After several games of my Soviets against Simon's Americans we thought we'd have a change and try the BAOR against the Americans, after all it could be an exercise rather than an actual battle in preparation for the cold war going hot!
The first thing I noticed was that you get an awful lot less British than Soviets which meant that with limited forces almost everything I have painted got used including two RAF Jaguars (though not the two Harriers I have as well).
The British are arriving from the right, the Americans on the left:
Chieftains in the centre flanked by infantry in FV432's:
The Americans:
With the Americans having made little progress (Simon's Americans seem to love failing command rolls!) the British continue to advance with the infantry taking cover either side of the Chieftains:
More movement in the face of American inactivity:
Finally some action as an A10 strafes the Chieftains but is driven off by AA fire:
The RAF retaliate but miss their target:
Chieftains press on, in the distance the American tanks await the enemy:
An artillery strike hits the Chieftains:
Four tanks take hits:
The A10 returns, adds a few more hits and suppresses some of the tanks:
Demonstrating excellent combined arms tactics the American tanks pour fire into the left hand group of Chieftains. Hits and suppressions mount:
They also overcome their command problems and manage to continue firing:
Three Chieftains are forced to withdraw and five are suppressed but the resilience of Western tanks results in none actually being knocked out:
The Jaguars return but are again off target. Not a good day for the RAF!
The next A10 also misses though:
US and British IFV meet across a hedge!
More US IFV have moved up into the central wood, unwisely as it transpires with four out of five being taken out by the remaining unsuppressed Chieftains. In return the American tanks finally knock out a single Chieftain:
It's not a good day to be an infantryman as two FV432's are knocked out:
As it was getting late we called it a day at this point with the action undecided, the Americans had lost six IFV to the British two plus a Chieftain so honours were declared even and both sides withdrew to contemplate the lessons of the day!
Simon combined his artillery, aircraft and armour well but even so the resilience of Western tanks made it hard for him to convert this into knocked out tanks. He also suffered from dismal command rolls as he seems to in every game with the Americans, they really don't seem to like him!
From my point of view looking back it is interesting that after the games with the Soviets I have developed a rather Soviet way of doing things which I didn't change here! The Soviets get a significant command bonus if everyone does the same thing hence that's how I play with them. This time I'd have benefited a few times from the flexibility of allowing some of a command to do different things ( some move, some fire for example) but I didn't think of that!
I'm also interested in how you make ATGW work (they have not done much in our games so far) and the use of ambushes. Finally I must paint up my British artillery and add a few more bases I think to up the choice for the army a little....
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