BA Early War: Germans vs French

Tonight Tony, Dave and I had a game with Tony's new French army vs my Early War Germans down at the club
We each had 800 pts.

I fielded the list I've just completed- mainly regular but with some vet pioneers

Tony took:
Regular HQ
3x regular squads with LMGs (2 sections had 2x LMGs)
1x mortar
1x somua
1x MMG (Vet)
1x free light artillery

We rolled up Hold until
Relieved and after winning the dice roll I decided to attack- after all we were kicking off the 1940 German World tour.


 A couple of shots of Tony's lovely new French army- like me he prefers double figure basing.

The building with the roof off is the objective, it has one squad of French infantry, the other house has a squad to help hold the objective.

Turn 1: My infantry advance. 

 My regular infantry take some rifle fire and take a pin.

 On my far right my third squad (Reg) advances down the hedge lined road.

 The French forces in the building.

 Tony's Somua, lovely paint job with free hand heart and flag.

 The Somua pins my infantry.

 Hmmm... that stops me from advancing in the open adn in fact the squad spend most of the game down and trying to reduce hits.

 My pioneers and other regular squad advance to the edge of the walled road.

 Turn 3 the stug arrives and takes a pot shot at the infantry in the building (the objective) but misses- both sides rolled lots of ones tonight.

 The French commander crosses the open ground to check on his troops. In the foreground Tony's third squad advances to put pressure on my troops.

 I take the bait and whittle them down- they are after all threatening to enfilade my troops.

 I'm no closer to taking the objective but finally my mortar ranges in and kills half the troops- but Dave passes his morale test.

 My commander and NCO decide to win an iron cross charging out to attack the infantry squad, destroying it. My commander then sets his sights on the MMG in the distance and eventually takes it out too.

 The stug moves up on the other building while the 222 pours fire into the objective but it continues to miss the gone to ground inhabitants.

 Are those Frenchmen auditioning for Fiddler on the Roof?

 My pioneers attack and after two bloody rounds of combat the French destroy my pioneers and continue to hold their building- with two LMGs this squad was a pain all game.

The doorknocker keeps pinning the Somua and thus keeping it combat inefective even if none of the shots penetrate.

 Turn 6 and 7- I just can't finish off the last couple of men in the building and my infantry remain pinned and refusing to finish off the Frenchmen.

 Turn 7, the first dice Dave ranges in (first attempt) on the stug and the round penetrates the top armour and the stug catches fire-  I roll an 8 for my morale test and the crew leg it.

So the French just manage to hold the objective.

A fun game and as good to have an early war battle. As with most systems it plays differently than the more typical late war big toys games but was a hell of a lot of fun. Tony has a really well painted army and it was good to get an historic match for my Early War Germans. 800 pts made for a great game but as per usual I wished I had an extra squad or two of infantry but I was fielding all I had. One thing that impressed me tonight was the nastiness that is two light machine guns in a squad- might need to look into that myself.

Craig