Early War Escalation League (7)

Yesterday we had another gaming session of our ongoing early war Flames of War league at Adler Hobby. Again there were four players and three with armies so we opted for another 2000-point game matching up Jerry and Adam's French against my Germans. Although Jerry brought French armor again Adam mixed things up and brought French recon with TONS of Panhard armored cars, which are an excellent weapon during this period. On the German side I had the same forces as last time, German infantry pioneers and Czech Panzers. This time the armor portion of the force included four 8-rads that I forgot to put on the table last time (sorry Gordon!). Commanding the Czech panzers in this game was a new player (to me, not to the group) named Russ. Russ was definitely the force of the German side. His Czech tanks ran great, shot accurately and survived many armor savings rolls. Russ was also a lot of fun to play a game with. Good to meet you Russ!

We rolled for the mission randomly and got 'Break Through'. For those unfamiliar with FOW this is an interesting scenario where the defenders deploy in two opposite quadrants of the table and the attackers attack from one to the other of the opposite corners. Both teams have reserves that can come on from either of their corners.

With 2000 points on each side and corner-to-corner deployment zones, this was definitely one of those knife fight in a phone booth sort of games. The French chose to deploy their entire armor force and the artillery and some of the Panhard armored cars with the infantry and additional armored cars in reserve. We started with our infantry force (with AT, AA and heavy artillery guns) and one platoon of Panzer 35(t) tanks on the table. Our 8-rads showed up turn two and our Panzer IIc platoon showed up turn 4. The French received no reserves before we called the game in a tie when one of the players had to leave.

This was a close game in many ways. Early on our engineers on the hill took it hard from a Panhard close assault and MG fire from several platoons of French armor. We counter-punched knocking out most of a Hotchkis platoon with our PaK36 AT guns and two of the hard-to-kill Somua tanks with some good shooting from our Panzer 35(t) platoon. As we completed turn five, the French armor company was beginning to withdraw to prevent themselves from receiving enough casualties to cause a company morale check, while the French recon platoon was pushing the objective with a platoon of Panhards and anxiously awaiting a flood of reserves to arrive from behind the thinly-guarded rear objective.

We called the game a draw, and a fun one at that. Had we continued the race between the Germans destroying the French armor company and the French capturing the rear objective would tell the story. Alas that's a story not to be completed. Good game, good people to enjoy it with, good times. Photos below.