by leopard » Sun Jun 22, 2014 8:05 pm
Day two...
Amazed to discover I was in 3rd place overnight, not to last.
Game Four: my Panzers attacking Hammy's Soviet Strelk in "Hold the Line". All I can say is I thought I had a lot of infantry, I realise now I have a mere small insignificant detachment... two blobs of 29 teams (three platoons & hq), 12 PTRD, Sappers etc the lot, just no HMG. Figured my only chance was to ignore the forwards objective they were clustered around and go for the rear one, using the threat of panzer MG fire on any infantry that came out of a foxhole to try and avoid fighting all of them.
Nearly worked, we blew a hole, at a cost of all my infantry (my own silly fault, they should have been further back until needed for the advance), my recce (though this did draw out 6 ambushing 45mm guns, which then took some of my Pz-IV down as well, before being wiped out by the remaining tanks in a somewhat tense duel). four ZiS-2 popped up, managed to bail a few flack half tracks and a Pz-III before being wiped out.
Sadly though we were broken before we had a chance to push forwards, my own fault. Did enough damage to limit the defeat to 3:4, scoring 7:14 points in the wacky scoring system used.
Now two wins, two defeats, not a good start to the day.
Game Five: My Strelkovy against a North Africa German Shutzen company, on a snow table slowing vehicles down in Free for All.
End result was a draw, we timed out and called it as a 3:3 - this mattered little in terms of the overall results of which more in a minute.
This game was utter mayhem, No one starts dug in, so figured 'Forwards!'. Slight issue, they had a Tiger, just one, I don't have much that can actually hurt it.. there is some, but not much. My ZiS-2 deployed behind a hill centrally, two facing outwards to each flank - if enemy armour went near objectives at least I had a back stop of some sort.
Both infantry advanced, the 'main' attack was broken before it got to assault range, some terrible luck on infantry saves, they didn't run but the survivors hid behind a hill and vowed to stay there (covering a home objective though), left the KV-1e on that flank (the tiger on the other started an epic trek to counter this, which in the end it managed, toasting a pair of tanks before the draw was called.
The other flank saw the 'decoy' feint get within striking distance of the objective, with only a broken infantry platoon and a few nebs to stop it - it was near breaking itself though, could have gone either way.
Point of calling was when two panzer III tried to hit the first platoon to grab that objective, on a snowy hill one bogged and the infantry bailed the other..
When we called it the hated enemy had four MG teams and command advancing towards that objective, about to be run over and machine gunned by the last KV-1 before it got tiger'd. Figured at that point they had a tiger but I would have borken them or grabbed the other objective first but ran out of time.
Final Result
54 points overall, placing 4th. 3rd place was on 62 points so even winning the last game would have made no difference hence agreeing to the draw result. 5th was on 45 points so reasonable safe in 4th.
Very good games, all five of them, enjoyable and learnt a few new tricks on how to use PTRD teams and also exactly why Conscript artillery is so very cheap (they are not issued with shells).
Overall conclusions
Aimed for mid table, and secured it against players of a wide range of ability levels so happy with that. At campaign it was three close victories and two heavy defeats, here two victories, both good ones (5:2 and 6:1), so have cracked that problem and three defeats (3:18, 3:4 and 3:3) so minor defeats. This is progress.
Starting to play more with a tournament feel, not aiming for the win as aiming to either win well or minimise the level of defeat by killing at least two enemy platoons before going down colours flying - this appears to be working.
Will make a few changes to the lists, panzers will drop a hull and upgrade the Pz-III to be better able to handle enemy armour (won't be able to upgrade them all but a few will do) and then either put the pioneers in armoured half tracks or further upgrade the Pz-III to something that can have side armour bolted on to be better in assault. Needs thought.
Soviets will get more radial changes, the scouts are going, have never used them, the KV-1e may also go freeing a lot of points to adjust other stuff, not sure what yet.
Happy, knackered but happy.