Kaiserschlacht battle report REPORT UP

[thejammedgatling]

Well I never managed to get hold of all the pictures, but here are some that I did tinker with. It's not an ideal battle report as we mainly were testing out the boards and rules (as well as introducing the rules to a few new club members) so the game was not completed.

A few rules we'd written to add to the core set were for snipers and barrages. Basically snipers could elect targets within LOS at the start of the turn and make a shot at a range of up to 48" on the table. This meant that the command figures needed to be mindful of keeping their heads down or in cover. Snipers could be targeted by fire but had a fairly high cover and armour save. Barrages (by both sides) were not in the control of either player. A dice was rolled for four rounds to be fired each turn and scatter dice used to indicate where on the table they landed. This kept everyone on their toes and mindful not to bunch up too much.



Two full companies of Germans were attacking one of British, plus one of the German companies was of Stormtroopers. The German had a tank, three 77mm artillery pieces and a heavy machine gun, in response to which the british had two HMG's, a mortar and quite a few Lewis Guns. So the odds were tipped a little in the Germans favour. The regular infantry swarmed across the open ground outside the town. Meanwhile the Stormtroopers advanced quickly across the town square.




The British made good use of every available building, splitting their force up into three sections. One held the factory, the other the single two story dwelling and the last the shallow trenches ..roughly an L shape.



The Germans had the best of the first turn with the random barrages, with three out of four rounds landing in and around the British positions. One blew the top of the factory off and three men with it. However, the Stormtroopers could not get across the town square fast enough as discipled rifle fire and HMG rounds tore into them. One platoon wiped out and the other at half strength in the first turn!

The German AZ7 ploughed on, getting in range with its machine guns to unleash a barrage onto the end of the factory, where several men from the mortar and HMG team were killed.


A bullet from a sniper eventually took out the last remaining member of the machine gun crew. In the single storey house, artillery rounds from the 77mm's were causing havoc withthe defenders, as men were blown from the upper floor and those below buried or wounded in the resulting rubble. However, the lewis gun teams from theree responded with a stinging hail of fire into the tight packed German ranks, wiping out most of the leading platoon.



Random artillery fire again caused havoc for the British, with one round dropping directly on the command HQ, blowing a sergeant out of the window and stunning the command staff, who were pinned for a turn. At this point the German tank broke down, though fortunately it could still fire. The German HMG which had used it's movement so far to get itself into range started to put down fire on the men in the trenches, pinning the unit. However, the british mortar proved successful again at taking out most of the second platoon of Germans.

The British in the factory had lost half their number but pressed on with their defence, perhaps suspecting that relief was near.


The stormtroopers were a spent force by this time, unable to penetrate the factory in enough numbers to make a decisive battle. However, they did manage to win a combat and cause at least one test by the British! At this point we called the game over, saying that the Tank Corps had arrived to save the day, along with a company of reinforcements. The German had not taken the factory but probably would have taken the western part of town and we would have been left with some pretty brutal house to house fighting, especially when the German second wave had shown up. But we'll leave that until next time...



thanks for reading