Friday afternoon at the End Game cafe

On one table John & Grigsy played Chain of Command.

My notice on the BA Tas Facebook page brought young Jim from the Back Shed mob with a horde of Soviet armour.   The 6 T34's, 2 Katyushas an a/tank gun & a bunch of infantry was rather intimidating opposite my 3 MkIVs, a Marder, Stummel, Pak 38 & panzergrenadiers.  But the Soviets  were inexperienced & the Germans a mix of vets & regs  so actually not a bad match & it made for an interesting struggle.

The Germans are on the left.  There are only two objectives one in the wood on the left .  The Germasn grabbed the village objective by rushing PG's from the Stummel into the nearest house.  The Stummel dies on turn 1 as I met Katyushas for the first time in BA.  Very scary but ultimately controlled pretty well by mg & rifle fire.

While the German armour faced off with half the Soviet armour on the right, the Pak 38 faced iup to 3 T34's & an infantry squad on its own.

The gunners somehow saw off the infantry charge then survived a tank assault, & while losing the gun the surviving gunners went down in the woods still holding the objective.  The Panzergrenadiers in the house missed every shot with their fausts, but shot up a Kat before being destroyed by a tank smashing their building. (We thought the rules for tanks smashing buildings seemed a bit draconian, but after the battle I noticed that we erred in letting a medium tank do it - only heavy & super heavy tanks can demolish buildings, so maybe the rules are reasonable).  The armour slugged it out on the right with Germans gradually getting the worst of it.  The -1 for inexperienced seemed very significant, but if you get enough dice the hits come eventually.

The game went to an 8th turn & the Germans got down to just 2 gunners, a truck & one tank, but they held onto 1 objective so with objectives at 1 each, the game was decided by kills.  The Germans had lost 5 units, but had taken out 4 Soviets so held on for a lucky draw as the kill difference has to be 2+ to break the tie.