Firestorm: Red Thunder

We decided to play a rematch of the other day's game. We opted for Counterattack with the British Berlin Brigade as the defender and Filisteo's East German t72s as the attacker.

He rolled for night and he got Dawn. I decided to deploy Chieftains, infantry, Swingfires and Scorpions from the start. Swingfires were very useful because they are thermal and Scorpions would prevent the enemy from redeploying too close to the objectives. I hoped I wouldn't get reserves too early or the enemy would have been able to deal with them before being fully committed to the objectives.

He decided to move his BRDM recon in the unoccupied quarter to make room for his tanks, then pushed en masse towards the "empty" quarter. He didn't even try to fire as it would give his position away and his chances were minimal. His Shilkas snuck around towards my quarter to prevent me from redeploying my infantry towards the quarter with the other objective.

In my turn I didn't get any reserves, luckily, and decided to engage the only troops I could see, scoring a few kills. As his BMPs were going the other way I didn't fear any missiles and destroying as many tanks as I could was very important.

In his second turn his whole army was in the neutral quarter. He still wouldn't fire because of lines of sight and fear of retaliation.

In my second turn I got some reserves but I decided to bring the Abbots in because at that point in the game three Chieftains wouldn't have survived the wall of guns, missiles and infantry that they were facing, so I sent the artillery on a suicidal mission against the tanks' rears, which they managed spectacularly, killing two tanks out of 4 shots despite hitting on 5s.

At this point the sun rose and the game changed entirely. He rushed more BMPs and tanks towards the objective, which was only defended by the Scorpions at that point, but missed entirely. The Abbots, which were in cover, miraculously survived the hail of 50 cal shots at them.

In my turn I got the Chieftains, blitzed them in and destroyed a platoon of T72s. Meanwhile the Scorpions put down a few BMPs and the Abbots finished off the other tank platoon.

In the following turn the Germans destroyed two Scorpions, a Chieftain and 2 Abbots, but the infantry failed to unpin and couldn't press on the objective. This gave me time to destroy the Shilkas with my own infantry and redeploy my Chieftains to engage the remaining BMPs, destroying all but one. I got the Blowpipes from reserves as well, which successfully blitzed in and killed 2 BRDMs.

At this point the East German forces were on their last legs. The infantry unpinned and proceeded towards the objective. The remaining BMP accounted for another Chieftain and the 2 BRDMs destroyed two more Abbots but I passed the test.

In my turn I simply massed all the tanks remaining, Swingfires and infantry against the German rifles and shot the hell out of them. The Blowpipes killed the last BMP and the Abbot valiantly destroyed another BRDM, causing them to flee. At this point my opponent gave up.