Firestorm: Red Thunder

Quick Mission: Recon in Force
60 points

Introduction

So after a few Quick battles, we felt that the 60 points and quick missions work well for us, but the tables felt a little bit clustered, so we decided to try them on 6x4 table. Also we wanted to try another of the unique scenarios and we chose Recon in Force which felt interesting after reading it but we did not realize few things until we started the game as you will see later.

Hauptman Weber was looking through his binoculars observing the village from a nearby hill.
His troops ware already moving in cautiously.
His task was to secure the village of Tornau before the Soviets move in.
There was not much time left as there were several reports of Soviet activity.
And there they were. He saw some BMP-2's moving slowly through the fields towards the village.
He got back inside of his Marder and closed the hatch.
"Zu allen truppen: Schnell, in positionen, feindlicher einkommen", he shouted to the radio and commanded his driver to move towards the village.

Deployment
We placed the objectives and I won the roll for who attacks.
I started by deployment thinking: "how the hell am I gonna get all my 30 vehicles into such small area", but then my opponent reminded me that I forgot about spearhead. And that meant all the difference. With 3 spearheading units and the daisy-chaining, I was able to spread across the whole length of the table and my infantry platoons were prepared to move in on three different objectives right on turn one.

My opponent also used spearhead to move outside of his deployment area, but as he only had one unit, he wasn't able to spread so much.

First Turn
So right after deployment, I realized, that I can win on scenario pretty fast with the advantage of spearhead and first turn. I was able to get my infantry to 3 different objectives by blitz + tactical move and I was also able to dash my Marders to the central objective. There wasn't much shooting from my side as lot of things just dashed. But between Gepards and Leopards, I was able to kill two BMP's and three infantry stands.

So my opponent had a difficult task right from the get go. He had to push me out of at least 2 objectives or contest them with a strong position so that I cant push him out on my turn. With him deploying lot of thing at the back, it was really difficult. He moved one of his T-64 platoons to be able to kill my Marders on the central objective and than he moved his infantry towards the left and central objectives. Rest of his army positioned to be able to kill as many things as possibly (he focused mainly on me Leopards). In the end, he was able to get rid of the Marders he needed to (killed one, bailed one and the last one ran away), but there were just 7 teams close to the left objective and only two or three were within 4 inches of the objective. He also managed to kill two Leopards and bail another and bailed a couple of Luchs and Marders.

Second Turn
So I was still in a great position to win right on this turn. The Marders on the central objective were out, but still, basically all I needed to do was to kill his 7 infantry stands. So I ignored the rest of his army and just piled all possible things in the middle to maximize the shooting. And boy was it needed. My opponent's dice just went bonkers. He made 28 out of 30 saves and I was running out of things to shoot at him pretty fast. But then the luck finally abandoned him and with last dozen shots, i was able to kill 4 teams and seal the deal. His remaining infantry failed their morale and I was holding 3 objectives, thus winning the game.

Hauptman Weber was looking as the soviets were laving the field.
Luckilly, it was just an enemy spearhead, and once they realized that the village is well defended, they quickly withdrew.
He listened as the casualty reports were coming in. It wasn't as bad, but he knew, that this wasn't the end. This war was far from over.

Conclusions
So as I said right at the beginning, we didn't realize how big of an advantage going first with spearhead would be in this scenario. We discussed it a lot afterwards, and agreed, that playing at 4x4 would not help much. If my opponent deployed and moved more aggressively on turn one, it might have been a bit longer game, but it would still have been pretty hard for him to push me off of the objectives without loosing his army.