A few weekends back I plowed through a brand new US army my Dad. We are gearing up for a tournament at the end of August and he desperately needed to get a practices game in to shed the BA rust from his treads. Opposing his US GIs was my army of veteran grenadiers supported by engineers (no flamers-lots of SMGs)
We rolled on the missions chat and got Top Secret. At first I was not too excited for this, but we haven't played Top Secret in a while and my dad was learning so we went with it. We placed the yellow VW in the middle of the board near the fork crashed into a road block. The passengers, a German staff team had been killed in the crash as they fled the approaching allies. A German patrol had been sent to find out what happened to the staff team and ran into the pursuing Americans.
A German MG-42 crew sets up to cover the approach to the VW. On the first turn 7 of my 12 units failed to pass moral and come on. Note most these guys were veterans.
The Americans rush forward in a truck and deploy, while a scout car moves in to support them.
Two more squads of GIs and a Sherman move down the other road.
My other MG-42 sets up to prevent the Americans from flanking me around the house.
A squad of grenadiers move up and la down fire on the Americans over the hedge.
The middle of the board started to get clogged with troops pushing toward the VW. This half track was loaded with two squads of Engineers with SMGs.
The German infantry used the Panzer IV to cover their advance toward the VW.
The Americans snuck their 37mm ATG into these woods.
More Americans arrive to support their attack. The lead squad then grabbed the objective.
The Panzer IV takes several hits and quickly loaded up with pins.
My grenadiers catch the scout car with its pants down and drop grenades in its open top.
The commander of the Panzer IV loses his nerve and falls back. This ended up being a good thing. The Americans had targets the Panzer with an airstrike and by backing up it several of my squads ended up being than 12 inches away and out of the planes affected area.
A fighter comes screaming in and strafes the Panzer IV. It is not strong enough to kill the Panzer, but it puts enough pins on the Panzer to break the crews will.
The German's launch another assault against the GIs holding the objective. It causes several casualties, but the Germans are wiped out.
Meanwhile these Germans launch and assault agains the survivors of the GIs who deployed from the truck. We got the same number of hits and had to go two rounds of hand to hand. The Germans ended up winning with only two figures left.
The lone survivors.
The Americans squad holding the objective is wiped out and the Germans send a unit forward to secure it. The US commander then threw two more squads forward to chase it down.
The Germans then transfer the objective to the engineers in the rear.
The crowded centers because an arena of death.
Another assault goes two rounds and the Germans win again.
The US commander takes matter into his own hands and wipes out the remaining Germans.
A mortar round hits the last American squad, but only does one casualty.
The German officer grabs the objective going into turn six, but the Americans call an airstrike down on him.
Meanwhile a grenadier squad moves up to delay the advancing Americans.
The US airstrike comes in and vaporizes the German commander holding the objective.
This is followed up by a direct hit from a mortar which takes out the last US squad.
So the Americans respond by putting a round into the Pak 40 and knocking the gun out.
The US commander is assaulted by the last four grenadiers and is killed.
The last engineer squad picks up the objective and makes a break for the board edge, but end up being an inch short of getting off the board. We failed to get a turn seven and the game ended in a tie. This was an epic game. For me it felt like my Germans where fighting and strategic withdrawal after contacting the enemy. I enjoyed it so much that I might play top secret again in the future.
