Meeting a Tiger in the Woods

On Thursday Ron and I had another go at WWII and a Grant Teaser.

The scenario came from Scenarios for Wargames. A force, Canadian as it happened, is fixing a bridge over a river. Across the river the main road runs through a dense patch of woods so an advance party has been posted to block any German counter attack. There is a secondary bridge and ford off to one side. The Canadians have to hold the main bridge and deny any bridgehead to the Germans.

A Tiger, always a Tiger!

 For rules we used the Airfix Battles rules but not the action deck. Instead, for reasons I can't  really remember but which may have had something to do with wanting a simple Old School feel, we decided to just determine initiative with a card draw then each act with 4 units then determine initiative again. We agreed to alternately activate 1 unit each with the possibility of an initiative flip allowing the sort of double move the Airfix card system gives but promptly forgot and went 4 then 4. 

The result of a flip giving a double turn had some of the effect of the missing tactical cards but next time we might just use the original card system. We'll see when the time comes.

Please imagine various knocked out German tanks as well as a pile of bodies near the far end of the bridge!

The scenario called for a light cavalry unit to be broken into 4 patrols to advance along secret forest paths. Given the card stats crossed with available models, this became 4 35T tanks using an Sdsomethingorother stats card. My brain knew this but eyes saw my force being attacked by 5 German tanks! It wasn't until the first one was blown up by a Piat that I relaxed a little.

The rest of his force included a Tiger, a platoon of Pzr Grenadiers in a halftrack, a pair of antitank guns and a long line of trucks carrying infantry.

My defenders consisted of 3 infantry platoons, some engineers, a 6 pdr, a 25 pdr using the stats of a German 75mm PAK since that was the only card on hand with HE and AT capability, a Bren Carrier and a Churchill w 75mm gun and generous stats.  We definitely need to start making our own unit stats for Ron's stuff that's not covered.

End of the day. Crossing Held!

It seemed highly unlikely to me that any of my guys were going to survive but one must do what one can. What can I say, I got lucky. Lucky as in my Churchill was damned lucky both when shooting and when shot at and lucky as in none of my many tactical errors had a serious impact while Ron made one or two small decisions and one error (as in unlimbering 1 hex short) that cost him dearly because my tank got lucky!

All in all it was a very enjoyable, intense, 4 hours of pushing toys around the table, rolling dice, and pitting wits against "the foe".