A Weird World War II Battle: Germans defend against the Soviet-US invasion.

Last night we had a game to test out the final version of the rules we'll be using. Since only four of us were able to show up we decided to have a 2 vs 2 battle, of Germans vrs an alliance of Soviets & Americans.

The German side was:

Totenkinder's Ahnenerbe: Small command squad, 2 Ahnenerbe squads (2 LMGs each) and 1 soldat squad of rifles.  3 Panzer I, a Panzer III and two Panzer IV walkers.  They also had the Gingerbread Man and Wulf in ambush.

German Counter Strike force: 3 infantry squads in half tracks, 3 motorcycles, a Pz38T, a Panzer IV walker, and two Panzer III in ambush, one with a howitzer.  No supers.

The Soviets had a serious horde of poorly trained & equipped infantry.  A T28, two BT7s and two walkers with 4 anti aircraft guns.  Note: I didn't realize they were anti-aircraft guns at the time. More on this later.
He also had The Soviet Bear, a super character.

The American force looked very small, but had mortar artillery, a couple snipers, camo'd anti-tank gun, and a squad of specialist in walker-suits: expensive and deadly.

The Germans were defending:

and from the other view:

The soviet starting position: That's a lot of troops!  I hope we brought enough ammunition.

The soviet bear:

The Americans:

We're using card activation now, which I like for the randomness of it, and not knowing when or if you'll be able to activate.  Others like it a lot less.  We'll be trying a modification of it next time, where every unit will have a chance to activate, but must roll to see if they do when their random time comes up. 

The German Counter Strike force opted for a very active defense: deciding if he defeats the Americans that will mean any defense is complete. 

Oddball, an American tanker in the heaviest walker suit:

The American artillery fell only once, to no effect, the rest of the battle, the radio operators Marge & Madge sat gossiping on the line. They're going to get a stern talking to from Rosie the Riveter you can be sure. 

I started taking shots on one of my Panzer Striders from Oddball, and since he had such good cover behind a house and assistance from a well entrenched anti-tank gun, my walkers went deeper into the forest and the other out of the ruins, behind the forest to get a better position against the Soviet horde. He'd disabled my main gun shown below, but the next action I'd repaired it and moved to take better cover:

The Soviet T28 and the Strike Force walker exchanged shots across the wide field until the T28 got the worst of it and released a column of smoke: X  <- right below this x is T28 wreckage. Nice shooting Karl!

Unfortunately the next action saw this walker destroyed by a lucky shot from one of the BT7s. 

On my flank, as the soviet infantry advanced I gunned them down: The Panzer I's were ideal for this, though I did lose one to fire from the BT7s: i kept trying to shoot them down with my Panzer Striders, but they made a lot of lucky armor saves, so it took some time.  One BT7 was taken out by a panzerfaust.  

When some of the soviets reached the bridge, Wulf charged them, killed half and the rest ran, only to be gunned down my my troops.  

To take out the soviet walkers in a breath of fire, Gingerbread man flew off only to discover those walkers didn't just have 4 machine guns, they had four anti-aircraft machine guns! So Gingerbread Man got shot out of the sky before having a chance to wreck havoc. Well, that's how the cookie crumbles.  (Sorry, I had to). 

He did have Regeneration, so the Bear ran up to snack on the sweet left over food, as bears will do, preventing the regeneration from working.  A bad turn, since those walkers would soon shoot up Wulf, leaving him on one wound. But his work done, and all soviets clear of a threatening position, and his rival, the Soviet Bear, far away back in the woods, Wulf decided it'd be better to retreat to the woods, lick his wounds, and wait for the next threat.  We're defending after all.  My troops defending the bridge got cut down, but the rest of my troops were well protected from them. If they came out further to get a better shot my walkers could pop them: the Soviets were pretty well held off.  

On the other flank, the German advance stalled out.  The motorcycles were destroyed and he was left with just two elements with anti-tank weapons to face the 3 remaining yank armored pieces. Hard to say how that would have gone down after the last turn: if he'd been able to give as good as he got before being eliminated then the Americans wouldn't have much hope of reaching the ruined keep in strength to take it from what I could bring to bear on them, but if the Germans failed to damage the Americans at all it could have been very different.  As it was, the last turn came up and the defense was complete. 

A good game.  It will be interesting to try out the modified activation system.  Also, this is a great simulation of an arms race.  Now that I see the Soviets have anti-aircraft guns and what they can do, I have to get my scientists to make some similar ones for my army.  I'm also going to need some artillery, but with operators who don't gossip as much as Americans do.  I also have some vehicle ideas for the Belgian Liberation Army to get them to a competitive size of these other armies, without breaking my theme, so I'm excited about that too.