Hill 253.5 Ponyri July 1943

Comrade Bikkliski, AKA Dave came over today, I set up a game based on the scenario in the Rapid Fire Eastern Front scenario book, vastly scaled down to suit my current reduced table size, see previous report. We used Bolt Action rules, for the first time we had an artillery spotter to call down, what turned out to be a thermo-nuclear strike.
Both sides would start with half of their force on table, the remainder coming on in turn two on passing an order test with minus one off their quality/morale rating. One Soviet unit failed whilst two Germans ducked out, the Germans advanced using the woods for cover until the Ferdinand arrived, neither side was unduly worried for now, the Germans benefiting greatly by Dave's inability to get the MMG team firing consistently for, four turns was Dave?
On turn four the Ferdinand took out the Soviet Zis3, things were looking up for Hitler's boys, then it happened the IBM's, sorry artillery struck, BANG went the Ferdinand, MMG team, engineer squad and platoon HQ. With nearly 50% of the German force gone in one fell swoop it was really all up then, but as the Germans just needed to get one unit to the Soviet table edge we pressed on, the following turn the Soviets took out all the PAK38 crew, I now know why the are called "gun" shields, they do bugger all to help the crew.
I made one last bid to hurtle down the road with the one remaining squad that was not heavily pinned, only to be intercepted by the one uncommitted Soviet squad, coming under fresh heavy fire they decided to call it a day and scooted back the way they had come.
Some pictures of the game follow in no particular order.

We had a very fine visit to WMMS yesterday, a great show, diverse traders together with some jolly nice and varied games, both in scale and period/genre. A big thank you to Paul, Dave and the lads, who not intimidated by last years Beast from the East bought it all together again, here's to 2020. Dave has posted some pics of some of the games over on Tales From GHQ.

TTFN