Operation Overlord Battle Report

Somehow, I managed to claw back a victory for the allies against Olly's treacherous Soviets.

The Soviet Steamroller gears up

This was the first time I'd played counterattack, and the stream across the centre of the board made the set up very interesting. Because of the Mobile reserves rule, I could keep whatever I wanted on the table and decided to keep one platoon in reserve to block off the far bridge crossing.

I tried to set up a mortar proof defence in depth, and this was almost my undoing as Olly's Spetsnaz managed to infiltrate his massive SMG horde towards my massively outnumbered platoon. They ended up within assault distance at the start of his first turn and I immediately thought that the game was over. With my units so strung out, there was no way I could repulse the assault and protect my support units. Luckily this was when Olly made his first mistake and didn't assault, giving me at least one turn to hit them with my artillery.

Unfortunately for Olly, his looping flank attack with his T34's to avoid my 17pdrs not only left them in the line of fire after doubling, the RAF really came through for once and the combination of fire left 4 tanks burning and another two bailed out.

Tally Ho!

Things weren't over for Olly yet, however and he sent the SMG blob with an OORAH! into be barely prepared paras. Although I'd moved up some reserves to help counter the inevitable bumrush, quality of quantity meant I couldn't pin them and I lost two teams. Somehow I managed to ignore my instincts to instantly counter attack and broke off to reform my line. Olly also continued his armoured thrust, trying to avoid the platoon that turned up from reserves the turn before.

My next turn was when Olly's lady luck really abandoned Olly. The RAF turned up to polish off the straggling T34 platoon, but more importantly, my artillery really went to town on his SMG blob killing everyone under the template, including the Commissar and the Commander, leaving the entire platoon hanging out in a field unable to move.

With the remaining T34 platoon backed into a corner while my ambushing 6pdrs deployed towards the unguarded objective and the platoon from reserve manoeuvred for the attack, Olly made the wise decision to reverse his commander in an attempt to rejoin the SMG blob, take it under command and resume the attack. Unfortunately the RAF, in a fit of never before seen, dazzling competence, dropped from the clouds to finish him off.

Coffin. Nail. Final.

First taste of (Early) War

I played my first game of Early War recently. My French troops are still stuck in the great Battlefront logistics SNAFU so Olly, who has the grace and foresight to collect forces in matching sets lent me his French, facing off against his Germans.

Arial recon shows Panzers closing in

At first I thought the battle would be a curb stomp battle in my favour, what with the massive amount of anti-tank guns I was fielding, but Olly played very intelligently, and I only managed to destroy a few of his tanks, before he swarmed the objective.

There was a lot of faffing about in woods before that happened and both his Panzers and my Char B-1 spent a lot of time bogged down. Admittedly mine were because they wanted to move above walking speed.

I was contesting the objective when the game ended, and I could have rolled up my literally invulnerable B-1's to bring some hurt, but Vanguard was closing and with a couple of platoons destroyed to Olly's couple of unit, he really deserved to win.

Pointless infantry are pointless.

Early War is a really great change of pace and I have a lot to learn. Given the amount of machineguns the early war german tanks are packing, my infantry really stand no chance against them in assault. I had to keep on reminding myself that they didn't have gammon bombs... I really should have had them dug in in a block over the objectives as a meat shield for the anti-tank guns, meaning that Olly would have had to assault the guns in order to shift the infantry. As it was my units were strung out and were destroyed peicemeal.

The Bolivian army gets another look in...

Missing Photos - Oh noes!

Ok, so apparently I'm a dumbass. Apparently photos uploaded from Picasa web albums don't embed themselves in the blog, so when they're deleted from the album they disappear from the blog.

I'm in two minds whether to delete the blanks or leave them as a monument to my own stupidity.

If anyone has any clean, simple ways to manage their photos for blogger (predominantly taken with an Android phone) then please share.

Operation Overlord continues apace

So I've managed to wrack up another two losses for the allies, the first against a treacherous Soviet force against which I managed to hold my own, despite underestimating the power of 21 massed SMG squads, until their reserves dropped onto the objective and annihilated my defending platoon. We were playing breakthrough.

My counter attack was successful, leaving Olly needing to pass a Company Moral check to win the game. He passed.

The second game was a slightly less graceful loss, with my para's getting chewed up by machinegun fire. I lost two 6pdrs in one turn to small arms fire. I also left my Tetrarchs exposed, despite the darkness and with their leader killed, they were unable to flee the assaulting tank hunters,

The right flank goes up in flames

My actual assault managed to punch through to the objective, despite taking heavy casualties but Alex's force was essentially intact and his counter-attack destroyed them, leaving nothing to recapture the  launchpad.

It's easier if I imagine this as a Bolivian army ending...