Rommel Mid War American v Germans

We played the second game of Andy and I's Rommel mini-campaign last night. I went for my full army list of 108 points while Andy had 94 points worth of Germans.

With a 12 point difference in the lists Andy chose Scenario 5 'Recon in Force' and defended. In this one the attacker has to capture three of five 'real' objectives by nightfall with the defender also being able to place four dummy objectives.

Most of the terrain ended up on Andy's side of the table and he deployed concealed to cover all the potential objectives. The Americans deployed their Infantry CC in the centre and the Armoured CC split on either flank:

The American Armoured CC advanced quickly on the right and assaulted one of the objectives in the town:

On the left the Americans began to sweep away German delaying forces:

The Americans also push forward in the centre:

American Infantry pushes forward into a wood in the centre:

On the right the Town has been taken but the objective is a dummy and the Americans press forward:

On the left the Americans are being held back by the German defenders:

Another dummy objective has been captured in the centre:

On the right the Americans have broken through the German lines and are beginning to outflank the German line. Both sides are taking losses with several German units being destroyed:

The Americans continue to attack all along the line:

The Germans are forced back into a small pocket of resistance based around the three 'real' objectives they still hold. The Americans have captured two 'real' objectives and all the dummies, will they be able to capture another before nightfall?:

The American assault on the objective town on the German baseline and another objective in the wood on the left begins:

Nightfall in close as the Germans desperately hang on:

The battle will now be decided in the town, the attack on the woods failed so the town is the only option for the Americans now:

A last-ditch attempt by the Americans to take the town before nightfall fails as a few German infantry survive the assault despite seeing many of their comrades dispersed:

Victory goes to the Germans as night falls!

This was a really close game with my last attack on the town having a 50% chance of winning the game for me. I inflicted massive losses on the Germans but they held their nerve and Andy skilfully constricted his lines to conserve his forces as the game went on.

The thing I really love about Rommel is that it makes you think about the strengths and weaknesses of your army and the oppositions, what you need to do to win the scenario and what the enemy might do.

Given the weakness of my tanks for this game, I chose two army level heavy artillery and one medium artillery attached to the Armoured CC. This gave me the option to add 11 strength points to any attack made by the Armoured CC once per turn.

I also changed the way I attacked. Previously I have gone for more tactical phases rather than using tactics so much. In this game for each of my turns pretty much I just had one tactical phase and chose one attack to concentrate on, adding all the artillery into the combat and using the maximum number of uplift tactics I could.

While this gave me less tactical phases it did result in the attacks I concentrated on doing a lot of damage, often inflicting four or five hits on the Germans and allowing me to capture positions before Andy could reinforce them. On the downside of course my other attacks were weakened but still did some damage so I think as a plan it worked well.

Our next game in the campaign will  be Late War 1944 in Normandy which will give me better quality tank crews. The Germans will have weaker units so the big choice will be to try to attack or defend especially as two scenarios won't be available (we agreed not to play the same scenario twice). 

Time to draw up a new list and make a plan!