Post by Tiger505 on Oct 27, 2008 5:07:21 GMT -5
Well I have to say that it was a rather interesting event. Of the three armies I fought only the one I loaned Bill really had the tools to take me.
Round 1 FFA vs Czech armored
He had exactly 1 unit that I considered a threat 3 Firefly tanks grouped into an independent platoon. The 2nd threat was in the form of 14 Cromwells in 3 platoons and his HQ. The remainder of his force fell into the ignore bracket and was no threat at all to Tigers but could harm my support units. The side I ended up on offered a beautiful fire lane along my board edge with hills to anchor my flanks and buildings in the middle. My right flank also had a nice block of trees behind the hill making it the tightest area I had to defend an objective in. I deployed Brummbars and a Tiger platoon to the right flank using the Brummbars to provide a back stop to the hill position the Tigers took. My left flank was held down by my 2nd Tiger platoon who started the game hull down in firring positions with fields of fire across the entire board. My HQ Tigers went into position using the buildings to screen them self and maneuver freely to the flank he pounced on. His deployment saw Cromwells spread across the back of the board with Infantry, Bofors, and Stuarts on his right and the Fireflys on his left concealed in some woods. He got the first turn and began to leap frog two units of Cromwells up his right flank while the uni carriers went right and the Stuarts and one unit of Cromwells went through the buildings. His speed meant he could jump from cover to cover without exposing a shot. The infantry advanced across the open ground strait at my left flank objective. His Fireflys sat still and the his left flank Cromwell platoon bounded up to hide behind a church. My first turn saw me go hull down with my Right flank Tigers and my CIC moved up into cover to. My Brummbars moved to cover the dead area caused by the spacing of the hill and woods. My 2IC moved into the center street. The left flank platoon sat still and selected targets. The left flank platoon killed 1 Stuart and forced the others to disengage. The CIC and right flank Tigers scored nothing and the platoon failed its ST check and stay out to be shot at. His 2nd turn saw the cover dodging continue with the uni carriers and infantry coming strait at the objective. His Fireflys opened fire scoring 1 hit that my armor stooped and the rest of his army had no shots. My left flank platoon shuffled a bit to gain a shot at the hiding Cromwells and my 2IC moved back into a covering position. The CIC moved back up to engage the Fireflys with the right flank Tigers. Another ineffective turn of fire as I manage to kill nothing and again fail the right flank Tigers ST roll. I do manage to shuffle the CIC and 2IC back into better covering positions. Turn 3 saw him double time the Cromwells that had been hiding behind buildings in the center of his line to his right flank. This put 11 Cromwells threatening my left flank platoon backed by infantry 2 turns away and uni carriers. He had 8 shots this turn 2 at my flank 6 on my nose. Basically only 2 shots could even cause a penetrating hit the rest could only bail. The dice rolled to average and both Tigers remained untouched. Both HQ tanks shifted to add their guns to the fight and the right hand Tiger of the left flank platoon fell back a bit to cleat its guns. My right flank platoon fell back disengaging from the Fireflys and positioning them self to add firepower down the long rear fire lane if needed. In the shooting phase my left flank platoon and 2IC totally destroyed 1 platoon of Cromwells. The platoon then ST back but the 2IC failed to move leaving himself in assault range of the infantry. The Brummbars and AA both ST to hide their weaker armor from the Stuarts which where lurking behind buildings mid board. He now had 8 Cromwells and an infantry platoon threatening my left flank objective. He parked the uni carriers on the objective and his infantry moved next to the wall so they could assault my 2IC. All 8 Cromwells now moved to get behind the left flank Tiger platoon but this parked them in the open to every Tiger I had with only 1 platoon needing to move to clear its guns. Thats 8 shots at AT 10 vs my rear armor 8 hitting on 4+. IF he could kill or break that platoon he would win because I wouldn't be able to contest. Honestly I was not worried about it. Best case scenario for him was 4 hits of which I should fail 1 save. Even if I failed 1 there was still only a 16% chance it would be a penetrating fail. The Cromwells failed again to harm a Tiger. His infantry then failed their 50% chance to charge the 2IC. My turn saw the right flank platoon move back opening its guns down the board edge at one platoon of Cromwells. The flanked platoon sat still to gain maximum ROF. I destroyed and or bailed all but 1 Cromwell and both platoons failed their moral. He now went into overdrive trying to score VPs. His CIC and 2IC had died in the cauldron now he drove the Fireflys and his remaining 3 Cromwells strait down my right flank. The Stuarts dashed into the center to bring fire onto my AA unit that had no where to hide. The remaining to uni carriers ( forgot where 1 died) attempted to pull back out of the LOF. He had lost 3 platoons of 9 and two where within a kill of break point. He managed to bail 1 Brummbar and kill the AA platoon. In my turn the right flank Tigers traversed their turrets ignoring the fact they where flanked and went to full ROF and with the Brummbars help the last 3 Cromwells exploded. The 4 Tigers on my left split their fire between the infantry and uni carriers intent to get one of the platoons with fire or assault. The uni carriers lost another track and promptly broke forcing the company to break and giving the Tigers a 5/2 win to begin the day.
