IABSM AAR: Defend the White House
/My afternoon session at this year’s Operation Market Larden event was a game of I Ain’t Been Shot Mum run by Phil and Jenny, using Jenny’s marvelous terrain.
The setting was Arnhem, 1944, and one section of the Oosterbeck perimeter where the British paratroopers tried to hold off part of an SS Division. I would play the Germans, with Vlad as my opponent.
My objective was to take (and hold until the next Tea Break card) a house at the far end of the table: see picture, left, below. At my disposal, I had four platoons of infantry and four armoured vehicles: a Tiger, a StuG, a Panzer III and a SdKfz 251 flak. Against me were four understrength Para platoons with a plethora of both automatic weapons and PIATS.
I believe the key to winning a game of IABSM is to mirror good, historical tactics. Here, the situation demanded a rapid, aggressive advance focused into a schwerpunkt that would allow overwhelming force to be applied every time the enemy was encountered.
I therefore decided to advance my whole force up the Stationsweg road (the one on the left hand side that runs the length of the table) and then cut right at the end to hone in on the objective. I was hoping that by doing this I could initially apply my whole force to only part of his because, as Vlad pointed out, he had the whole table to cover whereas I could choose where to appear.
The opening moves therefore saw me send the first two platoons of infantry (Zugs 1 and 2), accompanied by the StuG, up the sides of the road. The Tiger and Zug 3 would rapidly follow.
The action began very early on, with two squads from Zug 2 rushing the house with the dormer window by the greenhouse on the far left in the picture above. This proved to have a very surprised section of Paras inside on the ground floor, and a sudden melee broke out, easily won by Zug 2 as they had double the numbers.
There was a PIAT team upstairs who managed to fire a round into the Tiger as it took up a position by the house, but luckily all it did was chip the paintwork and rattle the tankers inside! Meanwhile Zug 2 continued its rapid advance: disposing of another section of Paras who were in the next house along. So far, so good!
Meanwhile, two squads from Zug 1 had taken possession of the house on the other side of the road, the other squad rushing forward into the small wood past the two greenhouses.
The squads in the house then watched as a couple of Para blinds advanced towards them, and then used their upstairs vantage point to spot both a 6lb-er anti-tank gun unlimbering in the garden of the house to their front and another platoon of Paras making their way through the copse of trees right underneath the windows. My plan to force the Paras to reveal their positions by needing to move towards my very narrow axis of advance was working!
The anti-tank gun got off a shot at the Tiger, but the round either missed or bounced off its armour, but then Zug 1 let rip and shot half of them down. HE from the Tiger then finished the crew off. Zug 1 then prepared to deal with the Para platoon advancing towards them through the copse.
Back on the road, my SdKfz flak had appeared, and promptly started pumping 20mm cannon shells into a house slightly further into the center of the table (the one with the dead marker on top of it in the picture below). Another Para platoon had been spotted in the house but, for the rest of the game, either the flak or the Panzer III would keep the enemy pinned down with cannon and/or HE fire, effectively taking them out of the action and unable to do anything.
So that was three of the four Para platoons spotted: with one eliminated, one about to be fired on at close range, and one pinned down by cannon/HE fire. One of the two enemy anti-tank guns had also been taken out, and all for the loss of only a handful of infantry.
The remaining Paras then had a bit of a resurgence, with the other anti-tank gun decloaking right at the end of the road perpendicular to the Stationsweg (I think that’s the Graaf van Rechterenweg road: the superb terrain was a more or less exact representation of the actual battlefield, with Phil and Jenny having walked the route and specially commissioned 3D printed buildings to get it just right. Huge kudos to them!).
This managed to get a couple of shots off at the StuG before getting enough HE in return to take it out of the action. All the Paras now had to deal with my armour were PIATS and sticky bombs.
One of the PIATS now made a difference, a the officer in charge of the Para platoon under fire from Zug 1 grabbed said PIAT off one of his squaddies and used a Have A Go Hero card to fire into the SdKfz flak. Incredibly, this survived one round with only a little bit of engine damage, but then the officer moved closer, fired again, and blew it to bits! His success was, however, short-lived, as elements of Zug 4 then rushed forward and captured him.
Meanwhile his platoon had been effectively neutralised by Zug 1 firing from the upstairs windows of the house overlooking the Paras’ position, and the Tiger and Zug 2 had moved further down the Stationsweg road.
Time was now ticking on, so leaving just enough assets to deal with the remaining Paras that I’d spotted, I sent everyone else forward and now curling around to the right in a final advance towards the house that was our objective.
As it advanced forward, the Tiger did have its second brush with death. If you look closely at the picture top right in the gallery above, you’ll see another British officer standing just outside the house in the centre of the photo. He also had a PIAT, and managed to get a couple of shots off at the armoured beast. