Lead, Paint and the General: Cutting the chord, leaving the nest ....

Greetings Troops,

I was able to get to Steve's this week for a FOW game. I was commanding a US detachment while Sean was leading a German detachment.

The title reflects the theme for the evening. Steve was allowing Sean and I to run the game without him in the room, thus as you will "cutting the chord". I am always been one to learn by doing. Mistakes being made and running into "I don't know ... lets research it" examples have always been a good learning model for me. There was some questions asked via "radio - aka asking out loud" but I feel Sean and I did really well.

Steve allowed my units to total about 1700 points. I am trying to find a combination of units for the Guns of August Tournament so I had a decent mix of infantry, artillery, recon and tank destroyers. I was not able to take the engineers this game since they are point heavy. Sean had approximately the same number of points of Germans.

Sean is a British player and a fellow NOOB so the game was a great learning experience for both of us. The game was Free for All. We both placed our objectives and units with little to no problem. The board was Afrika terrain with a moderate sized village in the middle of the board, North from my side of the board. I had hills on my East and West flanks. East flank I had my artillery battery of 105s placed. The West flank had a rifle company, mortar squad, a platoon of Stuarts. The middle of deployment area had my platoon of M10 tank destroyers, rifle platoon and a recon platoon. Sean had only tanks, all deployed outside of the village to my north.

The battle itself went fairly smooth as Sean and I had the basic down fairly well. We had to look up some basic stats on vehicles to help with shooting and such ... no biggie. We also researched at times transports and disembarking (my recon troops), assaults (especially tank assaults with infantry). I was very happy with the overall game since we both seemed to have basic knowledge down smooth. The rest will come with time.

Sean won 4-3, all objectives were either uncontested (no one in the area) or contested (I learned from my past loss with Jamie when I didn't push infantry to contest an objective). Sean pulled the win due to his spanking of my Stuart platoon (4 out of 5 kills, remaining failed morale and fled). My only kill was a Panzer N thanks to my artillery. I did have numerous bails on his tanks but the hardcore Germans returned to their tanks and had revenge.

Things I learned or Contemplated ...

My thoughts on the battle were pointed towards the future list I want for the Guns of August.

My tank destroyers will stay in the list. I like their Antitank and range. My learning lesson was not to let them get in close with the Panzers. The Side Armor of 2 is just too fragile for dirty work. Sean's Panzer platoon was dancing hard with them but lit up 3 out of 4 in one round which made a mess of my antitank capabilities.

My artillery battery of 105s (which I love artillery) was not able to range in most of the game. Although when it did I was able to bail a total of 2 tanks and killed one. Not shabby .... they can stay. I may look at different artillery options but they are a vital part of my playing style.

Recon was new to me. Since all pieces were on the board, no ambushes were planned for them to find. But with their awesome movement distance they are good at zipping to objectives or vital points and deploying troops to dig in. I will have to work them more to decide how I will best use them. In the game we played they were playing a cat and mouse game with a platoon of Tigers.

My platoon of Stuarts were not too bad. Good movement and plenty of "dancing" up close Sean's Panzers. I was able to bail a couple of us tanks before getting smeared in the last couple of rounds. The last tank failed his morale and ran. Overall ..... not too expensive and decent unit.

The rifle infantry had a hard time. One platoon was moving towards the village and had no contact. One was in a tank assault hell on my eastt flank. No results and 4 losses ..... pushed back. The third platoon was concealed in the woods near an objective, and moved assault launch stage in the last round. This in turn allowed them to contest the objective that Sean was moving towards. I may look into adding more bazookas to the platoons for punch power. We will see as I play them against more tanks and infantry.

Here are some pictures of the game .... enjoy.