Back to the Farm

 My second game this week and a second German attempt to force their way past Collective Farm 452, this time I commanded the Kampfgruppe against Phil from News From The Front blog. This will be my third game against Phil so I hosted for a change. Once again it was Chain of Command and as the Germans my supports included a Pz38(t), just to get the model on the table and in the same vein I took a 250/1 halftrack, again something you do not see very often on a table,oh, and a pre-game barrage to slow the Soviet deployment. My thinking behind the halftrack was that there was a lot of open ground for my troops to traverse and as the Russian support would be limited surely it would be safe to bring a transport. Phil took a minefield and as he knew I had recently finished a nice little BT-7 took the BT-7.

Bit scrappy as the original was elsewhere but 

you get the gist.

 The game started badly for me with only one extra move for my patrol markers, so I did not make a lot of ground however I got quite a few double phases in the opening rounds and deployed my full Kampfgruppe, I kept one squad in the woods on my left along with the tank while my other squad deployed on the right and my halftrack joined them with a squad in the back. Phil deployed into the Blue House near the crossroads and started a firefight with the squad in the wood, one which he began to lose and eventually had to attach a Senior Leader to to keep them in the fight. Another Soviet squad deployed in the centre of the village near the 'donkey enclosure', shortly after as the Jerries moved forward from their right, a third squad hunkered down in the large yellow barn.

 With large numbers of Russian infantry dropping Phil brought on his BT-7, for the rest of the game this tank duelled with the Panzer on the road, neither managing to land a mortal blow. This meant however that the German infantry advancing on the Russian left were free to concentrate on the barn and soon this squad broke and ran to the rear, Soviet morale was plunging. A Red mortar team desperately tried to help the troops in the Blue House of Special Purpose but fell to German fire. At this point the Germans had lost one man killed while Soviet losses were approaching 20, Phil took a desperate chance and moved his last, almost full squad from the 'donkey enclosure' to assault the nearest German squad. Things went awry for the Russians and as the dust settled their morale fell to zero. A German breakthrough.

 A good game and the farm proved only a slight speed bump as Barbarossa drives forward. Once again Phil had some bad dice luck and his men were usually killed while evading shock, although this eventually caught up with some of the troops. The scenario is fairly well balanced but if one or other tank gets knocked out it can spell disaster, this I think would normally force the Jerries to bring two tanks or a tank and an anti-tank gun just to be safe, my choices could have backfired had my tank brewed up. The Soviets do not have this luxury with half the support points of the Germans so perhaps a tank and a satchel charge as back up. I am not so sure dedicated tank hunter squads would have been employed in the first weeks of the war and the dog mines didn't turn up until October '41 and according to most sources were pretty much useless, although you could still find them in '43.

The dead pile tells a story.

 Not sure what will be next as the 17th May is still a month away, Phil wants to try Battlegroup again in a fortnight so I shall have to give some thought to the next game.

I don't do a lot of social media, I have a few Facebook groups on which I like to admire the photos of other peoples wee sojers and terrain and I manage to keep in touch with a handful of like minded people whom I probably will never meet but somehow I know I would enjoy a beer with. I have decided however to give up asking questions as the replies leave me struggling to find the effort to take my next breath. I asked a simple rules question the other day and immediately got a question back in return, then you get the comedians jumping in with their unhelpful and unfunny one liners. You also need to almost get a lawyer to frame your question so that it covers every eventuality or you can be sure someone will come back with something completely unrelated to what you were looking for. Then if you get that far the post is hijacked by people bringing up their own rules or experiences which have nothing to do with your original question. A typical example is someone asking about rules for large scale ACW battles, up pops Joe Bloggs with "Somesuch" is brilliant for Dark Age skirmish, duh, and yes I have seen it, or something akin to it. So I ended up with 34 comments and counting where only about three were any good to me. Lesson learned, I will use my own commonsense in future and merely enjoy the pictures. It is just a shame that the helpful answers are overwhelmed by the rubbish.

So not much coming up this week apart from getting my second Astra-Zeneca jab, and I am more than happy to get it. I did get those odd figures I sent for so I will be painting at some stage. Since opening up full time again I am really missing those afternoons off.