I figured I'd take Confident Trained again to see if I could make it work. I did wind up losing a bunch of stands, which I'll get into, so the list is still pretty fragile. I'd really like to play against an opponent that isn't Veteran. This isn't going to be a very detailed AAR, mostly because it's tedious and I don't like reading in depth battle reports. Just show my some pictures of painted miniatures!
With the mission being Pincer, we play from short edge to short edge. Jim's list is tiny: five Stugs, a Panzergrenadier platoon in the buildings around the blue one in the picture below, two units of two recce vehicles, two mobile anti air, three Wespes, and his CiC and 2iC in Stugs. Only six platoons, and he deploys half of his army on the board with the tactic of putting most of his points out right away. Delayed Reserves is a real kick in the pants.
 |
| The American horde lines up. |
 |
| Turn 1 of shooting for me is effective. I had two units of mortars plus the Field Artillery, so I had lots of smoke available to me. The Ozark Queen scored a halftrack and the 2iC with bombs. Already a grand start. |
 |
| Since the flamethrowers on the Crocs use an unmodified skill check to hit, why not smoke their targets? It keeps them from shooting at my poor infantry as they advance. At this point the Rifle Platoon with the CiC gets pinned (second from bottom) and they wind up failing their rerollable 4+ Motivation check... twice. |
 |
| I guess the Engineers have to do it... |
 |
| Rolling for planes. Harshing my groove, dice! |
 |
| After two rounds of shooting, there's a lot of carnage. My bazookas, after almost a year of playing, are finally doing some damage. HMG and rifle fire whittles away at the Wespe platoon by knocking out their platoon commander. |
 |
| Oh god here they come. I'm worried I won't be able to crack the Stugs rolling in. |
 |
| Jim got to roll on the Tiger Ace table for his CiC and got For the Fatherland!, which lets him pass motivation checks on a 2+. And I'll be, it really saved his bacon. He was able to keep his Panzergrenadiers around for quite a while. |
 |
| I take some casualties, finally unpin and advance both Rifle platoons. No reinforcements for Jim, and I'm starting to get too close to any of his units for my planes to come in. The Crocs wind up killing two, TWO, infantry stands out of ten shots, needing 4+s to hit. Really disappointing. |
 |
| The game could go either way at this point. Thankfully I'm dug in and in the wheatfields so there aren't a lot of good angles for Jim to sit back and nuke me with Stug main guns. The smoke that I keep calling in forces him to keep moving the Stugs. Bazookas take out a few more Wespes. |
 |
| A lot better now. I was able to bring the bazookas from the Egnineers and a Rifle Platoon to bear, which just wrecked tons of Stugs, Halftracks, and Wespes. Jim managed to roll snake eyes, meaning his Stugs run away, and his Wespes decided to retreat, causing a loss from no CiC on the table with under half the company. |
 |
| Trusty, well, mostly trusty motar support in the bottom right. |
 |
| These guys were going to book it for the other objective. Had to force him to commit either way! |
This was a rather hard fought game! When Jim did get shots off at my infantry, they went down in droves. The smoke wasn't as effective as I had wanted due to the wind direction and Jim's unit placement, but I was still able to keep a few anti-air shots from going up at incoming planes. Not having anti air on the board hampered Jim, I think, but what else was he supposed to do? Put the Stugs in reserve and hope he gets them on? Delayed Reserves is a real pain in the butt, and from my experience shouldn't be relied on for anything.
Given there were so few Gemran units on the board, I didn't roll right over them. Not immediately, anyway :P
Comments
Post a Comment