Just had another game at Jamie’s, lovely table, straight forward cross table patrol encounter.
I’m sorry to say only a small handful of pictures……a shame because I don’t have a full table shot, a lovely rural setting in French hedgerow country.
There is no real battle report to run with these shots, suffice to say that it was a game strangely devoid of infantry firing action.
The Americans, certainly I feel got a good spread of jump off points. It was obvious that for any real fire fights, sections would need to close up considerably with all those hedge rows. My jump off was a little more restricted, but I did see an opportunity develop over the initial phases of the game when realising the Americans chose to ignore my right, where the two houses with their walled gardens could afford a solid defensible point.
As the game got underway, I tried bringing my off board mortars to bear, but Jamie thwarted what may have been a damaging barrage by calling a CoC dice and ending the turn thus scuppering the potential carnage and severing my link to the battery.
However, as has proven the case more often than not in the last few games, my fellas deployed a sniper, pretty much the only guy to gain any height advantage and thus have a pick of targets. With the very first shot of the game, I killed a section junior leader.
In fact, almost every time he fired thereafter, he gained a kill, only for the kill to be a casualty on an officer! Now this happened a lot in our last game too….with pretty much every kill when checked, appearing to be a hit on his command staff.
I could say it’s my flukey dice, but to be fair, the owning player makes the rolls to determine the effects of hits and whether or not it’s an officer effected and the subsequent roll to see what happens to the force morale. So I’ve come to the conclusion that despite doing very little wrong tactically, Jamie’s dice are in the hands of a very fickle dice god!
The Yanks did bring on a Sherman which sat in overwatch for a little while before moving down the road to attack the massing German infantry among the walled garden of the buildings. Unfortunately, it then fell fowl of my other favourite piece…the dreaded panzershrek which I carry with every regular infantry platoon as a part of the command section. With thirteen dice it meant that I put four net hits on it on my first shot knocking it out…yet another hit on their morale. It’s a horrible thing to face off to, but I always seem to be able to pull off a hit, then with all that armour piercing goodness, it’s a matter of relying on the laws of averages to inflict pain.
I was able to then bring on my panzer II Luchs which up to this point had been hiding from the Sherman, and it managed a kill and a few shock for its inaugural outing.
I managed to overrun a jump off point then end the turn to force another roll on their morale.
By now Jamie was down to three command dice, never a great position to be, and a plucky US senior leader (that had taken over the leaderless section) tried to flush out with grenades a German section that had recently occupied the building next to them only to get charged by another german section that inflicted sufficient casualties with a flurry of stick grenades to see the game carried.
So, great thanks to Jamie for hosting. Enjoyed the game and look forward to the next one. You’d best make a few offerings to your dice gods though fella!
Now I’ve shamed myself, I’ve had to make up numbers in my summer German numbers with winter guys for the last three or four games…..I MUST get a few minis painted!