Steve & I took part in a Bunker Rats one day tourney in the Kingston bunker. The forces were 1450 pts mid war from the North Afrika book. Steve took a German infantry coy, I took a British Light Armoured coy.
10 players took part with Grigsy as TO. There were 3 rounds scored with a new points system invented by someone in NZ they were test running with a view of using it in their serious annual tournament in May.
In 1st round I fought Patrick in a Dust Up Mission on pretty open battlefield. (The tower on the table is a dice tower, not part of the scenery). Half the forces are deployed at the start defending objectives in diagonally opposite corners of the table. The delayed reserves come on from the corners at the other end of the long edges. Both of us had infantry & guns on the objectives. All my reserves were armour, the Germans had 3 MkIIIs, a Tiger & infantry in reserve.
I wasn't game to throw my armour straight at the enemy infantry & anti-tank guns - thinking that their combined arms reserves could beat my defense faster than a frontal attack on theirs. So my plan was to destroy their armour, then attack their defense from the flank. The result was a very entertaining tank melee in one corner of with Crusaders v. MkIII's & Grants v. a Tiger. One side had firepower & the other had numbers & it for went on ever. Eventually, the MkIII's were destroyed & the Crusaders attacked the objective from the flank while the few remaining Grants kept the Tiger busy. The attack was going well, but the tank fight had taken too long for my plan to work & the battle was a timed out draw with both sides getting a few points for destroying a tank platoon each.
Steve drew the dreaded Smithy first up and lost his battle, but gained more VPs than I did because he destroyed more enemy.
The second round was Hold the Line. My enemy this time was US (unfortunately blue on blue happens in FOW tournaments). I defended, putting artillery on one objective & infantry on the other. I probably won the battle on turn 1 when I had a run of good dice & wiped out a Honey platoon with my artillery & the tank destroyers with my Grants in ambush. The armoured infantry supported by a lot of Honeys broke my infantry & got onto the objective in village, but the Grants moved up from their ambush position to dispute the objective for long enough for the rest of the cavalry to arrive & break the US coy.
Steve also won his second round match.
After 2 rounds Steve & I were ranked 3rd & 4th so had to fight each other. It was a Hasty Attack Mission on a difficult battlefield for armour. My plan was to look like I was attacking on the left until my reserves arrived then use the Crusader's mobilty to switch the attack to the right. The plan was severely handicapped by Steve's flying tanks with came on nearly every turn and often with 3 planes. 3 Grants brewed up on turn 1 was not a good start & a Crusader platoon went the same way soon after. Having 2 Crusaders broken down just in range of 2 Pak 40's due to the unreliabilty rule didn't help either. Nevertheless, in the Tally Ho tradition of British cavalry I pressed on. My Grants took out the 88 defending Steve's left & the few remaining tanks attacked the objective. They actually took it, but Steve had had time to redeploy his Pak 38's and he blew them away. The Luftwaffe finished off my infantry in the same turn & I went from a rough chance of winning to total defeat with every platoon destroyed in one turn.
Smithy was the overall winner, but our Steve came a creditable 3rd. I ended up back in the pack, but was well pleased with my choice of army. It engenders a Death or Glory attitude that is good fun even if you lose.
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