Monday 8 June 2015

Battle Report - Firestorm Loraine Campaign Turn 2B Game 1

Yesterday the club continued on with our Firestorm Loraine campaign, this was the second round of games in turn 2. In this round I had to attack the Metz again and go up against the heavy entrenched guns. I was a bit lazy so I just went with the same army I have been using for most of this, this time my firestorm support troops were a platoon of tanks and 1 of heavy artillery.

My German opponent had a mix of Panthers, Panzer IVs, StugGs, Infantry, Artillery, so really just allot of stuff. I don't have the exact lists ready to post this time but you get the idea. We rolled for a mission and got Cauldron which was vetoed and then Hold the Line (or was it no retreat), it's the defensive battle where the defender is in delayed reserves but has 2 ambushes.


Here is our start position, the objectives are between the 2 hills in the back, and behind the trenches and tank obstacles on the right. As you can see I have decided that assaulting engineers in trenches with full panzerfaust is not a great idea so my plan is to bypass that mass and go for the rear. The Germans also have their heavy artillery on the board and the Panthers in ambush. We later realized that the Panzer IVs had forgotten to deploy so they were added later.


First turn I moved up cautiously and sent in the recon to make it hard for the panthers to deploy from ambush in a great position. The Germans fired the artillery and killed a sturat and held back the Panthers for now. As you can see I have elected to keep the heavy guns under smoke for most of the game.


On turn 2 I sent my recon unit in to attack the heavy guns, and was able to take out 2 of them at the cost of only 1 jeep, so no to bad. Meanwhile my tanks crept forward.

In the following turns the Germans deployed the Panthers and then brought up the Panzer IVs. My recon were taken care of by the commanders who decided to suddenly show up.


As you can see the Panthers were giving me quite allot of trouble. I was not having great luck, and my plans to take cover behind the houses back fired as the Germans were able to take advantage of that to avoid firing at my heavily armored jumbos, and instead kill the better gunned 76mm Shermans. The Reluctant Panthers had great luck un-bailing as well which was not great.


Eventually I was able to kill all but 1 of the Panthers, mostly with artillery, but by then almost all of my tank had been destroyed. Still both of the German command tanks had been killed, so there were possibilities if I could some how kill the last Panther and 4 Panzer IVs with 1 command Jumbo and 4 Stuarts.


This was not to be as my commander was surrounded and bailed out, so when I had to make a company morale test there was no one to roll it resulting in a loss due to company breaking. But still was a fun game, perhaps I could have played more conservatively and relied on my heavy artillery to do more work, but that is just not fun. As it turns out one of our allied generals was able to get a victory and captured the important town of Nancy. This puts us just in the lead as we head into the third and final round of the campaign which will have all the German counter attacks. So we will really have to do a good job defending our gains to pull off a draw.

Thanks;
Mike

5 comments:

  1. Was I allowed 2 ambushes? I don't think I could have used the second one anyway since I had to put units in the fortifications.

    It was Hold the Line that we played.

    I think it was my luck with the bailed out Panthers that saved the game for me. I also think that aggressiveness almost always pays off in missions with reserves

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  2. Yes 2 ambushes I am pretty sure. I think you could have formed a kampfgruppe with the 2IC Panzer IV and 2 of the ones from the Panzer IV platoon, this would have given 8 platoons so you could start with 4, and have both of the platoons of tanks in ambush.

    But it turend to be a question of wether I could take out the Panthers without to many losses, and it turned out I couldn't! Will be interesting to see how things go in the next round when the Panthers have to attack, how much difference will that make I am not sure.

    Thanks;
    Mike

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  3. I had completely forgotten about Kampgruppe -- I might have actually chosen to bring in one of the infantry platoons in that case and not bothered with the 2nd Ambush, I think I could have been quite confident about holding you off the objectives for 3 or 4 turns until my force got up to strength.

    I am looking forward to attacking with the Panthers, they died in droves historically but I think it will still be a fun (possibly very quick!) game.

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  4. I think the panthers games will come down to who can force the battle a bit. If we can make them come in to us where they don't want to be then it is good odds, if they can stand off in cover and hammer in shots it better odds for them. I expect that the allies will be moving over more to vet forces with this in mind as you can't hit gone to ground teams at all outside 16" and those Panther armies can't even get recon. I agree they should be fun and very different from what we have now!

    Thanks;
    Mike

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  5. How much of a quantity hit do you take when you go from trained to veteran for US Tanks?

    Veteran infantry (bazooka maxed) is probably going to win the day

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