4th armor Vs. Feldhermhalle (Encounter) at Game Castle

 Ted and I met up at Game Castle last night.  This was my first trip and I was impressed with the gaming space, Ted provided much of the terrain and I put down my housed and a bridge I have since the field was cut by a river.

Some one once observed to me that deployment is the first turn of the game and I would say I lost deployment.  I only had two Platoons available so I did one Armor and my Artillery. Ted was able to position two Powerful AT assets were they would have my tanks in a cross fire. To Make matters worse I won the initiative roll so I had fist move, so my artillery were not able to fire.  If they had the smoke bombardment might have save many tanks.

As it was I moved my men up and opened fire with smoke on the 88s for shots and not one hit I did kill one of Teds Pack 40s with shots from the CO but that was too little damage.  Ted was swift in his responce.

Ted killed three tanks with the 88s and got one more with his Pack 40s 4/5ths of a platoon gone in a single turn. I did manager keep the last tank alive, he even shot down one of the three planes that took a shot at me. Ted got his air support a lot but he didn't get any kills from it.

Turn 2 I covered the Pack 40s with smoke and had my surviving tanks run for the objective to the left side of the table as it was weakly defended. Ted did get my last platoon tank with a shot from the 88s.

Turn 4 I got my infantry platoon but the random arrival had them show up on the opposite side of the table from were I need them. So I used Truscott Trot to try and get them there.  They got shot up by the 88s as they were just in range I only lost 2 stands but they were pinned and did not unpin the next turn. At the same time my CO and 2iC were pushing to the left at the objective and were almost on it when... Ted got his reserves! Three Panthers to my Flank!

For the second time I thought I might well have lost the game!  Ted however managed to miss with all three of his shots on my Warrior teams. and I got my tanks the next turn.  They were at long range but two of them had side shots and we managed to take out two of the Panthers and bail the third.

Of course on the opposite side of the turn Ted got all three of his remaining platoons with Panzer JagerIVs and Panzergrenadiers now on the objective as well as Teds command teams the objective was no longer thinly guarded on the bright side the last Panther ran off. Unfortunately my CO was also killed.
Ted also had some recon that started driving on one of my objectives wile his AT guns sniped my Artillery with some success.

I pushed in with my tanks and was fortunate enough to kill the Panzer JagerIVs (Ted was unlucky with armor saves all night) while losing only one more Sherman and pushed for the objective.

The Time had come for assault and and I managed to kill most of Teds Panzergrenadiers with MG fire (Ted also had bad luck with digging in).  Ted's panzerfaust bailed one of my tanks and his counter attack killed another of mine but in the end he just didn't have enough men and I took the objective.

Ted was on the verge of potentially taking one of mine at the same time. I think I could have held it but maybe not as my Infantry were only trained, still since I would have won a the stat of the next turn Ted opted to concede .

The was a great game very close I thought Ted had me dead to right at least 3 times.  I would give Ted a slight edge on Generalship and especially complement his excellent initial deployment. I played aggressively and had Ted reacting to me but he was constantly turning the tables on me great game.

There were a lot of other games being played Bergi, Bob, Richard and Frank were playing Warhammer Fantasy Ogres V. Dwarves. The Ogers were getting the worst of it "clubbed like baby seals" is I think the phrase Bergi used.