When I think about this game I consider how Kevin told me he viewed it. In his opinion the 16 shots at the left flank platoon should have been enough to remove it from the game. I disagree in that he never managed to get more than a 16% chance of scoring a penetrating hit in both turns he fired at the unit. Even if we lump all 10 rear shots together only get 5 hits on average gaining you around a 20% chance of a penetrating hit on a single Tiger. So it was his opinion that placing a single platoon on my left flank where the terrain was open was a mistake.
I do think I made a mistake that game in the fact that I used a ST move on my first turn to back my 1IC out of the firing line against the Fireflys. I also think he made 2 critical errors though. First he under utilized his best AT weapon. The Fireflys spent 2 rounds sitting gone to ground in woods doing nothing but playing bait that I had began to ignore. The second was when he performed his rush which was into the best killing field on the board. Despite the fact my Tigers where widely spaced on a long board edge front I was able to overlap all 6 into the fire pattern on my left flank objective. I feel that had I deployed one of my light support platoons to that open flank they would have been an easy VP for him to gain due to the ease with which he flanked me with his 16inch speed. I had no chance to prevent being flanked due to the density of the terrain. All in all it was an interesting match but to me it proved the old adage speed is not armor.
Round 2 HTL vs 9th SS
Well considering I helped design this army at outback a few weeks ago it doesn't surprise me I ended up having to deal with it. Bill had 2 Platoons of SS with 2 fasuts each, the HQ section had a shreck, 2x 8cm mortars, 2x flak 36 88s, 2x Tigers, and 4x Stugs. He had 6 platoons in total, of which 2 packed enough AT to seriously hurt me. The terrain featured a town in the middle with medium hills leading up my left flank toward one objective which I had placed forward. There was a y shaped road going across the short board edge and then sprung in the middle to his deployment area. He kept both infantry on the board and the flak 36 unit in ambush. This was a good choice as it forced me to remove his most survivable units off the objectives and kept some very heavy AT up his sleeve. I massed on the left flank and used the cover to advance up staying hull down and basically sat up a killing field in front of me. I had 4 Tigers get ROF 3 one of which also had RR misses. The other platoon got motivate on a 2+. I am not going to go into a play by play account because this game was against one of us. A couple of points I will go over. There was 2 mistakes made in this game. The first one was not concentrating the AT asset's of the defending force. If the ambush was to not be used until I was totally across the midpoint then the mobile elements from the reserve should have came in on the opposite flank and began to push down the board edge I had left open. If the mobile elements where going to engage in a head on fight then the ambush should have reveled when the Tigers came on to present the maximum number of dice being fired at me and the most number of targets I had to deal with when I returned fire. The second was the Stugs coming down the same route that had already gotten the Tigers killed. They had no chance in a head on fight but where fast enough to possibly push down my right flank out of my LOS and force me to turn. Both mistakes where about application of force. Mass the 88 fire in one turn or withhold and maneuver for a flank while feeding infantry in to slow me down.
