Bedecon Game 2

Encounter vs Warren's Sturm company. Heavy snow (bog checks for vehicles/guns unless on roads)

Warren was a really nice guy and I enjoyed our game. He had a very defensive Sturm Company but the reality is even defensive forces have to try to capture an objective in a fair fight mission or both sides will lose.

Warren had nine platoons: 2x sturm paltoons (everyone had panzerfausts), 2x pak 40s, 3x pak 40s, 2x pak 40s, 2x hornisse, 4x 15cm artillery, 3x werfers, 3x armoured 37mm AA.

Warren deployed heavy artillery, infantry, hornisse and some paks.I deployed my SU 100s, small infantry, Zis 2 and mortars.

 The artillery prepares to open up.

 Surprise! My sniper (all players got a free sniper) managed to not knock out the artillery. I hit the guns 4 times and failed 4 times to destroy any of them, but did keep them pinned for a while.

 Warren used the village to block my LoS and snipe my guns it the stromtrooper shuffle- I managed to bail a hornisse but not finish it off- amusingly almost every turn one hornisse bogged and when it did remount it proceeded to immediately bog again! It must have happened 4-5 times in a row. 

 Eventually the Valentines arrive and start to try and blast our the sturm platoon who remained GtG. The panzerwerfers knocked out 5 Valentines over 4-5 turns.

 The JS 2s also get involved and move through the woods to get a line of sight on the sturm company.

 The sukas tangled with the AA half tracks- and come off second best! I end up with 2 dead sukas for one AA half track destroyed!

 Result 3-1 loss.
I tried to point out to Warren with an hour to go what if neither of us took an objective we both lost. He was relying on his heavy artillery to break me and his pak front to keep me at length. His artillery was damn effective and my force was pretty battered (Zis 2s, mortars and Val were all at half strength and I even lost a JS II to the heavy artillery) but I was able to withdraw damaged platoons into woods to keep them intact and was never going to be broken that way- far to cunning for that to happen!

My infantry were still intact and had advanced though the village and to the far side (whilst trying to hunt down his sniper- who kept slipping away) and/ or being pinned several times and refusing to unpin, and were finally in a position to try to assault the objectives when we finally ran out of time. Warren used the hornisse really well to prevent my armour from getting to near in the centre of the table but he lacked go forward. In the last turn or two I managed to assault one hornisse to (it was bogged again) with the large motostrelk platoon and also in the last turn my small platoon was thrown at the AA half tracks, taking them out in assault. I had also destroyed 2 platoons of pak 40s. Without any recon it took longer than I'd hoped and the artillery pinning me also slowed my advance down several times. What I really needed was to remove GtG for the tanks to be more effective) and my big platoon didn't arrive where I needed them so I didn't concentrate my asault quite as I'd hoped. I had nibbled away and was making progress but could not get at the panzerwerfers or artillery and so my avenues of advance were pretty limited for my infantry. However, what I really had needed as some recon to lift gone to ground. 

A fun game but a bit frustrating in the last hour as I tried to force a result without losing my own force at the same time. Nothing wrong with Warren's tactic (he had the artillery to pull it off) but if your plan to break the enemy on your defence doesn't work you really need to create some go forward too as you win by taking objectives in a fair fight . If you don't put pressure on you run the risk of both losing as happened to us so I'd encourage him to practice using his force to attack rather than rely on it defending.

MVP: My mortars did pretty well, the sniper was hopeless and really should have destroyed the heavy artillery. but overall nothing stood out.