The Sunday mega battle themed for D-Day and Beyond went off well, history repeated itself as the allied forces crushed the German defenders when we called it on turn 5. It was hitting the point of mopping up for the allied forces and German units were slowly dwindling away. Everyone had a blast and the table looked great.
We had two 750 British and two 750 US lists facing 4 German lists each at 750 also. The mix of Germans was two Heer, one SS and one FJ. We played long wise on two 4x6 tables with the Pegasus bridge in the middle with the US attacking from one side and the British attacking from the other side in a pincher attack.
Some of the amusing highlights:
Early in the game my Tiger I prowls down the road, fires at two squads with the MMGs and then promptly is hit with a flamethrower. No worries, Regular tank, only one pin, 12 for the check to abandon the tank. ARG! There went 50% of my points and one of my 5 order dice! I don’t think I rolled the 50/50 chance to take the pin but in any case I think I would have had to make the fire bail out check.
German Air Strike rolls a 1, they target a house with a unit in it with one of my FJ squads are in, rolls a 3d6 strike on the building. Rolls enough to collapse the flipping house and killed my squad outright. Another lost order squad.
The second Tiger I heads to the British lines, it fires on a British Centaur at close range and misses. The Centaur backs up and retreats from the Tiger. Tiger follows after the tank and destroys it. Then a British AEC flanks in and shoots the Tiger in the rear, making it immobile. The Tiger turns to fire and misses, AEC opted to hold on the new turn to shoot instead of giving up its order dice. The Tiger finally dies; we had a nice daisy chain of vehicles on the British side.
A German Stug takes a mortar hit and is immobilized the rest of the game unable to move. It continues to fire the MMG and main gun killing squad after squad in its fire arc earning the tank crew a promotion to a Tiger…as it seems we need some new crews!
A Hellcat attempts to take on a Puma, it opts to stand and take the shot. It misses as it was a ploy to herd the Puma to destroy it. The Puma pulls up and point blank shoots the Hellcat and misses. Puma is put into a tight spot and escapes the next time and is finally destroyed by the Hellcat.
Downfalls:
The allied forces had two artillery observers and an air observer….my goal was to have one of each but we played with it as is. I feel it really pinned the hell out of the bridge area to the point it made the Germans very I ineffective allowing some easy advances by the allies to objectives.
The dice roll of a 12 on the Tiger early helped also….dice what can I say? If people was worried about the changes to tank pins are worried, don’t be….no tank was any more powerful as we had a mix of both regular and veteran.
