK infantry platoon spared to cover Steve's 2nd objective.

The Polish attack on the 2nd objective got a hell of a fright when the Grenadiers charged them through smoke bailing all but 1 before failing morale. But 1 survivor was enough & the rest of the grenadiers died in the counterattack & the 2nd objective fell.

It was a tough assignment for the Germans. The rolling hills limited the ambush potential while there was little cover for the defence. The wide front allowed the objectives to be widely spaced and hard to defend. Steve's coy was ill-suited to facing serious tanks.

We had a long discussion before the battle trying to get the multi-coy rules straight for this battle. We need to work on getting clearer scenario conditions for multi-player games. There's some on the website to start with.

On the Lobotsitz Table:

Mark II's British Armour VS Steve II’s Russian Infantry
1500 pt Breakthrough Mission

As the defender Steve chose to place his artillery on a high hill which had a view of most of the table. The Infantry were dug in between the river and the woods. The other smaller infantry were dug in around a village to deal with the expected bailed out armour.

Mark placed his armour within striking distance of the artillery leaving Steve to think that he was not so clever after all and that the game would be over very quickly!

Marks first turn enabled him to effectively smoke the artillery preventing them from creating the destruction that Steve was desperately in need of.

The Sturmoviks failed to arrive! The dice gods however, decided that the Russians horde deserved an even break and allowed Steve to roll for his reinforcements and on came 9 T34’s right in the path of the advancing armour! Between the T’34’s and the now protected artillery the British attack was decimated.
The battle had swung dramatically in favor of the Russian horde! However new life was injected into the game when the Sturmoviks finally found their way to the battle only to attack their own troops, killing off ¾’s of the artillery!

Mark had bad luck with his reserves not turning up until the last few turns when it was all but over. A very enjoyable game with some valuable lessons learnt around deployment and the value of airpower.