Round 3 BT vs SS Panzer Grenadiers
He had 3x pak 40s, HQ shreck, 3 platoons with 2 fausts each, 4x 120mm mortars, 2x 8cm mortars and 3 stugs. Again the table featured a town in the middle with a scattering of small woods and hills. This mission played out like a text book example of how to lose Break Through. He attached 2 pak 40s to 1 platoon of grenadiers and the other pak and the shreck to the 2nd platoon of grenadiers. He deployed the 2pak platoon down the long edge of my deployment zone with the 120mm mortars behind the hill in the same zone. He then deployed the Stugs into that zone and the 8cm mortars on the edge of it near the town. The entire town was empty meaning that there was a 16 inch free zone in the middle of his line I could exploit. He deployed the other pak armed platoon in woods on the short edge of my deployment zone. His last platoon went down in position to double time to the far objective on his first turn. His deployment allowed me to park all 6 Tigers in cover within 16 inches of his 2 pak platoon and give the other pak only a 6+ shot at my 2IC tank. My CIC had Clever Hans and RR misses, my 2IC got ROF 3, 1 platoon had ROF 3, and my last platoon had ST 2+. My first 3 rounds of fire where horrid as I kept failing every FP test to kill a gun. Finally after bogging my CIC I managed to kill the 2 paks from the left hand platoon and begin to advance on turn 4. At this point he was truly boned and it was only a mater of time. His 2 pak infantry platoon found them self 2 kills from break point and 1 pak platoon had no LOF because of the town. He fired his heavy mortars at my AA tracks every turn from around turn 3 until turn 6 at which point without result. The Stugs where kept pinned down behind the mosk as the next few rounds saw Brummbars come in on turn 5 and my Tigers split 4 following the route through the town edge and 2 cresting the hill to eat the 120mm mortars. The rest of the game saw him being slowly ground under with the only bright spot being his assault with the 3 remaining teams of the picket platoon killing the AA platoon before dieing. He made several critical mistakes.
1 By attaching the pak 40s out he made it easier for me to work the SS Grenadiers under 50%.
2 By not deploying into the town he gave me all the freedom of movement I could ask for
3 By spreading out to cover two widely separated areas he allowed me to engage his force by sections.
4 He at one point left being dug in and GTG to try to run infantry away from tanks with MGs and got the unit murdered. bypass the survivors and go eat his artillery.
5 When he deployed the 120mm and 8cm mortars in the zone closest to my deployment he made it very easy to isolate them and remove his ability to smoke me or template my weaker platoons.
6 Also caused by attaching the pak 40s was the fact he denied himself the ability to cover the objectives or deploy them in defile and attempt to gain flank shorts.
7 By deploying 2 platoons up he gave me the ability to catch his left flank platoon in the open with mg fire due to the distance it had to travel when falling back on the threatened objective.
In short he made every mistake possible to make when confronted by heavy armor in this mission with an infantry force. Result 5/2 he got through 8 dice of DF to kill the AA unit.
Round 1 FFA vs Czech armored
He had exactly 1 unit that I considered a threat 3 Firefly tanks grouped into an independent platoon. The 2nd threat was in the form of 14 Cromwells in 3 platoons and his HQ. The remainder of his force fell into the ignore bracket and was no threat at all to Tigers but could harm my support units. The side I ended up on offered a beautiful fire lane along my board edge with hills to anchor my flanks and buildings in the middle. My right flank also had a nice block of trees behind the hill making it the tightest area I had to defend an objective in. I deployed Brummbars and a Tiger platoon to the right flank using the Brummbars to provide a back stop to the hill position the Tigers took. My left flank was held down by my 2nd Tiger platoon who started the game hull down in firring positions with fields of fire across the entire board. My HQ Tigers went into position using the buildings to screen them self and maneuver freely to the flank he pounced on. His deployment saw Cromwells spread across the back of the board with Infantry, Bofors, and Stuarts on his right and the Fireflys on his left concealed in some woods. He got the first turn and began to leap frog two units of Cromwells up his right flank while the uni carriers went right and the Stuarts and one unit of Cromwells went through the buildings. His speed meant he could jump from cover to cover without exposing a shot. The infantry advanced across the open ground strait at my left flank objective. His Fireflys sat still and the his left flank Cromwell platoon bounded up to hide behind a church. My first turn saw me go hull down with my Right flank Tigers and my CIC moved up into cover to. My Brummbars moved to cover the dead area caused by the spacing of the hill and woods. My 2IC moved into the center street. The left flank platoon sat still and selected targets. The left flank platoon killed 1 Stuart and forced the others to