Good morning ladies and gents,
I managed, somehow and against all the odds, to not only get everything finished but to get it all finished ahead of schedule. I know, I'm just as surprised as you are. . .
The final list for yesterday read as a StüG for my CiC, a platoon of 3 StüGs, a platoon of 2 Jagdpanthers and another single Jagdpanther, a trained grenadier platoon with a Panzerschrek and a Panzerfaust, a trained 4 gun leFH18 battery, a security platoon and a Flak 36 battery. As predicted, this motley collection of units did not function in a cohesive manner, letting me down left, right and centre. Thought I wooden spooned it, and more on this later, I must say I had an absolute blast considering only 5 people showed up in, including the organiser, and I was pleased to play as many games in a weekend than I played in the whole of last year. I also won best axis by default as I was the only person who brought bad guys with them. Suffice to say I'll be back, but hopefully by then I'll have the luxury of being able to pick and chose what I'm taking rather than having to throw a Kampfgruppe together at the last minute.
On the day we played three games, and I ended up playing Surrounded as the attacker against Gav's Market Garden US paratroopers, Dust Up as the attacked against Mark's Comet spam list and Hold the Line as the Defender against Michael's Remagen US Armoured.
My first game ended in a 2-5 loss on turn 5 due to some poor deployment on my part and some sneaky flank shots on Gav's leaving me with nothing to deal with the two Shermans sitting on the objective I was going after. The second game ended as a 1-6 loss with a humiliating turn 1 at the double move from Mark's Comets and some terrible deployment from me, not putting anything on the exposed objective he could quite clearly snag. Mark being a gentleman, however, we played on for the learning experience but I was hampered by bad reserve rolls and worse reserve placement. Lessons learned, I went into the final game and still lost 2-5 by turn 4, though mainly because half my reserves didn't turn up and those that did had to wait until turn three at the earliest; t'was a close run and brutal thing, with the game coming down to a missed artillery strike on a recon platoon near the objective and a very successful motivation test for the single Stuart atop the objective not to run away. I can, however, take solace in the fact that I wiped out over half of Michael's army for the loss of a single Grenadier platoon, so thats something.
Having got my Market Garden Germans to the stage where I can field a fully painted 1750 points list, the next thing I want to finish up is some suitable terrain for them to play over. I have started building a fair few bits, hedges and buildings mainly, and I intend to add some roads, hills, walls, fences, trees and a windmill to the mix. More importantly, I want to get the stuff fully painted up so I can start taking pictures of my games. I don't doubt I'll get bored of this, or at least distracted, but hopefully by that point the stuff I ordered during the Tanksgiving sale will have been delivered so I can make a proper start on Jochen Peiper's Kampfgruppe War Criminals.
Take care for now, folks.
