WW II Update. Chris Lisanti and the San Antonio Texas FOW group met up for a Thursday night game of FOW.
Last night, Nathanael (Soviet Medium SP Artillery Regiment with SU-100s and SU-85Ms) attacked Evan (US Battle Weary Armored Rifle and M36 Tank Destroyer Companies) in a mission from Bulge American book called Elastic Defense. The mission is somewhat like No Retreat except that the objectives are back further, there are no minefields, and the defender can deploy in their table half except for a band between 16-28 inches from the back.
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The Americans deployed both their infantry close to the center line while keeping artillery and mortar support back. They elected for no ambush and put all 8 tank destroyers (4 Jacksons and 4 M10s) in reserve.
The Soviets pounded away at the infantry but they proved to be very difficult to hit let alone destroy. One platoon retreated into a wooded area while the other fell back a turn or two later. Although the Soviets were ranging in with both their 122 mm howitzers and Katyusha rocket launchers, it still took quite some time to start to wear the American infantry down.
Meanwhile, the tank destroyers came in rapidly from reserve and moved up into the two wooded areas trading deadly fire with the SU-100s and SU-85Ms who were mainly in the open although more difficult to hit than normal Soviets (4+ base to hit). In the end, the Soviets were hard pressed to push forward within 8 inches of either objective by turn 6.
Three SU-85Ms plus a few infantry stands made it on turn 6, but too many bazooka shots took their toll on the SU-85Ms (killed one and bailed one) prior to an assault which they ended up winning when the lone SU-85M had to break off. Again, large veteran infantry are hard to defeat when they are defending. Next week Team Yankee/WW III.
