a tiny AAR on BBQB

[laxx]

Scenario: Quick Battle Meeting Engagement, PBEM

Map: Small, modest trees, small hill, rural

Points: 300 points Meeting Engagement

US: Low Quality Troops

German: Low Quality Troops

I chose to play German against my PBEM opponent, whom I shall call Mr. T. Mr. T is a competent player though in my previous encounter, he was quite aggressive in troop movements.

At 300 points, I choose Conscript rather than Green, the rationale being that in a small constrained map, firepower was important than manoevour.

My purchase decision was also influenced by what Mr.T would buy. Knowing that he was uncomfortable with Conscript, he would buy Green Troops. Good thing about playing at 300 points, you can make educated guesses of what the person would buy if you know the year and quality of troops. I wager that Mr. T would buy a Stuart, a Half-track, a platoon, lots of HMG and Zooks. He rarely bought ATGs or off-board Arty, so I doubt he would buy them now.

I bought the following:

1 x Conscript Platoon

2 x Conscript Panzershreck

1 x Conscript HMG

1 x Conscript LMG

1 x Green Puma

1 x Green H-39 Hotchkiss

1 x Conscript 75mm

1 x Conscript 50mm ATG

The following was my setup:

Next the terrain.

I was quite disadvantaged by the terrain, as it did not provide enough cover for my men, except a small strip in the centre, right and some scattered trees leading up to the victory location. Conversely, it provided excellent cover for my opponent, as the approach to the victory location for him was masked by woods.

Tactics

With this small map, 600 by 150m. I decided that once in position, the troops should not have too much movement thereafter but to setup ambush positions.

I decided to:

Fast Move the troops to the inner edge of the Woods.

Fast Move Panzershreck to the outer right woods

Hide the 50mm ATG but set up an Ambush marker

Fast Move the AFVs to the inner woods and rotate outwards providing cover against HMG from the enemy

My worry was that if the enemy decided to rush to the victory location, my then tired conscript troops would be routed, as tired conscript troops are apt to do.

By turn two, enemy fire was seen at on my far right. It appeared to be Zooks and HMG, my H-39 and the Puma soon started to respond. My Platoon Commander and HMG also started to respond to enemy incoming.

By Turn three, one squad + one support unit and one light tank (later found to be a PRIEST) was seen crossing towards the VL.

By Turn four, my 50mm ATG made scored a Hit! on the priest. And the enemy Squad and Support Unit was routed.

By Turn 7, I started to move the H-39 and Puma out towards the centre of the map, knowing that enemy armor was done. I knew Mr. T still had one Half-track left but he had difficulty moving between the woods.

By Turn 8, My H-39 killed the HT. By turn 12, the enemy surrendered.

Observations:

* Due to the conscript nature of my troops, the 75mm off-board arty was quite useless, and it appreared after turn 7 or 8 when the game was almost won.

* As the conscript troops tend to panic easily, I hid them most of the time until the enemy was in close range. Buying German Para was useful because of the higher firepower under 100m.

[Beta1]

Very nice. Lucky for you that your opponent was nice enough to drive the priest right up to the flag where you could kill it though.

Not sure about conscript level paras though. I have this picture of them being taken in through the recruitmnet office, a parachute strapped to them and then kicked straight out of a plane...

[Ales Dvorak]

Originally posted by Beta1:

Lucky for you that your opponent was nice enough to drive the priest right up to the flag where you could kill it though

[laxx]

no choice really. My troops where hidden in the lower half of the woods, which blocked the LOS from the priest. The Priest had to move to its left to get a side shot into the scattered trees on my troops' right flank. What my foe did not count was me buying ATG, which did the trick when the priest went over the ambush marker.

[Beta1]

Its difficult to judge the elevations from then pictures but I would have been far more tempted to leave the priest back near that building where it looks (from the pic) that it could fire into the wood with the flag. I would have been more worried about panzershrecks than ATGs though on that map so would have tried to keep it as far back that way as I could and still be able to area target into the woods. Then after whacking 105s into the flag for a few minutes would have dropped smoke to cover the gap and moved onto the flag (I normally take the brits so I always have some mortars if only 2"ers around)