"Put a Tiger in your Tank.. (or errr.. Hanomag)" - preamble, setup and game...

Time for another update..  apologies for the lack of post last week - way too busy elsewhere [clicky].. 😏

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Preamble

Feldwebel Schmidt was feeling the heat..  late May in the early summer of 1940 in France was turning out to be hot..  very hot.. and dusty.. 

Somewhere off to his left, the rest of his Panzer Division (the 7th) were about to break their brief camp and continue their race west in pursuit of an enemy that was retreating faster than they could advance... 

Rommel's advance was so fast that he was constantly in danger of running head of his resupply, and of them all, the half tracks and tanks had a prodigious thirst for fuel.. and so it was, that as he and a section of his grenadiers were doing a quick recce for food and drink in a small settlement at the end of a branch line before they climbed in to the Hanomags to continue the advance, he was stunned to see a railway fuel wagon just sitting there.. "ich werde verdammt!"

Sending one of his men forward to check the wagon, he scanned the village and surrounds for any movement. When the man returned he advised that the wagon appeared to be just over a quarter full.. almost five thousand litres!

Sending another of his men back with orders to let his captain know what they'd found, and to bring back a lorry with jerry cans, he was just preparing to order his section to move in and secure the wagon when he spotted movement across the way...  "Scheiss! Engländers!"

Setup

Encounter game, using the John Lambshead "Skirmish Wargames" rules - remarkable in their simplicity whilst not removing the need to make good tactical decisions..

Orders of Battle:

Identical - both sides had a motivation of 0, and comprised two sections of 12 men, with two LMG's, and an NCO - in this case neither NCO had any additional command factors (probably should have given the German NCO a plus 1, but I wanted them to be the same). 

Both sides also had a lorry though it was clear these wouldn't be deployed unless the position was very secure!

Table:

..and then the battlefield..  two foot square.. all shrubs/hedges count soft cover, buildings/wagon/steel drums/rubble are hard cover..  all buildings/hills/railway wagon/trees block line of sight..

British enter from the right, Germans from the left..  both sides start off table (so action points will be required to bring troops on)

The Game

Both NCO's opted to divide their sections into two and send them down each flank..  initial action cards were low for both sides and it wasn't until turn 3 or 4 that either side had managed to fully deploy, but in what turned out to be a key decision the British managed to occupy the barn first..

Turn 3'ish - neither side has managed to fully deploy yet, but the British are in the barn - the Germans are about to attack to expel them..  that German by the buffers though is about to shoot and drop the British solider along the wall of the barn.. Schmidt is behind the pile of rubble, Smith is bottom right..

..and the fight for the barn turned out to be almost a mini Volgograd Tractor Plant as the British soldier in there dispatched not one, but three separate German close combat attacks (and in these rules if you lose a close combat it's an immediate kill)!

..a few moves later and the British have whittled down the German attackers in the barn..

The British were also being far luckier when turning cards to see what happened to the downed figures - German casualties were climbing rapidly! Concentrated fire from those four mensch on the hedge line saw three or four British figures downed, only to see them recover in the post turn phase..

..that British LMG had the luck of the devil all game with hit after hit being shrugged off..

...but despite those climbing German casualties, they continued to pass their morale checks...

..Sergeant Smith was feeling confident, his men were doing well and following his commands to the letter - it was good to be finally giving the Bosche 'what for' after the endless setbacks of the last few weeks, and now it looked like he might actually be able to get a tank full of fuel for the truck to allow them to re-join the Battalion further down the road.. 

..the British have reinforced the barn and are planning to use it as a jumping off point for a concerted attack on what is left of the Germans who who at this point had suffered almost 30-40% casualties.. notice the number of Germans "downed"..

..so near and yet so far, because then the unthinkable happened, and on the end of turn 6 or 7 morale test this - following - happened! Now that, in the Lambshead rules, is about as opposite a result as it's possible to get since an Ace counts "One", and a King "Thirteen"... 😀

Casualty count - British left (4), German right (6) - with those morale cards.. end of game!

..then just as he (Smith) is thinking they might get away with it, he hears the unmistakeable clank and rumble of tracks - "Damn!". Across the the way he can see Hanomags and Tanks... 

Schmidt's captain has clearly decided this is too good a prize to miss and sent him some reinforcements..

Quietly seething to himself..  "so close, so damned close!".. Smith orders his men to pull back to the truck, to make their get away empty handed..  the German bodies they have left behind are a very slim return for their own casualties..

Post Match analysis

• what a fun little game - about 8 or 9 moves all told, but could have gone either way all the way to the end
• close combat is deadly - and normally you would expect three separate attacks on one to have a decent result, but the British soldier was clearly commando trained! 😁
  
  

  

  ..."ooof".. 😁



• for the next game* I will be using grenades - should have done in this game really.. it might have made the fight for the barn a little more.. errr.. "interesting" for both sides!

* I actually replayed this (with the addition of grenades) yesterday, and this time the result was very different with the Germans completely dominant  - winning the battle as the results would say they should have done..  highlights of the game..

• having shot them with his own LMG's, the two British LMG's were down, and then on the next turn the Germans having won the initiative, rushed them, and finished them off while they were still down... 
• ..on the next turn a German rifleman running up to throw a grenade into the barn, turned a Joker as his to hit card which ended the turn immediately.. in the next turn though the British won the initiative and shot him!
• ..before on the the next turn two more German riflemen dropped all three British occupants of the barn with two grenades, and then won the initiative again and charged into the barn to finish off the comatose British riflemen... deadly!

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..enjoyed that, but for now, "Laters", as the young people are want to say...