PBI US Attack.

I played another PBI game at the club yesterday. To the right is a picture of my initial deployment. My force was 2 platoons of U.S. Infantry (only one arrived in time to actually fight), a support platoon (3 light mortars and 2 HMGs) and 4 M10 tank Destroyers. As it turned out my opponent had no armour, but did have 2 pak 40's so all the points on the Tank destroyers was pretty much wasted All I could use was the speed and machine guns they had. Still at least they got an outing and it did scare my opponent. I was attacking the dug in Germans and the terrain generated was so tight that there were very few clear fields of fire. The fields of fire were easy for me to identify though as they had an anti tank gun in heavy cover at the end of them. The game started well for me and I reached one objective in my first turn. My light mortars did a brilliant job and managed to drop rounds on the German Company head quarters and actually killed the company commander. What a brilliant start I thought. (It was not to last.)

Given that I seriously out numbered the Germans in the first turn it was hard for them to shoot back but when they did they made it count. I must admit I was concerned about the German Flame thrower in the HQ section but it never got to fire in the whole game. It was my number one bullet magnet. To the right is the centre objective surrounded by dense terrain. I grabbed it in the first turn, as mentioned above, but my primary objective was on my left flank as far as I was concerned this was a bonus, but not what I was actually after. My infantry platoon which were my only real attacking asset, the tanks were struggling with the terrain and support platoon is just that a support platoon, were taking quite a beating but still pressing forward.

The tank destroyers had no choice but to try to take the Pak out head on. The main guns just could not hit it but after 5 bursts from the tank MGs I did put it down which opened up the objective. This is where I made the big mistake! The major mistake in the game was that I took a turn to prepare instead of biting the bullet and pushing on. I took my foot of the Gas. Not all my force the German sniper had pinned my closet troops to the objective. But still I should have been more decisive. The result of the delay was that the German reinforcements started to arrive with more Light Machine Guns than anything else. Facing a hail of lead my infantry platoon was reduced to half strength and was in danger of withdrawing. At this stage it was pretty much game over for the attack. I could have used the support platoon to try to take the position but with only heavy weapons they were never going to melee well. So All in all I conceded the game, being unable to force the objectives. Oh well next time....

 

Other news: No one has objected to any of the three proposed show games. So I have the go ahead to get them started. Mentioning no names, but you know who you are, one club members face lit up when I suggested a Zombies Attacking Gypsy's show game. The role play guys from Friday night also want to play this game, as long as they can be Zombies for a change. But We shall now do a WW1 game, I shall start on it soon (after SELWG) and it will be blogged so you will get to see all the work involved.

 

That's it for today, thanks for reading and take care. Next post Wednesday. Cheers Clint

 

 

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