AAR 1944 France: Second Game by Bagration

The northern table edge where Allied infantry will enter from.

The East-West road were the Allied Armour will enter from.

The Church is the center piece in the town (like most French towns). All the models are from 4-ground and they are EXCELLENT ! very easy to assemble and are just awesome. I cannot say much more than that. I bought them from J&M miniatures.. who handled my sale very well. Much thanks.

The area around the village that the Germans would be defending.

I even managed some basic sign posts.

Some more shots of the town and surrounding countryside.

German SS:  1st Platoon

German SS:  2nd Platoon

My wife places her sniper in the church tower.

German support mortars.

More Germans

MG42 in a ruined building.

Tank hunter teams occupy the inside of the church.

The German mortar spotter.

Turn 1 sees the newly painted British infantry company advancing quickly towards the town.

The British Armour also rapidly advances.

Supporting 101st Airborne platoon races from cover to cover.

British recce tanks checking out the outer farm houses.

British air controller trying to spot into the town.. no luck tho !

The British cannot seem to spot into the town, so the armour decides to force the issue by advancing around the bend.

German AT gun manages to use all its actions to "spot" the lead Sherman.

Turn 2:  German reinforcements arrive in the form of two StuGs.

A close up of some of the SS men using the Churchyard as cover, and their transport.

The 3rd card pulled after the reshuffle is the German AT card and "wham !", lead Sherman down.

Recce tank platoon starts out

Early shots from 101st takes out a Jerry, pins his squad and puts some shock on both SS squads.

British on the move towards the church. Movement was fairly fluid early on.

Shermans enter the fields on the 101st's flank on "hunt" orders

Start pouring HE fire into the concealed Germans

HE fire is doing some major damage to the Germans, but a luckly SS tank hunting team manages to take out the main gun of the lead tank

101st are having a hard time of it as the full strength SS squads shoot with 5 dice, are stationary, and are constantly pinning down all the forward attacking squads, plus they are steadily taking casualties.

British start taking some major fire from the churchyard and the town

StuG's exchanging fire with 2 Shermans. We managed a couple of hits each, but no major damage done.

A SS infantry squad just rips an advancing U.S Para squad a "new one".... a score of 25 on 5 dice!

The heavy fire is starting to cause a traffic jam on the dirt road. The lead Sherman, with his 75mm gun knocked out, withdraws back and out of the way. Not much point it losing a tank just for the sake of losing it. My wife asked "why don't I just use its MG's or use it as cover by another unit?" and my reply was "that they wanted to live", thus the most historical thing would be that it withdrew.

No one is moving due to the amount of enemy fire... I'm going to have to use my Big men to push the attack forward.

A silly British squad manages to find some open ground (road), but its torn apart by MG42 fire.

Good Ole Joe using his powers of persuasion to get things moving. He is constantly rallying shock from the Para's, and helping them send some basic return fire back towards the Hitler youth squads causing all the trouble.

A shot from the sniper in the tower. He managed two shots, both misses, but demanded some major attention. He can, by himself, pin a whole squad, or put a squad who was almost at their shock limit, over it: dangerous bloke, but not overly powerful. Really nice mechanic.

Opening shots from the British squads of 1st Platoon, managed to wipe out the remaining Jerries from one stand, pin the remainder and all most put them over their shock limit.. a good start.

Recce tank platoon starts to move up to support the U.S Paras.

The German half-track in town is just peppering the Brits.... lots of men dropping.

SS platoon 1 is taking some damage. They lost the remaining men of one stand and are strategically withdrawn to save them from some major HE damage that they know is coming.

The StuG platoon manages to hit the Sherman on the right twice, but only managed to do some minor engine damage. The return fire from that same Sherman blew up the StuG on the left with a 5-0 score. The Firefly managed to knock out the 10.5cm StuG's gun out and destroy its optics, while the other Sherman (off screen) damaged the StuG's engine. A VERY good round of shooting for me.

Now the HE can continue on this flank, as it was doing great in pushing the SS platoon back.

With the StuG's taking a pounding, the Hitler youth retreating, the 101st boys start to once again advance.

On the other flank, but Germans are looking a bit thin.... not going well here, as the British keep moving up.

Brits taking some damage, but still around and still doggedly moving up.

On the German right flank the retreat starts. Here the StuG42 backs up.

The first kill of this update, the Panzerchrek team in the church nails this Sherman.. 13 dice vs 6 armour dice...I saved only one and the Germans got five...so yeah...a big explosion.

1st squad starts the pull back to avoid the HE fire they know will be coming from the Allies tanks that are on their way.

1st squad of 1st platoon retreats all the way to the town and enters this building to set up what defence they can.

With the success of the last few turns, the British 2nd platoon starts to rush towards the church in the hopes of taking out the tank hunters in side.

They are met with lots of MG fire and take massive causalities. It was a mistake to get them within 9 inches of the enemy without lots of covering fire, or a couple of tanks as support. My mistake, and I paid for it.

Stuarts take advantage of their speed and start to race towards the open German left flank.

Still moving....

The surprise of the night. 2nd squad from the 101st airborne platoon races to the exposed flank of the 3rd SS squad and is hit mid run by the sniper, killing one man outright, and pinning the squad... stopping them dead.... darn!

Stuarts wont be stopped though, and lay into some Germans with a flank shot using HE.... 4 Germans dead.

Pak40 nails his second target... blowing up another Sherman.

3rd squad 1st SS platoon flees back towards town.

Firefly searching for targets.... spots a half-track, but misses.

On the allied right, I make the decision to retreat, as the German MG fire is just too deadly. Here we see 2nd platoon retreat out of the way, almost right back to their start lines. The white caps show just what a ribbing they took for 8 turns.

Another German squad enters the Hotel across from the church and sets up on the second floor.