Firestorm: Red Thunder

Lunch time (long lunch time!) and time to take on Aaron's beautifully-painted Americans with my somewhat-painted East Germans (plus a few reinforcements from the work collection).

As part of the studio campaign, I elected to switch to the north after my defeat in the south, so attacked Hamburg.

We used the Battle Plans and ended up playing Breakthrough. Aaron chose to defend the woods, so I deployed on the better protected flank and prepared to race behind the town to avoid Aaron's tanks.

My first turn didn't have much shooting aside from a handful of MG and Gremlin shots at the helicopters, some botched attempts at firing Spandrel missiles at an M1, and a rocket bombardment on the M1 HQ that achieved little. Still, the mad dash had gotten most of my stuff out of the line of fire.

Then I remembered the Hinds and opened fire with them knocking out an M1 and bailing out another.

After scoring first blood against him, Aaron returned the favour multiplied. His tank refused to remount, but his HQ shot up my AA, while the Cobras and the other two tanks made a mess of mine.

Meanwhile, his VADS anti-aircraft had arrived and dashed into cover behind the M1 tanks, hoping to stop my hinds.

My infantry continued their advance through the town, and found a pleasant surprise as the VADS seemed unaware of their presence. A Spandrel opened the score taking out one, then a very lucky fusillade of RPG rockets finished off the other three! The SU-122 Carnations playing assault gun missed out their opportunity to add to the score.

The Hails had dumped a load of smoke rockets in the centre of the town, screening my continued tank advance, so the tanks continued on, blazing away at the Cobras with their machine guns. A few holes for the mechanics to patch later, but nothing else achieved.

To round off the turn, the Hinds scored another M1!

With no reserves, and worried how long his tanks could hold out against them, Aaron turned his Cobras (who seemed to be almost immune to AA weapons!) against the Hinds, hitting one with a TOW missile, to no apparent effect.

My first reserves turned up, and the BMP scouts moved on to the objective, well half of them did! I failed lots of Cross checks this turn!

The tanks moved into the centre of the town and the infantry moved on to the town objective, coming upon a bogged down M1 that had gotten stuck while trying to get cover from the Hinds.

Their RPGs were ineffective, but the handful of intrepid soldiers assaulted anyway, capturing the bogged down tank. The one hiding in the woods had been bailed out by the Hinds, so had to test, and quit the field.

Aaron followed his failed Unit Morale test with a failed Formation Morale test (having just his own tank still operational after his wingman bogged down!)

With that, the schnapps came out and a victory was celebrated by all, except the T-55 company who had apparently gotten lost following the BMP scouts!

I felt quite lucky to win at that point. Although Aaron was pretty beat up, if he had passed the test, he would have had six Abrams attacking me in a pincer move! I'm not sure he could have evicted me off both objectives in time, even if he finished off my tanks, but it would have been much bloodier.

So, back to the map and Hamburg falls!

Sorry about no link or lists, but it's 5:30 Friday, so more on Monday!