Eastern Front Late WWII another AAR

I have been blessed with gaming time over recent weeks and another game on Thursday with friend Steve Shann. Steve wanted to run another playtest of his home rules, based loosely around field of battle. This time keen to see how more infantry works.

Mark and I thoroughly enjoyed these last time so were looking forward to another go.

Mark and I were attacking with Russians whilst Steve defended two built up areas with late war Germans.

Mark had a battalion of foot without transports and a battalion of 3 x ISU152'S whilst I had a battalion in trucks and 2 battalions of three T34's all off table.

The Germans had 2 weak battalions of foot dug in or in houses with an 88 and mortar on their right and a Raupenshlepper PAK40 and a Pupschen AT gun on their left.  They had no armour on table which surely meant we should get a move on before it turned up.

Steves wife Julie looked after us with biscuits and Tea, I will certainly be recomending this establishment!

The Russians got move cards fairly early in the deck allowing us to get forward, I also rolled 9's for all of my movement which allowed us to take three move actions each time and we were very quickly pressing forward. In the centre Mark was also making steady progress.

Steve chose to "Shoot and scoot" with the PAK40, missing and retiring behind the hill, I followed him over the hill and fired into it knocking it out. You can fire at any time but end up unloaded so I fired 2 of my T34's and kept the other loaded for the inevitable arrival of the German armour.

As this was gong on my infantry was being mauled by mortars and Mark was pressing forward towards the first buildings with a view to storming them.

Sure enough a couple of cards after, the third German move card came out which was the signal for two Panthers and a Whirbelwind to move on table, I fired my remaining tank, bouncing off that thick sloping armour, to no effect and they returned fire badly damaging all three of mine.

Next card is firepower for the Germans and they get to re-load and fire, one destroyed T34 later and the rest of the badly mauled battalion are forced to retire to cover.

The game was meant to try out the infantry side of the game so we did a lot of building assaults. Mark got the first one, attaching three platoons to a tank company to assault a house. As armour was attached the Germans had to test to stay and fight, they failed and pulled back to the next building. Steve was busy firing the 88 at the ISU'S to no effect whilst Mark was dropping artillery on the 88 with equal lack of success. The subsequent morale test for the Church defenders saw both the Wirblewind and the platoon of defenders break and run.

On my side my trucked infantry stormed and took the first building whilst a further platoon of tanks riders attacked and took the church. (A fantastic model, built forma  plastic kit I believe.)

At the same point Mark has dropped a third round of artillery on the 88 and managed to knock it out and all its crew.

Chancing my arm I push the remainder of my first battalion of T34's over the hill to have a pop at the Panthers whilst pushing my infantry into short range to engage the German entrenched infantry near the wood.

As the T34s were damaged this made it even harder to hit the Panthers and the result was depressingly familiar, 2 more burning T34's. But the foot are making some headway and gradually grinding down the German defenders. The light anti tank gun in thew wood has a shot at the T34 next to church and misses and the T34 and the infantry in the church return fire knocking it out.

I get a good movement dice and push the other two T34's right on the flank of the rear Panther and fire knocking it out, Mark meanwhile has captured 2 buildings and is moving on the next set. At this point we run out of time but with half of both villages captured all of the AT guns destroyed and one of the Panthers knocked out the Germans ability to resist is almost at an end and the Russians claim a hard fought victory.

I have thoroughly enjoyed both games so far and got a really good fast moving game from them, looking forward to a larger and longer game, although next week Steve has asked me to put on a little Carlist Wars game, so keep an eye out for that.

Thanks for reading.