I have been very keen to give this game a run at the club. A couple of convention demo games that I played in convinced me that we could have fun with this. So one of the club members a couple of weeks ago said lets give it a try. Woo hoo, only problem was that I am not really all that, shall we say, comfortable with the rules yet. Demo and Solo games not withstanding I had not really played many games. Well not only did I have an opponent but 1 more member and a new blood stepped up to the mark as well.
1 platoon of Grenadiers, an Sdkfz 222 and a Panzer IV for the Germans.
1 platoon of British infantry, a Daimler and a Sherman for the Allies.
Even enough and though we did not play a scenario from the book the feel of the game seemed fairly accurate.
Patrol Phase about to begin, the game within a game seemed to keep us entertained.
The British are in the ruins near the wheat fields and are taking somewhat of a pounding, yes they get to dish out a bit of pain back to the Germans but to be honest we really needed to go tactical in the ruins as we were using them as light rather than heavy cover. Note the little squares for shock, I think I shall put differing numbers on the, rather than stack them.
View from the right flank of the Germans. Yes that is another MG 34 enfilading the Brits in the ruins. Note the size of the Jump off points, yep 15mm minis. Oh until I make some fancy ones Jump off points and patrol makers and the chain of command board are mounted on foam core. Light easy to transport and wont blow off the table easily.
View from the British side. As you can see a huge amount of shock on the "ruined" British Infantry but not many kills. The little PIAT took a pot shot at the 222 early in the game with limited success but it did force it to move away with a dead gunner. About 10 minutes later a German squad pops up to the right of the hedges near the hapless Brits, opens fire, more shock and then throws itself into the maelstrom of hand to hand and sure enough the Brits crumble to a man. Melee is brutal and if you don't pin and reduce the numbers of defenders the attackers can come off second best when the bayonets come out, noted by the German commanders a couple of phases earlier.
As the shock started to mount both commanders brought on their senior commanders to rally a little shock off. Now this sounds sensible but it meant that the Germans tried 4 times to bring on the PanzerIV and I tried once with the Daimler but to no avail, I am actually glad that the IV did not come on as we would have been packing up pretty early.
Hard to make out from the blurry foreground but the 222 is concealing a Panzershreck armed fire team that leaps out from cover to smash the Sherman in two shots. Nice work for the little pair of troopers. Gaining 2 phases in a row with the double six throws can be real handy when you neatly place your Senior commander and keep rolling 4s to get him to make his three activations.
The British lost out this time but the better news was that my opponents want to give this game another run but use one of the scenarios with a defender somewhat limited against a stronger attacker. Happy days when the Blind lead the Blind and they want to come back for more.