Saturday, April 16, 2011

Russian Front 16/04/11

John's Tankovy
v.
Jim's Panzergrenadiers

1750 pts Breakthrough, Russians attacking.

The Germans put their 2 infantry and Marders down near the large wood to try and make the wood as a fortress.  The werfers deployed in the wheatfield and 2 Tigers, 3 Pumas & 2AAHTs had to be left in reserve.

The LH infantry made it through the woods & dug in on the LH objective & the Marders took up a position on the far edge of the wood covering the objectives.  The RH infantry got into position on the edge of the wood to dispute the objective, but were hit by massed fire & pinned down before they could dig in.  The Tigers came on and doubled forward down the left flank, but the Russian reserves came on with 5T34/85s and with double shots destroyed the Tigers.  The Marders & infantry took revenge almost destroying the T34's & attached infantry, but the survivors passed morale. 

The Pumas came on in the Russian rear, their path to getting into the action was blocked by a wood and a couple of infantry.  They tried to push through the infantry only to throw a string of ones & get themselves destroyed.

The ISU122's wandered about doing little except pop a couple of werfers, while the critical main attack was launched in the centre.  The T34/85's took out the Marders and infantry leaping out of half-tracks with smgs & a flamethrower made short work of the depleted P/grenadiers on that side of the wood gaining the objective.  The Germans had no way of taking it back.

This was bad Mission roll for the Panzergrenadiers - forced to defend with the mobile reserves rule making their Armoured halftracks useless & putting too much of the army in reserve.  The Germans lost a bad gamble in doubling their Tiger where enemy reserves would get double short range shots, and had rotten luck with their Pumas, but there's no room for error v. experienced Ivans.

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