This was a 600 point KG45 game with Germans defending the partly ruined outskirts of a German town. This was my first time using my new Yank stuff and Gary took the Germans.
It started well for the Germans with a mortar stonk landing squarely on the M7 Priest Battery and several well placed minefields caused further casualties. However concentrated tank fire on the buildings in the centre, backed up by the lucky arrival of a P47 helped to swing the balance, till the P47 got shot down...
Then the German Panther reserve turned up... and one promptly broke down, while the others steamed forward to engage the Jumbos. As this was unfolding the Yanks got their first toehold in the city with a unit clearing out two German units while supported by several tanks.
As the Panthers charged up they took out one Jumbo and then failed to do much, while US bazooka teams crept up on them. The German luck began to run dry when a valiant M36 drove into the city to catch the German command group unawares and promptly mowed them down with a burst from the .50! US firepower then took out a tenacious
MG team that had stalled the advance and as the bazooka teams opened fire, German morale finally crumbled.
In what had felt like a hard going slog, suddenly ended just as the Yanks were getting going, German morale crippled by Garys inability to draw chits lower than 4... Was a shame as it was just hotting up when the Germans legged it!
Automatically Appended Next Post: 
Another night... Another playtest, but this time with me taking the Soviets with Gary and Cyril playing the Germans. Wanting to try something different, I opted for a 'Russian' approach to a problem - Quantity.
We used 650 point armies for this game and the Escalation scenario.
German force with 120mm Mortar Battery (Off-Board) and a single High Priority Request;
Soviet Infantry Force with 120mm Mortar Battery (Off-Board), two timed 152mm strikes and a timed IL-4 air strike;
As usual, Gary wanted to kill a Tiger... As he hasnt got one yet. A cagey start from both sides saw little happen on turn 1, but on turn 2, two Tigers rumbled up to the crossroads... Which turned out to be the target for the IL-4 bombing run. A direct hit with a large bomb reduced one of the Tigers to scrap metal...
With a morale victory already, we were gonna call it quits there, but we carried on. As the Germans weighted onto our right flank, I put all our army onto our right and we rushed through the town. I convinced Gary that we would play it like Russians and with screams of 'Urrah!' resounding I launched an entire infantry company on a mad charge towards the Germans lines. Two more Soviet timed artillery strikes came in, doing little as few troops were in the area, but our mortars kept pounding away.
Then disaster loomed... The German FAO in his Panzer III lined us for his high prority request and whistled up a battery of Nebelwerfers to drop on us... As all our infantry were bunched up trying to leave the town it was a target rich enviroment to say the least. But it was Cyril rolling. His rounds went 'wild' and the target point scattered off the table...
With the charge about to begin I sent the KV-1s on a do-or-die mission and caught a Tiger in the flank... Much more of a surprise was when one round hit and penetrated the beast and we got our first Tiger kill from a Soviet tank! Much celebration was had though Gary, after five games of trying, was a little miffed he hadnt rolled the dice! We lost a KV-1 in the process but that seemed a fair trade...
We know sent in the infantry and did nothing more than launch the charge... We took some losses on the way in but our mortars lay down covering fire and the remaining KV-1s supported with their
MGs. Once close enough our infantry laid down devastating fire, and to add insult to injury, Gary used one of our Anti-Tank Rifle teams managed to hit the German Battlegroup Commander in his Tiger and his failed morale roll saw him suppressed from the gunfire!
With the mass firing over the German morale had broken and the Russians chalked up a convincing win, albeit with alot of luck and a fair bit of bad luck from the Germans.