disengage. The CIC and right flank Tigers scored nothing and the platoon failed its ST check and stay out to be shot at. His 2nd turn saw the cover dodging continue with the uni carriers and infantry coming strait at the objective. His Fireflys opened fire scoring 1 hit that my armor stooped and the rest of his army had no shots. My left flank platoon shuffled a bit to gain a shot at the hiding Cromwells and my 2IC moved back into a covering position. The CIC moved back up to engage the Fireflys with the right flank Tigers. Another ineffective turn of fire as I manage to kill nothing and again fail the right flank Tigers ST roll. I do manage to shuffle the CIC and 2IC back into better covering positions. Turn 3 saw him double time the Cromwells that had been hiding behind buildings in the center of his line to his right flank. This put 11 Cromwells threatening my left flank platoon backed by infantry 2 turns away and uni carriers. He had 8 shots this turn 2 at my flank 6 on my nose. Basically only 2 shots could even cause a penetrating hit the rest could only bail. The dice rolled to average and both Tigers remained untouched. Both HQ tanks shifted to add their guns to the fight and the right hand Tiger of the left flank platoon fell back a bit to cleat its guns. My right flank platoon fell back disengaging from the Fireflys and positioning them self to add firepower down the long rear fire lane if needed. In the shooting phase my left flank platoon and 2IC totally destroyed 1 platoon of Cromwells. The platoon then ST back but the 2IC failed to move leaving himself in assault range of the infantry. The Brummbars and AA both ST to hide their weaker armor from the Stuarts which where lurking behind buildings mid board. He now had 8 Cromwells and an infantry platoon threatening my left flank objective. He parked the uni carriers on the objective and his infantry moved next to the wall so they could assault my 2IC. All 8 Cromwells now moved to get behind the left flank Tiger platoon but this parked them in the open to every Tiger I had with only 1 platoon needing to move to clear its guns. Thats 8 shots at AT 10 vs my rear armor 8 hitting on 4+. IF he could kill or break that platoon he would win because I wouldn't be able to contest. Honestly I was not worried about it. Best case scenario for him was 4 hits of which I should fail 1 save. Even if I failed 1 there was still only a 16% chance it would be a penetrating fail. The Cromwells failed again to harm a Tiger. His infantry then failed their 50% chance to charge the 2IC. My turn saw the right flank platoon move back opening its guns down the board edge at one platoon of Cromwells. The flanked platoon sat still to gain maximum ROF. I destroyed and or bailed all but 1 Cromwell and both platoons failed their moral. He now went into overdrive trying to score VPs. His CIC and 2IC had died in the cauldron now he drove the Fireflys and his remaining 3 Cromwells strait down my right flank. The Stuarts dashed into the center to bring fire onto my AA unit that had no where to hide. The remaining to uni carriers ( forgot where 1 died) attempted to pull back out of the LOF. He had lost 3 platoons of 9 and two where within a kill of break point. He managed to bail 1 Brummbar and kill the AA platoon. In my turn the right flank Tigers traversed their turrets ignoring the fact they where flanked and went to full ROF and with the Brummbars help the last 3 Cromwells exploded. The 4 Tigers on my left split their fire between the infantry and uni carriers intent to get one of the platoons with fire or assault. The uni carriers lost another track and promptly broke forcing the company to break and giving the Tigers a 5/2 win to begin the day.
When I think about this game I consider how Kevin told me he viewed it. In his opinion the 16 shots at the left flank platoon should have been enough to remove it from the game. I disagree in that he never managed to get more than a 16% chance of scoring a penetrating hit in both turns he fired at the unit. Even if we lump all 10 rear shots together only get 5 hits on average gaining you around a 20% chance of a penetrating hit on a single Tiger. So it was his opinion that placing a single platoon on my left flank where the terrain was open was a mistake.
I do think I made a mistake that game in the fact that I used a ST move on my first turn to back my 1IC out of the firing line against the Fireflys. I also think he made 2 critical errors though. First he under utilized his best AT weapon. The Fireflys spent 2 rounds sitting gone to ground in woods doing nothing but playing bait that I had began to ignore. The second was when he performed his rush which was into the best killing field on the board. Despite the fact my Tigers where widely spaced on a long board edge front I was able to overlap all 6 into the fire pattern on my left flank objective. I feel that had I deployed one of my light support platoons to that open flank they would have been an easy VP for him to gain due to the ease with which he flanked me with his 16inch speed. I had no chance to prevent being flanked due to the density of the terrain. All in all it was an interesting match but to me it proved the old adage speed is not armor.
