Club Night 11th February

Despite the mass FoWing recently I had actually arranged another game with Mike. Fortunately it was a bit different from all our recent desert forays set in late war Northern Europe. I was borrowing a mix of Mike and Ricks figures to try out a Gepanzert Panzerpioeer company and Mike wanted to try out his new 7th Armoured division force.

We generated a fairly open table and I found myself as the defender in a fighting withdrawal, so promptly sent all those half tracks I had to the rear so they didn't get killed. As engineers with some supply trucks I was able to string some minefields across in front of two of the objectives and hid the last behind a river.

The British advanced and I immediately sprung my ambush using my platoon of Stugs which devastated one of their Cromwell platoons. We continued to be able to slow down their advance with the fire of these Stugs for most of the game while our infantry stayed dug in with their heads down other than the occasional, and unsuccessful, although amusing attack launched using Goliath remote controlled vehicles. The reluctant nature of 7th armoured was really making a difference if we brewed them up, and our single mortar tubes where enough to pin down and delay their infantry support too.

However time was not on our side and we had to start removing some forces and the British bravely launched their self propelled artillery forward to give them some more manoeuvrable units, and with all the command stand making the unit stronger the few losses the vehicles took, led by the 2iC, didn't break them and they pushed pass the minefield and closed on the objectives, but too late as they were removed.

Meanwhile they had managed to cross the stream with their Cromwells and were threatening the one objective we could not remove. As their final turn arrived it looked like victory was to be the Germans, but I managed to fail a save and have a stand machine gunned out of its foxholes. Now began the first of three critical dice rolls. The first was the platoon morale which I managed to pass. Next was the start of the 8th and final German turn, first was a last man standing roll for the platoon that has taken the loss which I failed, removing the platoon. Worse this meant I had to take a company morale check, which I promptly failed, meaning we just fell short of checking victory conditions in turn 8 which would have given us victory.

A hard fought and really enjoyable game. Now I just have to find a way I can afford all those half tracks for myself!