This past Saturday at Deaf Ear Records in LaCrosse WI, we had 5 people on hand. This allowed us to do a mini-tournament style set of games. Bill, Chuck, Matt and Collin all got there before I did and got the tables going.
This little one featuring a town off on the side and a bit of water somewhat offset from the middle.
This one, was still being setup when I snapped this picture. Since I had to get moving to pull my army I couldn’t dilly dally.
Chuck acting as tournament director for the day rolled up the scenario, Cauldron and then we paired off with 2.5 hours to play the match. Matt running Chuck’s American Airborne and I were paired up and Collin with more Americans against Bill’s Germans.
This time I went with a Confident Veteran formation of Volks instead of the Reluctant Trained that I did last time. I picked up a sniper, an ME262, a machine gun platoon, 4 Panthers, 3 Hetzers, a scout platoon, a 3 gun 105 battery besides just the required stuff.
Matt and I rolled off, he was the defender and I the attacker.
Given the setup the “box” he was in was on both side of the water. With this one, both sides have to start with half their stuff. Matt had to deal with being stretched across the water. He placed his armored jeeps on both sides, a small TD platoon and then copious amounts of straight legs.
For me, I started out with my scout platoon, machine gun platoon and my panthers. The panthers are setup just to the left in this picture, just out of view. The machine guns are in the field across from the Americans and one of the objectives and last the scouts are just up the hill in the town. Not a bad placement for a random roll.
With Cauldron the defender goes first. Thankfully as the attacker I get to start dug in. For Matt his reinforcements would come from behind where my machine gun platoon was. Likewise for me my reinforcements I choose to come from the side where the town was.
Top of turn 1, Matt issues lots of small arms fire but thankfully his LMGs don’t score enough hits to pin me. Likewise he sprung his ambush which was the TD platoon. The one M-10 you can just barely seen in the frame on the left. He went ahead and railed away at my panthers and bailed out one.
Bottom of turn 1, thankfully I did make the reinforcement roll and picked my 105 battery. I did my best to rush up the observer and just move the guns on.
I went ahead and picked on the tank destroy with the Panthers that just don’t seem to want to be in a picture. Once again they are off on the left. Two of the panthers in the platoon shot at the American artillery taking out the staff team and two guns with some really good shooting.
Likewise my machine guns opened up but my scout platoon kept quiet and held their fire. I figured there was no reason to expose themselves from being gone to ground until I started to receive reinforcements.
My shooting was quite good and I knocked out a couple of stands of American LMGs pinning them.
Turn 2, Matt pulled in his armored jeeps. Nasty little buggers those things. While the scout platoon was gone to ground he still landed a few hits and I lost a stand from in the town. Otherwise a fairly uneventful top of turn 2.
Bottom of turn 2, my second set of reinforcements I picked my assault platoon and immediately had them run down the road. It was starting to feel like I could eek out a victory with a bit more prep work and use these guys to assault the position.
Top of turn 3, Matt brings down his air with the intent of dropping a bomb right down the middle of the road. Sure he’s have to acquire since everything was within 2″ of the builds, but still, I had no AA and if he makes that roll, that bomb could make quick work of me!
Over on the other side of the table, Matt started to move a few of his bazooka stands to chase after my Panthers. Having made quick work of the American TD and with reinforcements arriving I felt it was time to get going and start to shift the focus of the attack fully on this side. of the table
With Matt’s air he did acquire me so amazingly I escaped a close call.
Bottom of turn 3. I made another air roll and reinforcement roll. The hetzers came on this time and made a bee line for the action. With luck, they’d be brewing up jeeps. (They didn’t, sigh)
The assault platoon moved in closer. I started to figure next turn, would be an eventful one!
Here we are turn 4. You can fully see my panthers shifting and likewise more Americans with Bazooks thinking those kitty will make a good target.
Matt rolls his reinforcement roll and makes it, bringing on an anti-tank platoon. 57s and more bazookas. Great. They come on roughly behind the panthers, and for one Panther, within 16″ at that for some pretty nice butt shots.
On the other side of the table Matt moves his jeeps away from the hetzers and down the road into town. With all that infantry out in the open and lots of vehicle machines, tacka-tacka-tacka…. he would take out a couple of stands.
The anti-tank guns likewise would score one panther. Matt also did receive air this turn and came down on my not-quite-dug-in-because-we’ve-been-busy-105 battery, taking out one gun.
Then Matt decided to assault with his jeeps into my infantry out in the road. We went a couple of rounds and thankfully with a larger platoon since it had some panzerschrek teams assigned I was able to last just long enough to take out all 4 jeeps, tho there was very little left of the platoon. They did make their motivation roll to stay around.
With that, we were effectively out of time, given I’d taken out 1 platoon of Matt’s that would be the game.
We did have one rule issue where we were unclear on what was in the Tank Destroy rules updates. I remembered from the fora they had removed the recce status but couldn’t for the life of me remember more than that. So the disengagement aspect of the TDs was wrong for the game. Would Matt have successfully gotten away? It’s a good question as I’d still have had a roll, just not with 4 shots. Do highly recommend getting a copy of Lessons from the Front off of flamesofwar.com as well as the recently released errata. Well worth the read, which does include updates for some of the early war rules.
Regardless was a fun time. Would have very much liked to have stayed longer and taken in a second game, but it wasn’t in the cards for me. Next time!