Project Panzer Lehr Part Four: Tournament Day Two

Day two, another fairly early morning drive up to the tournament venue from Rugby talking gaming and generally shooting the breeze with Al. Oh and lets not forget impromptu karaoke when certain songs came up through the iPod!

Getting into the venue and after grabbing a cup of tea I found out that'd I'd drawn another game against an elite Allied infantry force, this time British Paras. We'd be fighting for Saint-Lo, a historically vital strategic point so no pressure then!

I figured that on an entirely urban small table, more infantry would be better than less, so I went yet again with my defensive list. The mission was Domination, with objectives spread around the board, two each inside our deployment zones worth two points each and one in the centre worth four. First to eight points wins the game. So two tactics then really. One to hold the enemy off the centre objective and sweep round to take those in the enemy deployment zone. Or two, hit the centre hard,


push the enemy off and win through a direct assault. I've never been what Al refers to as the most "subtle" of gamers so naturally I opted for plan B. So did my opponent, it resulted in a blood bath.

Turn one saw both sides positioning for their respective advances towards the centre. Assault troops massing and screening forces moving up opposite flanks to block enemy reserves who would be arriving on the opposite sides to our deployment zones.

Turn two saw the first assault, with red platoon, the 2ic and Oic charging into the objective building in the centre of the town. The Paras put up some stiff resistance, but the size of my full Lehr platoon managed wipe them out to a man. My guys consolidated their position ready to receive the evitable counter attack.

The image left shows yellow platoon deploying in buildings on the T-junction opposite from the objective to cover my assault.

The image to the right shows his flank screening force. I kept my force close enough to threaten an attack on the flank objectives to keep these units from moving to properly support his assaults on the centre.

Turn three, assaults by another of his platoons who assaulted and all but broke red platoon. However the 2ic and Oic kept their men firm and held on beating back the Paras.

Mortar rounds from the Paras pounded he objective and destroyed the Oic's halftrack, left burning on a cross roads in the centre of town.
 












Turn four, another attack by the Paras on the tattered remains of red platoon. As you can see below they were in a bad way. Only one stand and the attached 2ic and Oic were left!

The Paras charged across the road towards the objective.

The Paras managed to kill a stand, but after several rounds of combat, my 2ic and Oic stubbornly held on and caused the Paras to fall back.

So far I'd passed every motivation test I had had to make and my opponent had failed each and every one of his! - To his credit he was amazingly good humoured about it!

I felt I was close to winning, but the battle was far from over. The next few turns involved both sides exchanging fire while reserves moved to attack and counter attack. Three stands of Paras were close enough to the objective to keep them in the game, however I couldn't risk moving the 2ic or Oic out to try to push them off. They were also tucked away out of sight of my covering force, so I couldn't bring my guns to bear on them.

Eventually however I decided to pull the trigger and raced the covering force across the street into the objective building, their half tracks racing down the road to fire upon the remaining Paras contesting the objective.

I ended up launching another assault to finally wipe them out. Taking the objective. However on the right armoured cars had arrived and moved past blue platoon who had moved up a bit too far on the right, allowing them to deploy behind them.

This allowed him to take one of my backfield objectives. So the score was 6 all. I had also wasted my Panthers coming on from reserve assaulting his flank force so was unable to counter them. We had however managed to play to time, so called it a hard fought draw! We had an absolute blast of a game, my opponent was brilliant fun to play against joking and chatting the whole time and a brilliant sport.I was a bit disappointed with missing out on the win, but two losses and two draws was definitely an upward trend going into the final game.

Final game of the weekend, I'd managed to keep the Allies from taking Saint Lo, so German high command decided to give me the vital town of Sainte-Mere-Eglise to defend, complete with US paratrooper suspended from the bell tower by his parachute!

Of course I'd be defending again with my defensive list as yet again I'd be up against Allied infantry. British Paratroopers again with some Sherman armoured support and Naval gunfire.

I can't remember what the mission was now, but I had two objectives to defend, one on a hill outside of town and another in the town itself near the church.

I would be starting with my entire force deployed, a bit of novelty. However the enemy could potentially come on from either side of the board, so deployed my force in a defensive formation in the town able to comfortably deal with an attack from either or both directions.

The British Paras opted for a night attack, fairly sensible as they had a large area of open ground to cross to get to either objective.

Turn one, most of his force committed to one point of attack towards the objective on the hill outside of town. Brave stuff, his assault would have to go off as soon as he could as the cover of night could lift from my turn three onwards. Spreadhead deployment would help that though!

He got an assault off on turn one. Luckily I'd deployed well enough, so was set to receive the assault and pushed them back. In my turn one I opted to counter attack and red platoon charged out of the foxholes as the attacking Brits. It was a brutal assault, but eventually I managed to break the back of his assault force. With enough of red platoon left to consolidate back towards the objective ready to set up defences again for the next wave.

Pictured right you can see my forces on the opposite side to the hill objective redeploying in reaction to the enemies movements.

After his initial assault had failed, turn two and three saw the Paras digging in around the farmhouse as my opponent organised for another attack on the hill objective.

My turn three saw dawn break and the cover of night lift leaving the British Paras even more exposed and my 88s and Panthers open up at long range.

Turn four saw another assault, which pushed red platoon off the objective just as yellow platoon moved up to reinforce them. The Oic and the small 2ic platoon, both mounted in their halftracks kept me in the game and swept the open ground with their machine guns keeping the Brits pinned.

Turn five and turn six saw the Paras hanging on and my Panzer Lehr brought their firepower to bear, trying to eliminate the small isolated group of Paras that were contesting the hill objective.

Eventually my fire began to find it's mark and after a last ditched charge from the Paras to try to finally take the Hill objective I managed to force a company moral check which despite being rated as fearless, my opponent failed. I'd finally won a game!

 

Above is the campaign map at the end of day two. Only small isolated pockets of Germans were left, but we had finally got our act together and begun to take the fight to the Allies a bit more than on day one!

It had been yet another excellent tournament from the Reluctant Conscripts (http://www.reluctantconscripts.co.uk/gaming) and a great weekend's gaming! I'll definitely be back for one of their future events and I can't recommend giving one a go, especially if you have not played in a tournament before as their a great bunch of guys and more than willing to help out newer players. On top of all of this the event was raising money for the Royal British Legion. A worthy gaming based commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings.