Battle Report - 31 Jan 2011

"Tally ho, chaps..."

So, this week, down at t'club...

Cold War Commander - the modern offshoot of Blitzkrieg Commander, which I am really fond of. M and myself, playing the British, took on a smaller Soviet force commanded by S, who was tasked with defending a position.
We divided the British forces, sent a small group (Paras in FV432s, a group of Centurions and the FAO and FAC)  up the left hand road to keep the Russians interested, and the rest (another infantry battalion and the majority of the tanks) up the right.

"'Ere, Reg, 'ave you seen
Miss November?"

The left flank did considerably better to start with, taking the hill that overlooked Soviet positions unopposed and sending the Centurions racing round the flank. Usefully, this got the FAO and FAC with really good line of sight, and they began by calling down artillery on the wood containing most of the Soviet infantry defending that flank.
On the right, M had a string of failed command rolls, causing most of the tank crews to, one assumes, sit around and read Playboy while waiting for something more interesting to happen.

"Stand, firm, comrades. Is only
poor Western-made capitalist
ground attack aircraft..."

Things really started to hot up around turn 4. The FAC called in the Hawker Hunter we had available, and it proceeded, despite incoming AA from a SAM, to pound the living daylights out of the command group atop the central hill (top left, second picture). And then came back for a return visit, leaving about half of that group supressed and all of it damaged.

"See. Am tellink you is nothing
to be fearing of... Ivan? Vladimir?
Ah. You are havink joke, yes? Is
very funny..."

The FAO called in more artillery on the wood, supported by infantry fire - I would have charged in, but I got overconfident after the second command roll was snake-eyes... and went for a third. Double 6. Command blunder. Artillery target friendly unit nearest original aiming point. Whoops. With 40% of the assaulting troops suppressed, that attack got delayed for a turn.

And then the tankers finally woke up, and proceeded to finish what the Hunter had started. As you can see, there wasn't much left on that hill - in fact, the Russian CO was pretty much it.  Sadly, there we had to call it, but it was a fun exercise, even if we did spent rather too long trying to remember the rules!