Hi Everyone,
I think it is time for the next battle report of me running my HG Assault Gun Battery list. So here it goes.
After the first game I thought I did a pretty good job stopping a US Tank company from overruning my positions. This time, I was about to be involved in some maneuvers against the 12 SS Panzergrenadiers. The mission was Dust Up. My opponent's list was:
We started off by rolling who gets to be the attacker and it was my opponent who got to choose his table quarter and nominate his reserves as well as deploy the first platoon. In fact, when he saw my assault gun horde on the opposite side of the table, he immediately deployed very defensively, putting his all his infantry with attached gun carriers and Barkmann on the table. His Brummbars, armored mortars and 8-rads were employed as reserves as he probably knew that he had to concentrate mainly on defending his own objectives as well as having mobile reserve units that could avoid annihilation by the ravenous StuGs :)
The fist couple of turns were only used to fire a few long shots with sexy sixes needed to hit and there was only some cautious maneuvering being done. Things only started getting interesting when first reserves arrived on the table for the 12 SS Panzer. My opponent decided these would be Brummbars. He measured his possible ways of escape from the trap set by the assault guns and learned that they were all covered by my tanks. With this in mind, he decided to sacrifice the unit and go for my objective. Funny part was, that I was not even aware that he could reach it with just a regular move and a stormtrooper. With no platoons able to contest it without a successful stormtrooper move, I felt a single drop of sweat trickle down my back :)
Fortunately however, I did not fail any of skill checks needed to get that extra 4" of movement and for a second, my objective was safe.
In the meantime, my StuH howitzers were failing miserably to disloge the dug in infantry and did not hit a single team even when their enemy decided to leave the safety of the foxholes and charge straight at them, backed up by Barkmann in his Panther.
In the next couple of turns the 12 SS Panzer were trying to keep the pressure up and even were close to a successful assault on the StuHs (with 2 of them bailed by Barkmann) but 6 shots of defensive fire were enough to stop and repel the attack! My opponent, harrased by the howitzer assault guns and my freshly arrived reserves had to go again on the defensive, especially after loosing the armored mortars to spawn-camping StuG units.
This is where I saw my chance to gain some momentum. I pushed all the PakPumas through a gap in his defences to target the Stummels and force Barkmann into a corner situation, but the armored cars whiffed completely and got devastated by return fire along with some follow-up assaults.
Things were not looking up so good for both of us so my opponent suggested we should call it a draw. I agreed under the condition that we treat the Brummbars, still roaming around my deployment area as dead but he declined. Two turns later, they were dead so he decided we should call it a game :P
I think with some better luck I might have pulled it off but this is when I started to realize that the big weakness of this list is that it cannot take on well-defended heavy tanks without some kind of support. I just cannot rely on being able to get side shots on the big tanks. But well... I kind of understood it even before the tournament.
1-1-0 to the HG Assault Gun Battery
Reksio
