Another Battle In France

STRUGGLING ON THE WESTERN FRONT…

I managed to get in another game of Blitzkrieg Commander the other day using the new order activation cards we developed (see a previous post about the orders & activation issues).

This time the game was in 6mm Micro Armor with an American Task Force (a mixed armor/infantry battalion) getting plunged into a meeting engagement with a German Kampfgruppe in October of ‘44.  John M. was the Germans, while I played the Americans. We were also using the variable objective cards we developed a while ago.

The first few turns went really well. The Americans had managed to neutralize the flanking force that had a pair of King Tigers with it by using smoke rounds. The German force was predominantly foot slogging infantry, which made slow but steady progress towards their objective.

Looking Down the Length of the Battlefield

Then the Germans really got clever and things went south for the Americans. The German commander began laying a thick line of smoke on his objective, completely consuming the American tank company in the area to protect it. At the same time, the Germans had moved a couple of under strength Pz IV tank platoons into the village – which just happened to be the American objective.

While the Germans moved steadily (and unmolested) towards their objective, the Americans came under increasingly more accurate and devastating fire from the tanks in the village.

Looking Down Towards the Village

Eventually, the Shermans being smoked on the German objective were forced to withdraw, or risk being swarmed by panzerfaust equipped infantry. As for the American push towards their objective, it ground to a halt under the withering German fire.

In the end we were forced to call the game due to time, but we both agreed that it was probably an inevitable German victory.

In the post-mortem we agreed that the American’s are having a hard time winning. While historically they had a numerical superiority over the tougher German tanks, the rules’ point structure only allow about a 6:5 Sherman to Pz IV ratio (about a 3 1/2:1 Sherman to Panther ratio) – not really a stellar numerical edge for the Americans. We are going to try to add a few more things to the American force per the rules (more artillery, aircraft, etc.) to see if that gives the American a chance to win. If not we may have to look for another solution to get the Americans competitive (since they were on the winning side after all…). Stayed tuned for an update later.

Nonetheless, both of us had a fun game and are looking forward to the next one!

Until next time…

Cheers!

Dan