Friday Night Game WWII Iron Cross Rules

Chris, John and I joined Julian for a late war encounter between US and German forces. The aim of the Americans was to get at least one of their two Sherman tanks off the road at the German end of the table. The German aim was simply to stop us doing so! All German troops were concealed until they either fired or US troops got within LOS eg if we entered a wood and the Germans were already in it. John and I (US) did not know what the Germans had by way of infantry numbers or support, BUT we did know that they had some armour, as they would start rolling after the first exchange of fire, 6 to get the tank on that turn, 5 or 6 next turn etc.

All the figures and terrain etc are Julians.

Table lay out - we had to get at least one tank off the road in the top left corner.

A few close ups of the very nice AB Figures 20mm US infantry

John and I each had a force of three "squads" of infantry, a command, a mortar and HMG and a Sherman 76mm tank - 8 command tokens per force.

Mortar and HMG support

Early on, Chris revealed one of his infantry squads, and exchanged fire with my leading unit.

The US forces advance cautiously.

My infantrymen rebuffed Chris inflicting a slight loss, but having exchanged fire, he rolled a bloody 6 and on came a STUG III!

John moves up through the woods - the Sherman managing to avoid becoming bogged!

Julian revealed an HMG team and opened up on the US infantry on the edge of the woods (the green and red markers are order tokens, not hits!)

I obviously missed a few actions as Julian had a platoon of infantry in the woods who rebuffed one of Johns platoons, but I sent support across the road to take them in the flank, and a fresh unit from John's command advanced too - between us, we drove them back with 5 (maximum) hits. Next turn, I got a couple more hits on them and they were wiped out. John had already taken out the pesky HMG with his mortar.

Chris had now revealed a PAK in the woods next to the lurking STUG

ZOOM! John had moved forward out of the first wood when Chris advanced rapidly (20" on a road) and put a shot into the flank armour....BOOM!

With only one Sherman left, we sent more infantry forward to clear our left flank of German opposition.

Chris repositioned the STUG to the German right/our left, ready to take on the remaining Sherman.

The infantry clears the last wood before the German held buildings, blocking our exit route.

"O'Malley, git that bazooka over here, double quick" 

"Roger that sarge!"

BOOM! PFC O'Malley takes out the STUG/

Unfortunately, at this point, Chris had to go and we decided that at 10pm+, we might as well call it a day. The US were winning the infantry firefight and the Germans would possibly have succumbed to our small arms fire - they still had two AT guns available but potentially we could have worked our way around to killing the crews with the infantry, then getting the surviving Sherman off - or perhaps, the Germans would have got in a lucky shot with a Panzerfaust....certainly at the point we had to stop, things could still have gone either way. 

Good game, shame we didn't have another hour to possibly reach a conclusion, but I think everyone had fun, and John Chris and I, plus Rick, will be doing another WWII game tomorrow, once again play testing Andrew's rule system, so another AAR in 36 hours or so!

Finally, here are a couple of Warlord hard plastic Blitzkrieg Germans I have trial painted.

Thanks for dropping by, hope all is well with you, wherever you are and whatever you are up to this weekend!