Bedecon Game 3

No Retreat vs Bede "Otto Carius" Bailey

I had stuffed up my score at the end of game 2 (sorry Bede) adding my sniper kill to my score rather than my battle points so got to play Bede (I blame it on being addled/ not thinking straight trying to squeeze a result out of the previous game).  Personally I'd have rather not faced the top ranked player in NZ at this stage, but that's just me!

Being mechanised I attacked. Bede was running Otto Carius & has tiger platoon , 2x pioneer platoons, AA half tracks, 4x pak 40s and 3x nebs.  The table had a river in the centre so Bede used that as a cornerstone of his defence.

Turn 1: I advance towards the river and Bede moves forward to engage the SU76s with Carius and company. He had told me earlier on the day that if we fought he would kill my SU 76s on principle!
 Fortunately he managed to fail 3 firepower tests and only knocked out 1! In my head I'd been singing to myself my latest ditty. "Otto, Otto, who the Fuck is Otto?"  Now I'd had a lesson in what a combat beast Otto was- he ignores cover and GtG and rerolles misses. Yikes! There goes the two things I try to rely on with Soviets (range and cover) when tangling with German armour.  

 On my left he plan (yes Bede, I had a plan almost) was to advance the SU 100s, Zis 2s and JS 2s together to the far edge of the field and cover each other and blast out the infantry. However the Zis 2s pinned for 3 turns or so and so I stopped and tried to stay out of "Otto range" which meant he was able to snipe my tanks piecemeal- eventually they succumbed to the tigers without hitting a single one.

 My other part of the pan was to hook round past the barbed wire and hit the front objective from the flank- well at least I almost got to the flank.

 Eventually Bede deployed his pak ambush- very nice paks Bede!

 My infantry hide in a field and survived a lot of nebelwerfer fire- I rolled some seriously good saves!

 We edge our way past the defences- what is that sitting on the rear objective? That Bloody Otto I bet. Now that is what I call an integrated defence!

 In the best of WWI traditions (or should that be Soviet traditions?) I threw three or 4 assaults across the wire but all were beaten back with heavy losses. As you can see I am trying to slip past the far tiger to get at the Nebs and try to find one victory point. Yep, definitely grasping at straws now!

 Having successfully fought off the Soviet attack Otto drives off to where ever it is he goes after a battle.

 Result 5-2 to Bede
In the final turn I managed to kill the Nebelwerfer commander and so force a morale test which Bede failed so only just managed to avoid a 1-6 hiding.

I think this game showed my lack of playtesting with  my force- Bede thought I would run straight over him but as it turned out I suffered from Otto awe and failed to commit my heavy tanks and AT guns together. My front armour should have been enough to engage in a gun dual with the tigers with a good chance of success but while his paks remained uncommitted I was worried about surviving 8x pak shots as well as 7 tiger shots  (most of which ignored terrain and rerolled misses) so was guilty of being too timid.
A lesson learned me thinks. Bede played a good defence, as I expected, and I was very lucky to come away with anything. Afterwards I kicked myself for forgetting to snipe at his paks too! I wish I had some airpower in this one to keep the tigers moving.

MVP? The SU 76s for not dying! Take that Otto!

Good game Bede a real lesson on how to run an elastic defence. Bede took my force out piecemeal by using range and the tigers skill. Very well played.

Craig