Finnish First Action

Tonight was the first night for our escalation league/tournament at the local store. As you can see from this photo, I decided to go with the variant of my 600-point list that allowed me to use two of my StuG assault guns. I wanted to learn all of the different mechanics in the game so having the StuGs on the table allowed me to see how armor worked.

My first game was against a company of Americans with two platoons of infantry supported by some light mortars, MGs and a section of Hellcat tank destroyers in a recon platoon. The photo to the left is our initial deployment. The American recon platoon utilized their initial recon deployment and first turn movement to deploy in the woods in front of my infantry. I advanced my AT rifles into the woods directly in front of my deployment zone and was able to squeeze my StuGs in between the houses and the woods. Surviving the initial shots from the Hellcats, the StuGs and AT rifles were able to take out the enemy armor. My machine guns deployed in the white village area and eventually repulsed an assault from one of the American platoons, stopping it cold with withering defensive fire. This coupled with my mortar fire on the other infantry platoon allowed me to go on the offensive, eventually scoring enough kills to force morale checks on the recon platoon and both infantry platoons. My opponent's dice weren't going well and I was able to get a first 'lucky' win for the Finns!


My second game was against a high-quality German force (me posing as Lapin Sorta Finns, but keeping my Stugs, since it was just a 'for fun' game). The German's had a single high-quality platoon of infantry supported with many stands of panzerfaust-armed troops. In additional to the core infantry platoon they had a support platoon of three StuG G tanks, one more than I had. They lacked my mortars, MGs or AT rifles, so I had the numbers, but they had me beat on equipment and quality. Early on my mortars scored many hits, but the Germans saved them, shrugging off the pinning fire and advancing easily. I tried to out-flank his tanks with my AT rifles, since they were worthless on the StuGs front armor. Eventually I took a chance and close assaulted the German StuGs, but was repulsed with heavy losses. Meanwhile the German infantry took out my StuGs in an assault, but followed up into my heavy machine guns and were repulsed themselves taking heavy losses. We called this game as a draw when time ran out and the store closed. Still it was an eye-opener as to how effective the panzerfaust-armed infantry were in an assault on armor. I'm definitely going to make sure I have my anti-tank infantry with panzerfausts in my 1000-point and higher lists. They're not only awesome anti-tank troops, they're perfectly fine rifle infantry as well. With a section of HMGs, they're a great force to defend an objective and my mortars against all comers.