Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Of Panthers and Vodka...

Bringing a conclusion to our little mini-campaign, the other night saw another fine battle between Jeff and I. Well, fine, that is, if you consider burning Panthers and squished Russian infantry to be "fine".

I took an agressive SS Panzerkompanie consisting of 2 HQ Panthers, 3 Panthers, a Bergepanther, a GpPzGren platoon, and an understrength Panzergrenadier platoon while Jeff shoved a bunch of infantry, assault guns, some Anti Tank guns, mortars, oh and more infantry against me.

I started Pretty agressively pushing everyone forward as far as possible, partly to deny him some prime ambush locations but also because I knew that I had to remove him from his hidey-holes before his reinforcements showed up.

Ah, plans...when will you ever survive contact with the enemy? *sigh*
































Read on for the rest of the report! Does contain large amounts of pictures!




Two turns of shooting saw not a single Russian casualty, but had one of my Panthers burning due to a failed motivation off of a double bail. Bastard. He will certainly be shot for cowardice.

I pushed my 2iC along with the Panzergrenadiers up to the Communists flank, in the vain hopes that I could assault from three directions and show him his way home. Again, bastards. Despite Jeffs repeated failings of his morale rolls he remained in quite a strong position guarding the objective. On his turn he not only rallied, but ambushed on an wooded hill overlooking the objective with his three ISU's. At first I was a bit worried, but then I realized that the crew of those big ISU's were actually german sympathisers. Or, at least, they may as well have been because they failed to hit or kill anything all game. Woo!

Meanwhile, my poor (invincible) SS Panzergrenadiers took hit after hit from mortars, Machine guns, rifles, AT guns...and laughed it off. I think one stand threw maybe 5 or 6 saves in one turn alone (and ended up living the rest of the battle! Knights Cross!).

Realizing that I was in a pretty poor position due to Jeffs inability to fail a reserve roll meant that I had to push the objective before I thinned the herd as much as I had hoped. The Armoured Panzergrenadiers assaulted...and flopped. It was pretty bad. The Panthers assaulted...and hilarity ensued. After I think 5 or 6 rounds of Jeff having to re-roll his motivation rolls to counter attack I had two operational tanks, and one bailed and he had maybe 7 stands. Maybe.

When all the smoke cleared there were three bailed panthers covered in the detritus of war. Bodies of russians, slain crewmembers, more dead russians lay strewn about in unglorified heaps. Unfortunatly with my Company Commander dead in his tank my Company decided to withdrawal to more defendable positions, begrudingly giving up what little ground they had gained.

Good game, Jeff! Victory to the communists. Booo Hiiss!!

Overall, I think I just ran out of time with Jeffs amazing reserve rolls, and my inability (despite three magic BB's in one round of shooting) to thin out his blocking Company of Strelk. If I had gotten in position on the objective a turn earlier, I would have been in a great spot to finish trying to kill his ISU's and use my Half Tracks to thin his reserve infantry. Oh well, maybe on another battlefield!
















































































































































































































































































































Thanks for reading!!

1 comment:

  1. Hi, I came across your site and wasn’t able to get an email address to contact you. Would you please consider adding a link to my website on your page. Please email me.

    Thanks!

    Joel Houston
    JHouston791@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete