So the day finally dawned that would see both my Brits and myself get our first taste of Team Yankee. As the sun flickered through the trees, it`s beams highlighted upon the misty dawn of the German late summer, little 15mm squaddies, their breath showing on the crisp morning air, drank tea, smoked fags, and told dirty jokes by way of distraction. For they knew the day would be long, and the outcome, as yet, unclear.
This is the story of high drama, fights, confusion, camaradarie, conflict and tension; of sin and redemtion, and the will to survive. And what happened on-table was pretty interesting as well. This is the unbiased and impartial story of how brave Tommy Atkins and his plucky British chums took on the despotic Communist horde with both a hip, hip, and a hooray!
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There will be two parts: the after action report, followed by an extensive, and unnecessarily graphic, stomping on certain parts of the rules.
First- the rami/carefully planned battleplan.
Steve had talked of bringing an East German horde, but I still thought that this may be a rouse. To be on the safe side, I ensured that I had plenty Milan anti-tank to back-up my handful of Chieftains. The previous evening, I planned that my Milan would fix the enemy centre as my Chieftains would use their superior rate-of-fire and hitting power to snipe from the flanks. I simply could not foresee a situation whereby my genius would be ever called into question. That situation arose twelve hours later when I found that Steve had, indeed, brought an East German 100 point horde consisting of thirty-five tanks and over thirty other supporting armoured vehicles and infantry. My big hitters were my six Chieftains, Milan equipped infantry, and Spartans with Milan turrets. My mass of FV432 were now looking rather impotent armed only with General Purpose Machine Guns against this steel wall of East German tanks, which may have been mostly old T-55, but tanks none-the-less; bit difficult slowing them down with a Jimpy! Add to this, a company of T-72, and this looked like trouble.
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Almost immediately I began screwing-up. Through my own stupidity we ended-up selecting the very scenario that I wanted to avoid: `Free For All`, a meeting engagement where the attacker is considered moving on turn one, and therefore unable to use any guided missiles. Despite the `meeting engagement` rule, the opponent is not considered to have moved and, therefore, is free to use their whole range of weapons. I fail to see how this is anything other than your standard attacker/defender game; a meeting engagement should surely see both sides suffering the same movement penalties during turn one.
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In a most gentlemanly gesture, Steve offered to be the attacker, at which point I should have said `go on then`. But no, I had to roll the dice...and rendered my whole plan arsed by becoming the attacker! No Milan in the first turn, my whole defence- nuked! Plus, I had conspired to play down the table to allow some defence in depth, and again, I managed to goose this 50/50 prospect to find myself defending the long table edge against a horde that would stretch across the entire horizon, able to attack everywhere at once rather than a narrower front that I had schemed to get. Curses!
