Last nights game saw my freshly painted British take on Skip's Waffen-SS in a 500 point bash. As a change I built my force from the British Armoured list and Skip went with SS Panzers too. What was expected to be a bloodbath of the British, turned into something totally unexpected...
The game commenced with only Recce and HQ units on the table. Here the British had a big advantage as we possessed armoured recce in the form of three Cromwells. These raced forward, shot up an enemy Puma and then bolted for the middle objective taking it early. At the sametime the British BGHQ (another Cromwell) took another objective. At the end of the 1st turn, the Germans had already taken four morale chits...
This all looked like it was to change when six Panthers rolled onto the table. While the British had elected to bring on infantry first, the German Panthers raced on and made a beeline for the three recce Cromwells hiding behind a hedge. Expecting the worst, the British commanders prepared several smoke markers... But somehow all the Panthers missed. This was to become something of a theme.
After that, it really all went wrong for the Germans! A hesistant German attack down the road lost them two Panthers, one to a Firefly and the other to a close range frontal shot from a very lucky Cromwell and the supporting Grenadiers who took cover in the farmhouse suffered a blaze of fire from an entire inafntry platoon, supporting tanks and direct fire from the two 25 Pounders set up to provide gun cover! The Germans were wiped out to a man. All the time the Germans seemed unable to hit a single target, though after nearly all their rounds had been expended, one of the recce Cromwells, and then another, finally got brewed up.
By this time however, four of the six Panthers were burning, casualties were mounting in the German infantry ranks and their artillery kept failing to do anything of worth. The Germans decided to fall back on their village and hit the British as they advanced. Lady Luck then dealt the Germans a final kick in the teeth...
Out of the clouds, a rocket armed Typhoon dived in loosing off salvos of rockets into the parked German supply and radio trucks. This was all too much for the Germans, their morale broke and the army fled.
What was remarkable was the sheer kicking my British dealt out to Skip's Waffen-SS. We drew 9 morale points, while the Germans totalled 35! We lost two Cromwell and five infantrymen, the Germans lost four of their Panthers, most of their half-tracks and half their Grenadier platoon and all their recce troops!
It was a rather spiffing first outing for the 3rd Foot & Mouth, and even the newly painted 17 Pounder chalked up its first kill, popping a Panther at a full 47" away! Man of the Match though has to go to the Cromwell Recce Troop who for almost the entire game went toe-to-toe with Panthers and kept them at bay while the rest of the army got into position to administer the
coup-de-grace.