So due to an administrative error somewhere along the way, the event I was scheduled to attend has had to be postponed. Blogger Scotty offered to host the nerds for a couple of the games we were planning to play.
In my first, I played Blogger Pel and his Hero T34/85 company in Covering Force.
I leaned heavily on the left hand objective but figured I'd leave my StuGs out wide and if Pel aggressively redeployed they, and the Ostwinds, might have made a cheeky grab for it. As it was, he shifted his infantry towards my shove but left some T34/85s and his ISU122s comfortably holding it!
The middle turns of the game were largely dominated by Pel's redeployment of his infantry and my infantry's steadfast refusal to move at all, especially not to remove the minefield I needed to remove to get the Jagdtigers able to push forward. I got Pel's T34s on my left flank but was struggling to figure out how this was going to work and what I could get onto the objective.
Suddenly, in turn six-ish, the whole game blew wide open. With a shot at taking the far objective in the offing in my StuGs raced forward into the T34/85s flanks:
The Jagdtigers chipped in the first two T34s and the StuGs promptly missed. GAH! Chris' ISU 122s hit back and destroyed a StuG but the realisation that I was going to be unlikely to remove them (and risking breaking if they got killed), I swung my efforts back to the left flank.
I also sent the Jagdpanthers forward about the same time, inadvertantly preventing an easy ambush in my flanks to try and knock out the T34 CO (unsuccessfully, I might add) but it did let me finish off the SU76s that were also there. Pel finally popped his ambush (you can see it in the cornfield at the top of the picture below) and the CO who wouldn't fricking die knocked two of them out over a couple of turns. I passed one last stand but didn't get the second one I needed!
In the end, it came down to my trying to work out how to break Pel in the last turn. I had to kill two T3/85s and one stand of infantry to at least make him take a bunch of tests. I got one T34, failed on the infantry alltogether, giving Pel the win in what was a very good and very close game. In the end, for an army that I expected to have very little go-forward, she did okay. If I hadn't spend several turns pinned behind a minefield, I might have been able to push the Jagdtigers up instead of the Jagdpanthers and had a better result. Lessons learned!
I had a second game of Counterattack (not a mission I wanted to play, TBH) against Blogger McBeth and his Soviet Forward Detachment in which I took precisely this photo before the first turn:
This was one of those games where things just landed, especially things that shouldn't. McBeth removed my StuGs with a cunning ambush in his first turn. I got some blitzes and moves off and the Jagdtigers and Jagdpanthers removed the ambushing platoon in response. 7 shots on 5s shouldn't yield that result. It is one of the things I have noticed with the AT 17 amd 18 shots on the Jagds - when you hit, it's just all over. It's weirdly quite satisfying.
Anyway, McBeth's reserves arrived in turns one and two as well and rolled up to the centre of the table to stop me shoving my Panzersturm through his Strelkovy. The centre got really congested and then the game got silly. I pushed my Jagdtigers a touch too far ahead and the remant T34s and Strelkovy snuck round their flanks. Things hit and I made SO MANY saves. And then withdrew my Jagds in good order. McBeths IS2s and my Jagdpanthers got in a scrap and it was another one of those, I roll 5s and everything goes bad. 4 shots on 5s shouldn't get 3 hits and destroy 2 IS2s. The conclusion, in the end was that on my turn 4, my 250 Recce arrived from reserve and the 20mms just went to town. Their first round of shooting removed two of McBeth's .50 cal quad halftracks holding the objective and their second and third rounds removed the BA64s contesting the objective, despite the BAs PTRD armament winning me the game. It was patently absurd.
Next Time
Some workbenchery I shouldn't wonder. I've got a lot of primed and partially started things on the desk at the mo...
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