Thursday, October 24, 2013

World War III Disposable Heroes (SOCWAD) Action: END GAME

Fought the remaining turns of a sharp and brutal modern DH game set in a fictional WWIII in Northern Germany.  British conducting an infantry probe against a small town held by Soviet paratroopers.  Ostensibly this small town is part of a larger defensive scheme and the British are sending reserve forces forward to gauge the enemy's strength.

This post covers the remaining 7 turns of the game.  LOTS of pictures!
Brit weapons team sets up position at the south end of the land while the scimitar moves forward

DPM Camo looks good on this guy!  What a pain to paint but worth it.

Soviet team on the road

The Soviet squad fans out in the rubble.

"lucky" RPG 16 shot kills the Scimitar and crew.

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 The game progressed as expected.  Both sides were relatively understrength so there were no sweeping advances to be made without fear of large casualties.  The British cautiously advanced while the Soviets put up a stiff resistance.
The luckiest toy soldier in the world.  Hit by the Soviet Sniper with the Dragunov and PASSES the AP test!  He lives on through the game.  Perhaps I'll retire this figure?

Soviet sniper. 

British team from 1st Squad advances up the side of the farm field.
 The British made slow advances and were turned back by Sov Airborne squads at each point, but with great cost to the Soviets.  The GPMG really took its toll on the Soviet teams.


You can see the British advancing up the left side and against the hedgerow in the upper right of the pic

a sharp firefight broke out between the brits at the hedgerow and the sovs in the rubble with the sovs eventually forcing the brits back but at the loss of an entire team.  

British team mixing it up at the base of the rubble.  There was a bren keeping the Russkie's heads down

pinned and eventually wiped out

lots of activation and pinned markers

minimi posing as a bren today.  The A team keeping the red's heads down.



meanwhile on the British left flank...Soviets form up for a counterattack against the team moving along the fenceline.  The GPMG's beaten zone didn't extend into the woods!  No cover fire!


lots of Dead Russians around the rubble now

and on the road...


casualties mounting - they would eventually fail all their morale checks and rout.



firefight continues as the British Platoon Leader decides he'd had enough and pulls back

gotta love that sterling!




Scimitar still burning









british marshalling up at the rally point


final dispositions
LESSONS LEARNED
Well by this time you're anxious to be done with this blog post!  So I'll cut to the chase.

Support by Fire: Remember to have mutually supporting fireteams.  When one moves, the other one can cover it.  In this instance, teams from the squad on the left were not able to cover their moving teams, leaving those guys out in the cold without any lead to cover their advance.  Not a good thing...

Stay in Command Radius:  This is much harder on the defensive when you're covering more positions.  The Soviet squads were moving out of command radius making it too expensive to activate each team each turn.  This left a team stranded on an open road and they were constantly getting chewed up by GPMG fire until it was too late.  The only one routing into cover was the squad leader.

All in all a great time.  The "big" war between NATO and the USSR never happened obviously, but it makes for great gaming material.  This game was a great time and a good opportunity to fine tune my Seek Out, Close With, and Destroy rules supplement.  I could have played with jamming and artillery but that's not fun in a small battle.  Next I'd like to play a huge World War II battle with my Northeastern Europe forces, armor and maybe even airpower.  Also have my Vietnam forces to play with and can include airpower and helos.  Cant wait.

11 comments:

  1. Great looking game, looking forward to more battle reports.

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    1. You got it, KG. I'm thinking of playing the "Rolling up the Stick" scenario from Blood and Guts book, but set during one of the late war jumps so I can have a JagdPanther in the game!

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  2. what make is the fig changing the smg? cool pose. nice game with not a horde of pieces

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  3. Tsold,
    They are from ESCI and not easy to get anymore. From the NATO Troops set Here is the link from PSR:

    http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Review.aspx?id=110

    I like playing with a little over a platoon on both sides. Makes for good solo play and I don't lose track of all my resources!

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  4. Nice. The pictures told the story very well. Look forward to your next write up.

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    1. Sean,
      I thought so too. Much better looking at cool pictures than reading endless paragraphs.

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  5. Great AAR. Enjoyed the flow and the photos immensely.

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  6. Lovely! The tash on the Sterling's pose was well worth the post by itself!

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    1. This was the early 80s so I thought it was entirely appropriate!

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  7. Do you have any of the DH profiles you used for the troops or vehicles for WWIII? And if so could I get a copy?

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