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I had the great pleasure to fight judgedoug's DAK this past Saturday. Please see his DAK thread for his 1000 pt list and WIP pics of his awesome force. My force consisted of two platoons led by 2nd Lts with two sections of 9 riflemen and a NCO w/SMG plus a MMG and light mortar team. First platoon also had a Boys AT Rifle team and a Daimler Mk 1 AC. Second platoon was supported by a Matilda Mk II.

We rolled the point defense scenario and I suggested Doug attack given the mobility of his force. He agreed and we used some gun emplacements I recently ordered as the objectives, pretty evenly spacing them down the six foot length of our play space. Doug easily made the 2+ roll for preparatory bombardment, which put at least one pin marker on every single unit I had deployed, i.e., the heavy weapons teams and the vehicles. In the three following turns, I consistently failed my morale tests to activate any of these units other than a light mortar and the AC. It moved up and picked off a couple of riflemen in a DAK squad marching up to the British leftmost objective. Doug masterfully laid out his advance in the meantime, setting up his Pak 36 in the center while bringing is Panzer II to bear on my rightmost objective and readying a truckload to spear either center of left. He also called in a Luftwaffe strike which immobilized my Daimler, put five pin markers on it, and pinned my forces on my left objective who had only just gotten underway after the preparatory bombardment.

Here's how things stood at the end of Turn 3/beginning of Turn 4:Notice the pin marker on the Matilda. That's from the preparatory bombardment! The damn thing just wouldn't go, leaving the Germans to do as they pleased on their left. Here's another view, where some of my left is visible post-Luftwaffe attack:The Daimler was out of action for the rest of the game despite me trying to rally it every subsequent turn. Doug kept egging me on to bring over my officer from the center objective to give the AC a little morale boost but my motto is "never trust a Doug" -- especially when he has a MG-42 covering the path! It would have paid off, however, on the last turn as I rolled exactly what I needed to rally -- if the officer had been there. Then again, the AC was already immobilized and may have retained enough pin markers to make activation a problem anyway.

Turn 4 was the climax. DAK motorcycle troops came around my left flank while an 8-man squad came around my right. I tried to fend off the Kradschutzen but failed my morale test on box cars. The resulting FUBAR check saw my full squad shooting their compatriots who had just received German fire. Things look very bleak there. On the other side, things were pretty evenly balanced as the Matilda finally moved up just as the Pak was sighting her. I also brought on a squad to counter the flanking Germans. Noting I had already activated my MMG team in the center to try topin his MMG team, Doug took the opportunity to blitz with his Opel Blitz, right down the center, where his squad popped out and shot up mine, giving them another pin marker.

But finally I made a morale check and my boys remembered dear old Blighty. The assaulted the Germans and swept them away. That turned out to be the beginning of the end for the German advance. On my right, the Matilda immobilized the Pz II before being assaulted and immobilized herself by one of Doug's squads. I then shot them up from behind with the squad which had just held the center. Here was the final result on my right objective:I was pretty chagrinned to not have killed the Panzer II after two point blank shots to the side.

Doug was looking to pull out a draw by capturing the left flank, where his Kradschutzen had so effectively terrorized my riflemen. The survivors of the first section regrouped into the emplacement and fended off a German squad bearing down on them from ahead while the second section figured they'd better try shooting the motorcycle squad after practicing on their own men the last turn, resulting in only a single casualty but an important one -- one more SMG knocked out. Doug tried assaulting on Turn 6, but the Kradschutzen were wiped out by the second section even as the first evaporated under assault by the fanatical DAK officer:It was a tense game, with the British pretty well tied up until it counted.

Everything went according to plan until I deviated from my plan and tried to capture all three objectives in one turn. Had I sent the Opel Blitz w/ squad to one of the flank objectives instead of the center, I think I could have pulled off a win - definitely at least a tie.

Still, an excellent game! And the Brits are tough. That Matilda is pretty much invulnerable to everything I could historically field barring the Pak 36 - which took so long to get into position that it only had one shot (which it missed) before the Matilda moved out of line of sight. I definitely felt the pains that Early War Germans had when it came to dealing with British armor!

I think you would have taken either the left or right if you had sent that center squad there. But you may have even taken the center if I had not passed that morale check on my center section, which had two pins on them after they were shot up by your squad. It was not a bad bet at all.

I kept underestimating the amount of firepower a full British Rifles section can output!

So let's take apart the two squad selections we made:

DAK Squad, Hitler's Buzzsaws - 103 pts

NCO w/SMG
6x rifles
LMG + loader

4 dice at 30"
9 dice at 24"
11 dice at 12"
9 dice on assault

8th Army Section, Rapid Fire - 103 points

NCO w/SMG
9x rifles

0 dice at 30"
12 dice at 24"
14 dice at 12"
11 dice on assault

The downside of the British is they lose 2 dice on their first, fourth, and seventh casualties -- hence why I kept them off the board to begin with ... (that first casualty is terrible).

I also thought about this:

8th Army Section, Rapid Fire - 120 points
NCO w/rifle
7x rifles
LMG + loader

3 shots at 30"
12 shots at 24"
10 dice on assault

But that would have been so weak on the assault.

judgedoug wrote:Everything went according to plan until I deviated from my plan and tried to capture all three objectives in one turn. Had I sent the Opel Blitz w/ squad to one of the flank objectives instead of the center, I think I could have pulled off a win - definitely at least a tie.

I do that all the time in games. Make a sound plan and then abandon it. And usually abandoning the plan involves going for more than I can capture/hold.

Sounds like it was a fun game.

We both got caught up by how well his envelopment seemed to be going after three turns of my British basically doing nothing.