Round 2 HTL vs 9th SS
Well considering I helped design this army at outback a few weeks ago it doesn't surprise me I ended up having to deal with it. Bill had 2 Platoons of SS with 2 fasuts each, the HQ section had a shreck, 2x 8cm mortars, 2x flak 36 88s, 2x Tigers, and 4x Stugs. He had 6 platoons in total, of which 2 packed enough AT to seriously hurt me. The terrain featured a town in the middle with medium hills leading up my left flank toward one objective which I had placed forward. There was a y shaped road going across the short board edge and then sprung in the middle to his deployment area. He kept both infantry on the board and the flak 36 unit in ambush. This was a good choice as it forced me to remove his most survivable units off the objectives and kept some very heavy AT up his sleeve. I massed on the left flank and used the cover to advance up staying hull down and basically sat up a killing field in front of me. I had 4 Tigers get ROF 3 one of which also had RR misses. The other platoon got motivate on a 2+. I am not going to go into a play by play account because this game was against one of us. A couple of points I will go over. There was 2 mistakes made in this game. The first one was not concentrating the AT asset's of the defending force. If the ambush was to not be used until I was totally across the midpoint then the mobile elements from the reserve should have came in on the opposite flank and began to push down the board edge I had left open. If the mobile elements where going to engage in a head on fight then the ambush should have reveled when the Tigers came on to present the maximum number of dice being fired at me and the most number of targets I had to deal with when I returned fire. The second was the Stugs coming down the same route that had already gotten the Tigers killed. They had no chance in a head on fight but where fast enough to possibly push down my right flank out of my LOS and force me to turn. Both mistakes where about application of force. Mass the 88 fire in one turn or withhold and maneuver for a flank while feeding infantry in to slow me down.
Round 3 BT vs SS Panzer Grenadiers
He had 3x pak 40s, HQ shreck, 3 platoons with 2 fausts each, 4x 120mm mortars, 2x 8cm mortars and 3 stugs. Again the table featured a town in the middle with a scattering of small woods and hills. This mission played out like a text book example of how to lose Break Through. He attached 2 pak 40s to 1 platoon of grenadiers and the other pak and the shreck to the 2nd platoon of grenadiers. He deployed the 2pak platoon down the long edge of my deployment zone with the 120mm mortars behind the hill in the same zone. He then deployed the Stugs into that zone and the 8cm mortars on the edge of it near the town. The entire town was empty meaning that there was a 16 inch free zone in the middle of his line I could exploit. He deployed the other pak armed platoon in woods on the short edge of my deployment zone. His last platoon went down in position to double time to the far objective on his first turn. His deployment allowed me to park all 6 Tigers in cover within 16 inches of his 2 pak platoon and give the other pak only a 6+ shot at my 2IC tank. My CIC had Clever Hans and RR misses, my 2IC got ROF 3, 1 platoon had ROF 3, and my last platoon had ST 2+. My first 3 rounds of fire where horrid as I kept failing every FP test to kill a gun. Finally after bogging my CIC I managed to kill the 2 paks from the left hand platoon and begin to advance on turn 4. At this point he was truly boned and it was only a mater of time. His 2 pak infantry platoon found them self 2 kills from break point and 1 pak platoon had no LOF because of the town. He fired his heavy mortars at my AA tracks every turn from around turn 3 until turn 6 at which point without result. The Stugs where kept pinned down behind the mosk as the next few rounds saw Brummbars come in on turn 5 and my Tigers split 4 following the route through the town edge and 2 cresting the hill to eat the 120mm mortars. The rest of the game saw him being slowly ground under with the only bright spot being his assault with the 3 remaining teams of the picket platoon killing the AA platoon before dieing. He made several critical mistakes.
1 By attaching the pak 40s out he made it easier for me to work the SS Grenadiers under 50%.
2 By not deploying into the town he gave me all the freedom of movement I could ask for
3 By spreading out to cover two widely separated areas he allowed me to engage his force by sections.
4 He at one point left being dug in and GTG to try to run infantry away from tanks with MGs and got the unit murdered. bypass the survivors and go eat his artillery.
5 When he deployed the 120mm and 8cm mortars in the zone closest to my deployment he made it very easy to isolate them and remove his ability to smoke me or template my weaker platoons.
6 Also caused by attaching the pak 40s was the fact he denied himself the ability to cover the objectives or deploy them in defile and attempt to gain flank shorts.
7 By deploying 2 platoons up he gave me the ability to catch his left flank platoon in the open with mg fire due to the distance it had to travel when falling back on the threatened objective.
In short he made every mistake possible to make when confronted by heavy armor in this mission with an infantry force. Result 5/2 he got through 8 dice of DF to kill the AA unit.
