Road to War(fare) Pt6

So, with five days to go until the tournament, I've not really got any further since my last update! A combination of work being busy, along with a week dodging rain, fog and wind trying to glide has really put me back. I have, however managed to take my army to the gaming board for the first time!

Glider Aiming points

Having managed to convince Paul 'Tuffskull' Townsend to run a proxy Soviet Tankovy list (which he is planning to collect eventually), we decided to have a go at the Fair Fight scenario.

It felt funny to only deploy my two gun platoons, leaving Paul to set up his masses of tanks and infantry company(Platoon). I won the roll for first turn, and then it was time to land the gliders!

Having worked out that as long at the aiming point is 7" from a enemy team, I'll be able to assault. However, you've still got to be in command in order to charge. As you ignore the wings, its possible to minimise the spread.

In they go!

I decided to take on the infantry, and hope they fail their 'Zombie' roll (on a 4+ they can come back... gulp).

All that was left was to test the skill of the pilots in the swooping, silent decent onto the battlefield.

Oops. 

Apparently they were not very skilled at this yet, with three of the eight gliders rolling a 1 and crashing. Paul seemed happy at my misfortune.... until I saved all but one stand of infantry on a 5+. After shooting the AA mounted machine guns, (not from the crashed ones) it was time to charge in. This is the first mistake with the rules - I was taking skill checks to see if I could assault, when that's only needed to stormtrooper move if you're not assaulting.
Against the teams that are assaulting from a glider, the defenders count as being pinned down and bailed out for the purposes of defensive fire. The initial assault took out a few stands, and the artillery observer, driving back the main bulk of the infantry.

This combat would push back and forwards over the next few turns, but the intervention of the soviet flame tanks ending up with the Glider troops destroyed, but the soviet infantry company decimated and pinned down.

The left Flank crumbles

The other luftlandesturm platoon went for the tanks on the left flank, These guys fluffed their initial rolls, and ended up having to retreat, before being destroyed by massed machine gun fire.

The Stukas managed to kill a few tanks for the first two turns, but then decided not to come out to play for the remainder of the game - this would really hurt my chances of winning.

By this point, I had gotten so excited about the game I forgot to take more pictures... sorry!

The tanks were hesitant to advance into range of the Flak guns, so stood off, and whittled them down turn by turn. The Pak 36's achieved some great long range kills, including a whole platoon of 5 tanks in one round, and then moving forward to bring the Soviet iC tank into range - only to bail him!

At this point, I only had the two platoons of guns left, and no iC command stands. All I had to do was destroy one more platoon of soviets and they would be forced to take company moral tests. The battle of guns verses tanks went on, as I waited in vain for some air support. As the tanks reduced the Flak guns down to its command stand, they rumbled forward. The command stand passed its moral check (Although I forgot it would have had to take last man standing tests each turn - sorry Paul!). He promptly called forward his transport and made a break for the objective in the soviet deployment zone - it was right down to the wire, with the slow tanks yet to reach the objective abandoned by the Flak guns commander.

Then, my luck ran out, as the Russian iC tank un-bailed, and machine gunned the command stand transport, forcing the company moral check that I auto-failed.

All in all, a fun game, although as I expected, far from competitive - its the ultimate specialist list, so I'm not looking forward to many of the other scenarios.

Now I just need to get on with the painting!!!