Day of Days- done and dusted.

The missions went well, a few grumbles about Soviets getting “Night attack” and on turn 2 of some of the first round games I was thinking oh, oh. This looks like it will be over very quickly but on all those games (including Dale and mine) we held on and all had hard fought and close games that led to defenders victories, even though the defenders were feeding teams to contest for most of the games. The extra objectives made for tactically interesting game as there were options for attackers and hard decisions to be made by defenders so I think overall they worked well.

The only major issue seemed to be Surrounded here I made each attacking player have one deployment zone and so some forces ended up being destroyed piece meal but the “defenders.”  One one attacking team (Dale and me) ended up winning that one. I think we will replace it next year with dust up or something else.  

I a was a bit surprised that the attackers struggled in many missions but I think the lighter tanks & new AT rules made it difficult to crack AT defences.  In fact I've never seen so many Zis 3s fielded in one comp.

Dale and I ended up winning, a bit embarrassing really as  I was organising it but in my defence I only joined with Daleinski when we lost a couple of players. Our lists were:

 6th Panzer,  6. Reconnaissance Battalion,

Aka Dalinski’s Gepanzerte Aufsklarung Platoon

• HQ (2x Sdkfz 250), 1x P/K                            80
• 6x MG teams (4x Sdkfz 250), 1x SMG P/K  235
• 4x MG teams (3x Sdkfz 250), 1x SMG P/K  165
• 1x 223, 2x 222 Armoured Cars                      110
• 3x Stug F/8                                                     510

Total:                                                                          1100

 My Mittere Panzer Kompanie,

C Company, 11^th Panzer Regiment, 6th Panzer  Division                                              

2x        MK III Late J                                       210

2x        MkIV F2, 2x MkIII Late  J                   500

2x        MkIV F2, 1x MkIV F1                         390

                                                                        1100

No AT guns, no artillery to speak off (Dale usually takes some mortars but not this time), no AA. It was only game 2 I remembered my single panzer IV F1 could fire bombardments- not that it ever destroyed anything.

 The forces were pretty fragile and we were under a lot of pressure a lot of the time but managed to come away with 3 good wins and also were on the end of a crushing defeat to Poochie and Nick- ambushing T34s soon led to a massacre and we lost EVERY model on the table! Our dice rolling didn’t help our cause, it went from bad to worse to damn right embarrassing but it was a very clinical and well deserved win to Poochie and Nick in that one. In the last round Dale and I were the only Axis team to win and so managed to snatch first place.

The Saturday night BBQ at my place went well, a few extras ending crashing at my place and we rounded things up about 3am so there were a few very tired and hung over gamers in the morning

Results:

Soviets  

Jamie MacDonald and Peter Black          36

Nick Garden & Chris  Pooch                     33

Lionel Graves & Bob Pearce                     30

Mark & Simon Taylor                                   27

Kent Galpin & Martin Wilkinson                23

Adam Smith &  Andy Tucker                      19

Germans

Dale  Franklin & Craig Courtis                  38

Noel Black & Stephen Falconer               32

Jeff Larilottz & Josh Graves                       30

Dave Dreaver & Cal Manson                     26

Keith Hewitt & Estella Jones                     25

Nathan Maynard & Robert Higgins          9

I am already looking forward to next years comp.

Wins per round
Round 1- No Retreat- Soviet attack in the blizzard, 5 German wins
Round 2- Encounter- 4 German wins (also 1 timed out loss/loss)
Round 3- Pincer- Germans attack- 4 Soviet wins
Round 4- Surrounded (final breakthrough to relieve Stalingrad) 5 Soviet wins

Not sure of it as the new rules for guns etc but the defenders won many of the battles but overall there were 12 German vs 11 Soviets.

A few pictures:

 After setting up the tables and waiting for Bob, Nick and Poochie to turn up I remembered I had a tram from King and Kerr undercoated. A quick (20 minute) drybrush and it was ready for the table- hey it was painted at 11pm :)

The final link up between Dale and my forces.

 The participants

Craig