we decided to play 250 points and it would be Nick's SS panzer's up against my German Infantry,
We both looked at the huge amount of scenarios and thought escalation would be the easiest to start with, now straight away the deployment rules made us both "ooohh" with the Recce elements starting on turn one, the vanguard coming on in turn two and the main force coming on in turn three, but we missed the bit where D6 units come on each turn though, which wouldn't have made much difference but would have been a laugh to see bits and bobs turn up.
Nicks armoured fist!
the 88 with a commanding field of fire...
the armoured fist continues to roll forward as it comes into range of the 88, the range for some of the weapons doesn't quite make sense (example is the 88) as the max is 48" for all weapons and depending on the range banding depends on the hit roll,
my end of the table with the main force walking on,
and some swift movement starting to get in postion ready for some panthers...
the panthers & tiger halt to start taking some pot shots, now the intresting thing about the shooting is you need to spot your target before you can open up which is a nice twist on the shooting rules, and you have two type of shooting, Supperssion so you can prevent the unit from activating and if you do suprress them you have to take a moral counter to get them going again or direct where you try and slot some of them,
Nick didn't manage to do any damage from his first salvo, and another really nice twist is that each tank has AMMO! so you choose what mixture of armour pericing and high explosive you want and as you shoot you mark off your ammo, when your out you bring a supply truck up and rearm you tank, now this could be alot of admin but with a little prep easily sorted via excel or word.
and some more jigging about and still waiting, at this point the panzer IV and the stuG opened up on the panther and rounds bounced off it, so the infamous panther started to live up to its name...
the view of the heroic crew...
before they both went down to a round of shooting from one panther....
but I get my revenge a few turns later with a broadside from a stuG
and the Aeriel view, it wasn't looking good the HMG team and the infantry team were being shot up in the woods and if they went my right flank would collapse.. meanwhile on the left flank Hanz in his command stuG had claimed his second panther and was starting to make the SS panzergrenadiers look a tad nervous...
I threw more infantry into the right flank, and a lone panzerfaust failed to pop the tiger, and the last remaining panther drove in to the woods cutting the HMG team down and securing the objective,
at this point my moral was close to popping....
and a cheeky shot from the panther popped a stuG and it was game over!
So thoughts and feelings on the system...
Gameplay
Some really nice rules in this system from the off board support, the random air support that "could" turn up, the spotting the target before shooting and so much more!! the rule book is a hefty tomb and some of the rules take a bit of getting used to over all once you get into the flow it plays really quick!
Models
Its 1/72, 1/76, 20mm so there are literally thousands of kits out there for this scale vary in price but the armourfast, plastic solider company and SHQ all mix in fine and looked nice on the table with plenty of randoms coming over to have a look.
Lastability
This one's a keeper! I've tried various WW2 systems and most have been platoon skirmish type games with this one combined arms is your friend as nick discovered with the 105mm off board support, the only draw back is that you have only 3 nations to choose from and both the British & US get two lists each and the Germans get 4, but what I've read on the miniature pages new lists are coming out in the new year via wargames illustrated and they've been play testing tobrok and the russian front so its looking hopeful.
So Instant mold, its been kicking around for a while now and until recently I've not really been that interested in it,
With the stowage packs that I picked up from skytex the other month I figured I'd give the stuff a crack to see if I could pump out some copies.
so three sticks in boiling(ish) water and pushing the mold stuff over some bits let it cool down pop those out and bang some green stuff in.
so the actual bits popped out when the green stuff had cured a bit, most of it was pretty good to be honest, I'm not too sure about the panther tracks to I'll re-do that one me thinks.
so before today's game I wanted to get all the bits painted that I wanted to use so I peeled my ass off Starwars and blasted out the three stuG's and another two panzer IV's giving the monthly pledge a healthy boost, but looking at the actual year end figures I'm about 14 models short to break even for the year so I'm gonna crank out the remaining german infantry and see if I can get the first model done for one of my 2012 armies....
I'm quite happy with the logs on the command stuG
Till next time...
he might look like my Uncle Paul but this guy is superb....
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