Echos of El Alamein – Uncle Sam Went to War

Martin back today with a follow up on how my Mid War Americans fared at the recent Echo’s of El Alamein event at Tabletop Republic in High Wickham. This was a 3 game, 1 day, 100pt, Mid War North Africa themed day of gaming, with a limit of 30 vehicles in your Force.

My Force and game plan are outlined in my article from August. I arrived nice an early so had time for a quick bacon roll and coffee and a bity of light shopping before settling down for a days gaming, along with Eddie and Lee from the Shoot&Scoot podcast and Mike from the barn, who had brought along a pile of desert terrain. You can hear how they both got on in episode 112 of the podcast.

Mike’s awsome train terrain feature – pity I didn’t get to play on this table

Game 1 was against Tom the store owner and all around nice guy, now in Toms defence FoW isn’t his main game, he is a Bloodbowl fanatic. Tom had an Afrika Korps Rifle Company with 2 full platoons with HMG and Mortar, 2 platoons of 5cm guns, a platoon of 7.62cm Anti-tank guns, a platoon of 10.5cm Artillery and two 8.8cm heavy AA guns, backed up by a platoon of Panzer 3 long barrel 5cm tanks. Tom not surprisingly chose Defend whilst I went with Attack and we played Bridgehead with me attacking.

I managed to spearhead all my tanks and the ARP behind Toms left flank. I then proceeded to smother all his now surrounded guns in smoke, rendering things a bit ineffective and due to most of it being forward firing it would have to move and give up its bullet proof cover, to make matters worse the 7.62cm are large guns and would now have trouble Ambushing me. My only assault was against the 8.8cm AA guns which I duely dispatched with my Sherman platoon thanks to a Folllow Me order.

Toms turn started quite well with his reserves of the Panzer 3 platoon arriving in the corner behind my spearhead position enabling him to confront me from both sides, he managed to kill a couple of Lee’s but his position was already looking in trouble. His ambushers were forced to deploy being large guns it was now or never but couldn’t get any effective shots off.

Spearhead allows me to completly change the balance of deployment

My turn 2 saw me dispatch the 7.62cm guns along with one of the infantry platoons and a unit of 5cm guns. The USAAF turned up and duely pumped shots into the sides of the Panzers destroying 2 and bailing a third, 6 dice and the extra point of AT on their 0.50 calibre guns makes a huge difference over a couple of standard AT4 .50 cal machine guns. Toms turn 2 saw him recover what was left of the Panzer 3’s and engage my ARP and Lee’s knocking out a couple of vehicles including my two HQ tanks, luckily I passed the warrior roll and he relocated to another tank from the second Lee platoon. This weakend the platoon a bit but meant I hadn’t lost a platoon yet. The remainder of his fire was ineffective again thanks to me having a second smoke bombardment to block the majority of his Lines of Sight to my easier to hit/kill targets with his AT guns.

The USAAF deal with Toms Panzer III’s

Turn 3 saw a further exchange of fire with me removing a 5cm AT and the 10.5cm artillery platoons from the game, this left a platoon of infantry, the HQ and the 2nd 5cm AT unit holding on to the objectives in the middle of the table, the Panzer 3’s were again engaged by the USAAF but with less effectiveness this time just 1 tank was lost to a combined air and ground assault from my 5 Bazooka teams. M my Green skill began to show its limitations here as I couldn’t hit anything in assault and despite putting all my armour into the infantry platoon I failed to push them back and ended up having to break off the attack. On his turn Tom wisely decided to hold his position and open fire with everything he could killing enough of the Lee’s to finish off the weakend platoon entirely along with my HQ platoon to ensure he scored 2 VP’s at least. Turn 4 ended the game as a contest with the remainder of the German Units being heavily mauled by a combination of direct fire and massed armoured assault, Tom held on for one more turn but finished the game with just a couple of Panzer 3’s in the cormer of the table as the might of the Arsenal of Democracy made its mobility advantage tell. Result win 7-2

Game 2 saw me play Charles whom I’ve played a couple of times before at events, on the same table as game 1. Another DAK Formation to be faced, this time with a rarely seen Panzer IV Formation, with HQ and 2 Panzer IV platoons all with the new 7.5cm long barrel and a Panzer 2 Platoon all with 3 tanks supported by a minimal Africa Rifle Formation with HQ, 2 basic platoons and a unit of 5cm guns – interestingly no artillery at all. This time the scenario was Valley of Death with me Attacking along the length of the table.

