Blitzkrieg Commander: third rules test - 2 April 2011

Having now played a few Encounter scenarios, Andy and I thought we should try an Assault scenario.  Here the attacker has 50% more points than the defender, but the defender can spend up to 10% of his points on hasty defences.  Given my recent spate of model-making, I was keen to be in defence.  This was a fictitious scenario: the attacking Germans had 3300 points (having got +10% on the modifier roll) against my British with 2000 points.  So here's what 200 points of hasty defences look like wrapped around 1800 worth of army on a hilltop:

You can just about make out that I've rebased all my Command stands on to discs - 60mm diameter for CO, 40mm for HQ - which I think helps them to stand out better against the other rectangular based units.

Andy's deployment was mobile and all but one command arrived on the first turn.

Andy had a good mixture of infantry (in trucks), infantry guns, tanks, engineers, artillery and aircraft, and put the artillery to immediate use.  One of my Grants destroyed a truck which led to the German infantry advance going into reverse gear.  Andy's fourth command came on the table but immediately blundered, resulting in a half move backwards.  Andy then sent his Stukas to bomb the British.

We then discovered that Command units have anti-aircraft capability as well as the formal anti-aircraft units, and Andy's Stuka was coming into bomb near one Bofors, the CO and 4 HQs - so they all rolled to shoot it down.  And they did... right into the minefield:

Very quickly joined by the second, and final, Stuka...

As Andy closed in, firing regularly with his Tiger 1, 88 and Infantry Guns, we also exchanged artillery fire - with limited damage on the German troops but with increasing pounding of the British trenches.  The British FAO failed his command roll again and again but the Germans were ruthless, enhanced by Andy's cunning tactic of having two FAOs.  The COs view was looking pretty grim...

Andy's troops eventually reached the wire and the tracked vehicles breached it.  German Elite troops sneaked through the gap at the edge of the table I'd left, and attacked the Brits in the trenches.  At this point, the breakpoint of the British battlegroup was reached but one turn later than that required for a Major Victory, but still a Minor Victory for Andy and the Huns, who only lost a lorry and two half-tracks (and two Stukas!).

Learning points:

• multiple FAOs are a great idea
• FAOs and FACs are Command units, so they are not part of a formation, they can move virtually e.g. across barbed wire, and (apparently) cannot be directly targeted so can't be chased away if (for example!) you happen to have all your units behind minefields and barbed wire
• the minefield would have been better deployed to one side rather than the middle, and then I could have deployed to the front and the other side, and got much of my units into the conflict
• be careful with airstrikes where lots of commands are close together

We had a few queries which I'll post on the BKC forum to try and get some clarification.