Normandy Tank battle

A new feature I'm starting on my gaming blog is guest articles. For the first one my good friend John has been working out the kinks of his micro armour game and has supplied me with his latest work on a Canadian armour formation meeting to German Panthers in Normandy. Enjoy!

Here's the latest scenario I was playing with. I'm using Schwere Kompanie rules which once you get the hang of it is pretty fast and furious.  1 inch = 50 yds

The Canadians have been tasked with taking a ridge and advance with 2 troops of Shermans each with 4 M4's and 1 FireFly each.  Normally the troop would only have 3 M4's. They will have to cross an open field in order to reach their objective.  They have also been informed that there are 2 Panthers on the ridge.

Image 1 is the start line and the Canadians have the initiative.  Combatants are 30" apart or 1500 yds.  The Canadian plan is to hit the pedal and sprint the screen of M4's across the open ground as two separate battle groups with the FF's in support.  Max move for the M4's is 16 inches which uses all there action points for the turn and they will not be able to fire as seen in image 2.  Gutsy but let's see what happens.

 The Panthers get to declare  fire on the fast approaching M4's. 

P1 blows his roll due to the M4 fast moving target modifier.  P2 2 is luckier and gets a kill but the crew survives.  Panthers get a 2nd shot as they have only used 1/2 of their action points.  The Fireflies are curiously immobile.  P1 gets a hit and due to his roll suppresses his target and the crew breaks.  P2 gets a miss.  FF's advance half of their action points and are able to fire. FF1 hits and suppresses Panther but survives his break test.  FF2 fires to no effect.

Now it's ugly time.  This part is a judgement call as the easy targets are the M4's but the prize are the FF's.  I opt for the easy target and am able to kill 3 more M4's as they are the one's I've opted to move first. The rules are 'I go you go' and the Panther's have expended all of their action points but were able to fire twice. However notice that, hey where did those trees come from?  Notice that 2 of the M4's have advanced to a flanking position expending all of their action points. The FF's advance half of their action points and are able to fire which results in the death of one Panther.

Aspect from the Canadian side.

In the image above, Panther 2 decides to bugger off at this point in reverse using all action points and Canadians advance on their objective and get a lucky flank shot and kill the fleeing German. So ends tactical experiment 1 with a Pyrrhic Canadian victory with 50% casualties.  This was strictly a move and fire experiment to see if it would be possible to go Russian style on the Germans and overwhelm them in open ground at high speed. 

I found the rule set to be very easy to use and realistic and made for a fast and furious pace. I'm looking forward to adding other elements into the mix.

Hope you enjoyed.

John