The German defenders get swamped

Charles split his force evenly across the table with an infantry platoon in each deployment zone covering the objectives one supported by the AT guns and the other by the Panzer 2’s, the majority of the Panzer IV’s were in Delayed Reserve. I massed my on table troops on the side side with the Panzer 2’s to render the AT guns ineffective, my aim being to overwealm the infantry and Panzer 2’s hopefully my Lees should arrive in suffiecient numbers early enough to hold off any counter attack and certainly before the Panzer IV’s arrive and even up the fight. I planned to use my Recce platoon to keep the AT guns away from the fight as they would need to make several moves to reposition to cover the objective on the opposite table side from their starting position giving my light troops a good chance to pick them off before they could do anything much.

Again I used a lot of smoke to screen my lead elements from any potential fire before I could get into range and my Reserves started to roll on to the table in Turn 1 which certainly helped. THE USAAF spent their time early on hunting down but not quite managing to eliminate the Panzer 2 platoon protecting the infantry covering my target objective. Sadly for Charles his reserves decided to not put in an appearance until Turn 4 by which time I had swamped his position with tanks and infantry – I luckily got all my Reserves on by Turn 2 and the game was over as contest in Turn 3, the mass of American armour simply rolled over the unprotected infantry. This game was a bit one sided to be honest, Charles tried his best to slow me up and we had a lot of fun but once the scenario was set he was on the back foot and the delay in his reserves arriving just made this even harder for him. Result an 8-1 win

Game 3 saw me playing Eddie who it has to be said has a very well honed Italian L6 Company Force (its an update of his ETC list from 2023) which he has played a lot with. He chose Manouver and we got Covering Force as the scenario meaning he got all his many, many tiny tank platoons on the table. Not so good for the Yanks, I would have been more comfortable had we got a scenario with Reserves. The USAAF obligingly killed his one Lancia 90 in Turn 1 and poor Luigi was returned to the tray after less than 5 minutes of game time! This sadly, was my highlight for the game. Despite managing to flank the Italian position I simply couldn’t push them back through a combination of failed cross checks and poor assault rolls, not to mention needing 6’s and 7’s to hit anything. Eddie effectively won the game when he won an assault by a quirk of the game mechanics, his platoon I was in contact with with broke off but his other platoons that were in the assault held but by being more than 4″ from my assaulting teams meant the assault was over and he had won it, so I had to fall back ending my attack and leaving me mired in rocky ground and exposed to the 8.8cm AA on the hill for no real gain. Eddie talks about the game on the pod cast where you can hear his take on it. I was wasn’t overly surpised to loose to Edddie with my list given the table and scenario. Having three 8.8cm Heavy AA guns on a hill dominating the board does tend to help control the game and again my low skill rating made life difficult. Result a 3-6 loss.

The rocky ground plays havok with my attack plan!

Over all I was pretty pleased with how the Americans played. No real surprise that Green Skill is a bit of a challenge especially in Assault where my ARP were particulary weak despite having 5 bazooka teams assault a lone Panzer 3 I still didn’t manage to do any damage to it thanks to an inability to actually score a hit. One aspect I was a bit undewealmd with was the ineffectiveness of my shooting I had a lot of dice but against Cautious troops you need 7’s or more to hit a lot of the time thanks to either the stabilizer or secondary weapon rule combined with gone to ground and concealment and this definately had a majorly negative impact on one or two occassions where I simply couldn’t amass enough hits to pin down platoons so I could derisk an assault on them which left me in positions where my Aggressive to hit rating really counted against me forcing me to run the gauntlet of too much defensive fire or exposing me to overwatch fire next turn.

As to the event it was great fun and I finished 2nd overall. Tabletop Repoublic is a great shop with friendly staff, a decent range of thigs avaialble to buy on the day and plenty of gaming space, its well worth a visit if you are in the area. We will certainly be back for future events. As to the American’s in MW they are a good Force but not a great one vs German’s they are more than capable against most builds but the Italians are always going to be a challenge if facing a well constructed list and you will need a little bit of luck from the scenario selection to be able to offset the advantage of their Cautious rating.

That’s it for now next I’ll be back to Project 716 and getting my D-Day Beach Defenders ready for Warfare in November. Martin