Fought At Frankfurt
2426 days 21 hours 26 minutes ago
Battle Report
Onward to Frankfurt
100 POINTSThis is the second for us in the Team Yankee Firestorm campaign. This week both my son and daughter played and I filled the role as game master. In my role I tried to provide unbiased advice for both. They didnt always take it!! I spent the week painting up many models to bring them to game quality. I still have several steps to go on a number of models.
SITREP: Soviets have blasted through the Fulda Gap and are now threatening the industrial city of Frankfurt. While USAREUR forces are reorganizing, a company of West German Leopards with some infantry support have been tasked with slowing the Soviet Juggernaut as it approached the outskirts of Frankfurt.
Battlefield: The table represents a secondary highway on the East side of Frankfurt where it is a bit flater. This area of the country can see small industrial areas, farms, and towns.
Mission: We rolled on the More Missions PDF and the winner was… NO RETREAT
My daughter (now known as Emmy Dragon for AARs) elected to be on defensive with the West German force. Last week she was the US Force.
West German Panzer Kompanie
Leopard 2 HQ
Leopard 2 Zug (3 x Leopard 2)
Leopard 2 Zug (3 x Leopard 2)
Panzergrenadier Platoon (full size)
Luchs Patrol (2 x Luchs
FlaKpanzer (4 x Gepard)
Fliegerfaust Gruppe (4 x Redeye)
My son played under my Nom de Guerre as a Soviet T64 Battalion.
Battalion HQ (1x T64)
Tank Company (6 x T64 with Songster Missle)
Tank Company (6 x T64 with Songster Missle)
Motor Rifle Company (W/ BMPs and mid size unit 9x BMP 2s)
BDRM Recon (4 x BRDM-2; I like how cheap this option is)
AA Platoon (4 x ZSU23-4)
SA-8 Gecko (2 x SA8 Gecko)
Deployment
Emmy Dragon elected to take the city as the defender. The mission allowed her to have 4 minefields per 25 points. She deployed the minefields to limit the paths available to the Soviet Player. She kept the Gepards as the Ambush unit.
Turn 1: The Soviets dashed all units into the Fray. The West German Gepard Ambush lays waste to the Soviet BMPs killing 6 out of 9. I told me son to be careful! The Leopards and Milans had mixed results where they killed a couple T64, but bailed quite a few.
Turn 2: Soviets redeploy with the objective of hitting the left flank of the Capitalist Germans! The BDRM recon and Shilkas get a number of kills on the German Marders and Gepards. My son was fired up and stunned at the devastation at the same time!!
Turn 3: The battle started to turn into a slug match of attrition, but the Soviet Motor Infantry commander downed a bottle of Vodka followed by a bottle of Schnapps and then assaulted the lone Leopard in the forest (One was destroyed and another bailed). The Soviets assaulted from cover = no defensive fire. A soviet RPG finished off a Leopard 2 and the bailed Leopard quit the game!!
Turn 4: The Germans were not out of the fight. Milan missiles and a Leopard finished off one company of T64s. The Shilkas were bailed out and one destroyed plus another two T64s from the other company.
Turn 5: The German Redeye teams arrived to help contest the objective, and the slug match between the Leopards and T64s continued. However, the Soviet Motor Infantry kept advancing. In a moment of heroism 4 Soviet infantry run out into the street with their RPGs and take out the German Kompanie Commander.
Turn 6: Soviet Motor infantry annihilates the Redeye teams with a burst of fire and then assaulted a lone Leopard 2 for the win!
Hero of the Game… The Soviet Motor Infantry.
Comments: I was shocked how my son drove all my soviets right into the Leopards and then instantly become chewed up by the Gepards. I told him Gepards were really nasty cats that make Soviet children cry.
Nobody took the infantry as a threat until it was too late. The German infantry successfully holed up and held the objective. The Soviet infantry won two fights from concealed terrain killing 3 Leopards and one Leopard from a side shot. The T64s only killed one Leopard 2 and bailed two others. However, they were the focus of the Leopards instead of the stealthy infantry.
Shout out for my Blog
https://shermon.wordpress.com/2017/08/27/firestorm-red-thunder-onward-to-frankfurt/
Battle Report Author
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WelandWins
Always take the shot unless you are on the defensive and need gone to ground. Dont push the infantry out alone as the single target. Make your opponents have higher priority targets. The best combination is to have one of your tanks bail their tank(s) and assault the enemy tank for a free win of if you got enough soviet RPGs such as the larger group, the odds are higher when you have 7-9 RPGs concentrating on one tank. Never try this tactic on more than one tank. The odds are stacked against you.
I lost two FV432s playing Brits the other day that way. My opponent was the one who has been teaching me the finer details of this tactic!
Congrast weland!
I have never attempted to bail tanks with the infantry as I find it pointless, but I have to admitt, you are making it work!
I might actually start doing that in the future if I am lucky 🙂
One of the things I have learnt very well in my local meta is to bail single tanks and assault them. In all three cases where the infantry won against the Leopards either a RPG or tank shot had bailed the Leopard. The infantry then proceeds to assault the bailed leopard. In only one case was there an operational Leopard when the assault occurred. Emmy Dragon cursed my dice tower and never used it again, because she got 3 sets of snake eyes relatively close to each other plus a ton of other horrible rolls.
When I first came to Wiesbaden I played very ballsy with my tanks near infantry with AT because most infantry players are not that aggressive, but learned very fast to respect my distance and use the tactic back. Key is reducing defensive fire, number of operational tanks to one, and then assaulting out of cover.
Because tanks cant assault into buildings in TY and V4, it makes infantry deadly in a city environment. It is one of things that annoy us about V4. Tanks during WW2 would on occasion smash smaller houses and destroy the infantry or force them to retreat and even if they didnt smash the house the amount of firepower that could be pumped into them made them untenable. Now, you have to rely on tanks destroying or pinning down the infantry and assaulting with your own infantry. I do acknowledge that was the primary tactic used by combined arms.
Soviet infantry has no way to take out mbts unless they rolled a 1 for armor. Then they assault them. Well good game,either way.
Nice game, nice looking table
I guess it could be a very unlucky (for the WG player) series of dice rolls where 2 RPG-7s hit, (on a 5+) both cause a glancing hit (on a 1 for the armor roll) and both results in bails (on 5+ for them both), and the formation commander fails his remount save. (Rolls a 1 or 2)
Odds of all this happening are 0,33 × 0,33 × 0,16 × 0,16 × 0,33 × 0,33 × 0,33
= 0,01% chance.
Strictly speaking not impossible 😀
But that does detract from the fact that it’s a very nice report and good series of photos 😀 Commendation for that!
Good report, but I have the same question as M. Nisbet, unless he was bailed out there isn’t any way I think the infantry could capture him.
Another awesome report and a great table!
Wonderfull table. Thx for good batrep and nice pics.
To bad for WP wins 🙁
Good report, and good to see kids getting involved. A nice looking board too. I’ll rate you highly.
But I have a question: How did the infantry kill a Leopard with a side shot? Leopard 2’s have Chobham, meaning they have side armour 16 against HEAT weapons. Meaning they can’t be knocked out by any Russian infantry AT weapon.(except the Spigot launcher)