after action report

Callum, Stu and myself christened my new gaming garage and my new game table with a 1,000pt NZ Army joining a 1,000pt US Army facing off against my 2,000pt German Army. It was a great game, with plenty of action, but set up took a while and time passed quickly, so at about 10.30 we called it a night with a draw, though to be honest, I was playing a defensive game and with a bit of luck, the combined NZ and US attack down my left flank would have resulted in a victory for the Allies if we had another hour to play.

Stu gave a pretty good overview of last Wednesday’s game;

Between my own and Jonathan’s legendary poor rolling I thought we were screwed and mid game it looked like a walk over. Then the Tiger finally ranged in as did my lone 88 (after being mortared for most of the game), plus my three IIIj’s somehow weathered the storm of fire from six T-34′s for several turns and then the Ruski/US tanks started popping! Last two turns I think we knocked out three shermans, a handful of T70′s and a handful of T34′s. Suddenly it was looking interesting again (my Jerries were looking forward to returning MG fire on those Infantry on the hill, and hammering those bloody mortars in the gully) when we called it a night cause it was past ten! Of course Jonathan’s PBI and Marders were dead, but that’s ok they’d staunchly drawn fire away from the objectives…his Tiger was just getting warmed up!

But was their anything I could learn from the experience?

Quite a bit actually. First and foremost is a trap I often fall into, especially when I have two platoons deployed so close to each other. I had two full combat platoons dug in on the edge of town, looking out at the objectives, but not anywhere close enough to secure them. One platoon was being harassed by a recon unit, that was puring enough lead on them to sink a battleship, but doing little damage. The other platoon just got forgotten about. What they should have done was rushed the second objective and dug in, whilst the lone Panzer made it’s way to the first objective. I only remembered the second platoon when enemy reinforcements deployed mere millimeters from securing the objective and winning the game. They then had to go into a defensive battle whilst out in the open, not very wise and which saw them being cut to shreds.

The second is that I didn’t bother to read up on the mission rules, or really think about where the enemy reinforcements were likely to come in. Had I done that I might not have forgotten about the second platoon. I think I need to be a bit more conscientious in my battle preparations and stop letting the game dictate what I do.

Hopefully I’ll be able to make it to next weeks game, and think a little more about what I’m doing, rather that reacting to what my enemy is doing!

A mass of Germans wait behind the relative safety of the village church.

The Americans move into the quiet village.

The Germans repel an American assault!

With four players and only one table with any scenery last week, we decided to have a four player, four army, 1750pt game. Two American armies took on the Axis of doom, a German Army and British Army fighting together the rid the world of American Imperialism.

The Americans conceded defeat after leaving one of their objectives lightly defended, and having it over run by the two remaining British tanks. The Germans did little but slow the American advance, loosing two Marders to ricocheting machine gun bullets.

All in all, a minor victory as the Yanks should have really won, doing much more damage to the Axis of doom!