Snow Battle

Jan 26th 2006 Kent and I tried a snow battle using my new snow terrain and the Deep Battle Mission of Brian Cantwell (http://www.lshm.net/files/Deep_Battle.pdf).

Basically it is a modified Hold the Line with several objectives, each of which is worth 1 VP, and a variable game length. It looked interesting so we gave it a go. only problem was snow counted as difficult going so my company was always going to struggle and not be able to utilise its greatest strength-it's mobility.

The German forces- actually I'm missing a pak 40.

My 2000 pt force consisted of:

Kent's force (from what I remember) consisted of:

The German Plan: Having to capture 5 objectives wouldn't be easy!

And from the German positions: from left to right: PGs, tanks + nebelwerfers, PGs + HQ, pak 40s on the hill, Quad AA and the 3rd PGs.

The order to advance is given!

Immediately we run into trouble. Tanks & half tracks bog in the snow. One quad AA gun spent most of the game stuck on the hill!

My infantry advance on foot (it is faster than taking their transports on this table!)

This should be a doddle!

The infantry reach the minefields but fail to make a gap in the wire. They are also under fire from Russian guns. The tanks area bout to be ambushed by Zis 2s at maximum range! One team has made it int0 the abandoned strongpoint.

The right flank advances under the cover of 2 pak 40s.

Uh oh!

Here come the reserves!

The high water mark. My PGs have made it to the base of the hill but are pinned, fail to unpin and then cut to pieces!

Now it is the Soviets turn to advance. Why can't those nebelwerfers hit anything?

They are getting closer!

Well, we got the closest two objectives before our company broke!

What happened?

The lack of mobility hurt but the big Soviet company was nasty. It had about 35 teams at full strength and could chuck out an amazing amount of Rifle/ MG & HMG dice and decimated my army. The terrain really hampered me as well but I was expecting that and a number of vehicles bogged. The snow meant I also lost my mobility advantage. Kent though played it well, he hung back and fired at targets as they appeared and soon whittled the German forces down to size. I probably should have tried to go wider instead of grabbing the front two objectives- oh well, you live and learn.

The mission itself was interesting and made for a fun game. It would make a great multi-player (which was what it was intended for). We might replay this one on a summer table and see how it goes.

 Last Updated:

26-Jan-2006