Monday 27 August 2012

Action at Breville - Para's vs more Germans

We were thinking of a game - another outing for Johns superbly painted Para's, and, as I have a copy of  the Wargames Illustrated Para article, Breville sounded a good idea. We had to improvise a bit with the terrain but generally got the same layout. The 2 Marders were run as Marders, but were shown on the table as a Hetzer and JagdpanzerIV.



Overall another very good game, with the Brits not really getting anywhere until the Shermans showed up. Essentially the same thing as happened actually. The Germans suffered from dire action points throughout the game, and not having a Battlegroup command, were unable to do anything about them. Also, with the action fought out at night it limited the ability to engage at distance. Not that this was a problem for the Pak38, which was pretty useless at long or short range, missing 3 penetration shots, then getting blasted out of its ATG position. A further problem with the germans was the splitting into 2 of the infantry sections, whilst giving a more flexible fire unit, was a royal pain in the ass when rolling for action points without rerolls. In short, more command units needed in a list, radio van is a must, buy mortars for support. Sniper was interesting.

KGN 400pt game - British Para's vs Germans

A game organised by me and John, with 400pts a side. We put up the terrain, which on reflection was to much,with the entry/exit roads easily blocked with as it turned out burning tanks. No exits off the lanes channeled the attacks down easily identifiable avenues of  approach.
In short, a very good game that showed many of difficulties of fighting in Norman bocage
The forces




We ran an encounter game with the forces, which was excellent 'fun', the Tiger going for a shot at the lead Sherman, missing!!!, then being sniped by a Firefly.The resultant wreck blocked entry/exit from the lane. The Stugs then sniped a Sherman, which blocked the entry/exit of the lane on the British side. The game then revolved around feeding in Infantry to push along and force the tanks to retreat, and to push success gained from vehicle mounted mg's.



Learnt a lot more about force composition as well which I tried to put into effect for the next game.