Gaming At Panzerschreck 2015

Ready for a big day of gaming Phil and I were in the zone, ready for anything...

Round 1: Breakthrough vs the Stanton Brothers and pair of Sicherungs kompanies

We deployed in our corner, whilst a great big train drove by

The PaK40s and King Tiger worked it over, whilst Phil's artillery pinned down some infantry heading for the objective. On the left flank my Pumas skirmished with some infantry.

The King Tiger pursued the tank (passing its skill test to move) and destroyed everything but the far Tank Hunter car, leaving it stranded. My Pumas were jumped by StuGs and retreated to the safety of my PaK front.

Getting our first reserve of the game on turn 5, Phil pounced on a weakened infantry platoon, wiped it out and jumped on the objective. The train (as it was still functional) stopped enemy troops from contesting it.

Okay, this was a pretty weird game. We were heavily outnumbered and our reserves just did not want to come on. My Pumas pushed up, shot some infantry, took some hits and retreated. Phil spent most of the game with one unit of heavy mortars on the table. We were lucky to come away with a 4:3 win!

Round 2: Dust Up vs Joe and Cameron with US Tanks and Paras.

For some reason I didn't take a lot of photos in this game, but this was on of the few. Phil's halftracks working over the guys artillery, trying to knock a few off an reduce their effectiveness.

This was a fun game to watch - I say that as my force was pretty static in it whilst Phil, Joe and Cameron fought it out on the far end of the table. Phil pushed up and got punished by a combination of air support and artillery, getting off an assault but running out of steam against some pretty smart opponents. In the end we timed out and both ended up loosing 1:3 as we just could not finish anything. This would become the theme of the weekend.

Round 3: Fighting Withdrawal vs Ken and Damian. Damian stretched his Trained Tigers across the table, whilst Ken backed them up with is SS Panzergrens.

We rushed the near end of the table, ignoring casualties, over a bridge and into Ken's troops. Meanwhile our tanks and guns took potshots at the Tigers. I felt that we should have knocked out more but some great dice, some bad dice, and certainly some average dice made it slow going.

Phil's assualt ran out of steam (Reluctant Trained eh...) but my Pumas managed to get round the flank of Biemeyers Panzer platoon, chipping away at them before getting in behind the line of Tigers.

 Sadly that was all she wrote. Ken and Damian withdrew in good order leaving Phil and I with a single point to show for some pretty intense fighting - 2:5 loss.

Round 4: Free for All vs Mike (who lent me the Pumas) and Andre.

Mike and Andre deployed a massive Soviet gun line stretching the entire table, backed with rock hard infantry and SU assault guns.

Once again we pushed the flank, chipping away at the guns. My Tiger and PaKs also slowly killing the artillery. Yet again those the fragility of Phil's troops was exposed and the lack of "slug it out" ability of the Pumas did not help as Mike's company command T-70 killed off my CO in his Puma.

We put in a decent showing in this game, but Mike was rolling morale tests like a legend and whilst we had a mathematical chance of winning the game his dice kept the Soviets hanging in there. 3:4 loss. 

Round 5: Surrounded vs Paul and Ste with a wall of Soviet infantry and tanks.

Forced to attack the Soviets split their force and sent the bulk of the infantry and T-34s at the objective in the town, whilst a small unit of infantry and SU-100s forced us to keep the back objective secure.

Paul pushed up aggressively, pushing the Panzergrenadier halftracks out of the way and reducing the defensive firepower considerably. Within a couple of turns he would be low on numbers but so would we.

At the other end of the table the Pumas dashed back and wiped out the Soviet infantry before...

dancing around the flanks of the SUs.

This turned out to be a game of two halves. The fun and less stressful end with the Pumas and SUs, and the nail biting end with the rest of the infantry and Phil's force lurking in the streets of the town. Unfortunately for Ste and Paul there was so much firepower in such a small space we were able to wear them down and whilst Phil did not have a lot left it was enough. 4:3 win to us.  

In the end we found ourselves solidly in the bottom quartile of teams, so not a great performance on the scoreboard, but I did get to have a lot of fun running the Pumas around and whilst I still want to paint them army for myself I think it will take a back burner to some Cold War Gone Hot troops... and some Trollbloods of course!

Next up, I've got a few photos from our trip to the Waiouru Army Museum.