PBI Disaster

I played a game of PBI against Graham at the club yesterday. I am not going to make any excuses. I was completely outplayed. The dice gods were not kind, nor were they totally horrid. It was a combination of Graham playing very well and me playing badly.

My American Infantry company were in defence and his German Infantry company were attacking. Graham had a bit of luck with the set up and the terrain favoured him and moved 2 of the three game objectives to as close to his start line as it was possible to get. This was my first mistake. I should have anticipated and set up better. I then decided that I needed to get at least one objective back so set my troops up to counter attack one of the objectives. Then Graham unleashed his artillery and pinned all those troops. Unable to return fire he used his usual German MG rule and brought fire to bear on the defenders to the extent that I was both pinned and bearing casualty markers and my "Gifted" Platoon commander was also dead.
My turn came and I also used an artillery strike against a whole platoon of infantry moving in the open. It landed on target, so they would be pinned next turn, but despite the lack of cover only a single casualty. With all my infantry "pinned" and with casualties and without a leader they were all on one action pip so it was either try to remove casualties, try to remove the pin markers or get one shot back. The platoon did manage to remove 2 of the three pin markers which just set them up as target central on Graham next turn. I also had 2 Shermans on the board (66 points out of the 400 total force points so good value I think). The motivated badly and each was able to fire the main 75mm gun once and a Machine gun once. One tank had no effect, the other have very limited effect. I rolled for reinforcements. Each Platoon off table rolled 9 d6 and each platoon only scored 1 6 so those troops were not interested in coming to play just yet.
 On to turn 2.  Graham shoots the guys in the trenches and foxholes and that platoon drops to over half casualties, with no leader and parts of it "Pinned". So he rushes some troops forward and takes the trench, with 3 casualty markers in it so they would have to stay on the table and could not be removed unless I could retake the trench. My Pinned troops could not move so that would leave a tank to take a trench with Panserfausts and Panserschreks in it. So that was not going to happen! Given that Graham had free troops over the other side on the board he rolled high for the action pips and managed to get them adjacent to the last objective.

Ok I thought I'll see how the next turn plays out for me and take it from there. My Infantry did not break, but neither could they do anything so it was all down to the two medium tanks. on 2d6 they both managed to roll 5 each time. so I did my best, but they ended up doing "Diddly Squat!". So I thought I'd roll and see if I could get any reinforcements. As it happened 1/2 a support platoon did decide that they could arrive as did 2 pieces of artillery....... but at this time it was too little too late! I would only be able to put them on the table edge and Graham would get a free turn in effect. Then with far less troops I would need to take back all three objectives. So I conceded. I was totally out played, and I have to admit it was my fault. Nothing I can say will change that. So well done Graham, I have learnt a couple of valuable lessons so I should play better next time. (Yeah right!)

I am not going to say it was a good game for me it was a disaster! I don't even think Graham particularly enjoyed it as there was no real element of challenge in it. But sometime games play this way and we will play again as we both know the rules work really well most times. Oh well enough said, you can't win every time. And if I did wargaming only to win I would have given it up many years ago!

SO here is a quick heads up as well. These glass beads, very similar to those used by wargmers in certain games are available in TESCO's for a mere £2 a pack. The packs are considerably larger than those in wargames stores and at shows and for the price are a real bargain. The down side is that they only seem to do Black, White and Clear. However for the price it is a good set of game markers.

That's it for today, I must get painting as I want to show some TAR7AN figures on Wednesday. So until then "Keep Calm and roll the dice!" Best wishes Clint