I was a bit lazy so I just went with the exact same army, just that the firestorms were a bit different, the extra platoon of tanks got switched for some infantry. Not really useful but you get what you get. The Air Support is proving itself to be totally useless in this one but that is life also hah.
I don't have the German list but there was a platoon of 5 Veteran StugGs, 2 of infantry, some AA guns, and some anti-tank guns.
We rolled and got Forced Withdrawal, so the Germans were trying to slowly pull back. Figured I had a reasonable chance at it this time around.
Here we are after my first turn I think, basically moved up with everything and fired a smoke bombardment to limit the fire from the StugGs as much as possible. I decided to start with everything massing on the right side, actually I am starting to think this may be a mistake, but that's what I did. The Recon moved up to the river on the far right to block the Germans from ambushing that wood on the flank.
The Germans shifted down and started some firing, killed a few infantry stands and 1 Stuart so not to bad. The plane came on in the first turn and failed to range in, second turn got shot down by AA. Didn't get a third due to rain.
The StugGs were almost destroyed by this point, and the far left objective had been left totally open, so I decided to try sending the Stuarts after that. I moved them down at the double which was risky as I knew the German ambush would be forced to deploy, but I also knew they would have to be a long range so figured it would be worth a shot at the win. I kept pressing with my tanks and infantry on the right, infantry were starting to get worn down, but still good for Shermans so far.
On my turn I moved the Stuarts around to the side of the anti-tank guns and tried an assault. I hadn't got enough hits for a pin and didn't get any kills with my firing. But I need to kill them to be able to claim the objective, they will just kill the Stuarts otherwise. Unfortunately I was about half a cm out of getting totally behind their firing line so one gun got to fire in defensive fire and I lost both stuarts. I still think this was worth the shot, but should have been moving down there from turn 1 really.
On the other side of the table the last fire from the StugGs managed to kill 2 tanks which was not great for me.
On my turn I finally got rid of the SutgGs and pulled back the infantry so I didn't loose the platoon. The Germans then began to redeploy their guns and get ready for the next attack.
On my turn I put down some smoke and then made a pair of assaults with all the remaining Shermans. Both of them never really went my way. I did push the infantry back off the objective and pinned them down. But I was bleeding tanks to defensive fire hits from Panzershrecks and Panzerfausts. But I was on the objective now so there was something. I think my mistake was that this assault happened one turn to soon, if I had sat with all the tanks and fired I may have killed a few teams and would have been in a much better position.
The Germans used the far infantry platoon to mount into trucks and drive to contest the objective so they didn't loose. I shot them all down with machine guns, without much trouble and kept up the smoke to minimize the fire from the anti-tank guns.
But in return the Germans managed to know out my remaining tanks and my company broke. As you can see the last remaining German infantry is almost below half so really was a close game that could have gone either way. But in the end another failure.
We actually lost all 4 attacks across the river in the campaign, which is not super great. The river is very difficult to get across, and really negates the maneuverability bonuses of the American Shermans, you almost need a specailized force for this kind of thing but they aren't really available in this campaign. But the Canadian forces with amphibious transports would be super helpful!
Hopefully we can do better in turn 2.
Thanks;
Mike
I wonder how useful the Buffalos would be, there are 3 crossings that you could race across in halftracks (or even trucks) and not be in much more danger than the amphibious vehicles (and not have has many stands in one vehicle).
ReplyDeleteI have 4 or 5 that you can borrow if you want to try them out
Well you can only race across the bridge if they let you, the defender could put teams right up to it in most games as the river is set to the center line by the campaign. My experience with assaults across bridges is that the geometry is not good so you won't kill as many teams as you would like.
ReplyDeleteBut it's true the buffalo is super vulnerable, but I think if you combine that with a night attack it's ok and you can cross in a safer place and be more concentrated. The one army that can get them also has other good items like crocodiles and the breaching group.
I have lost to the river so many times now that it is almost becoming my white whale!
Thanks;
Mike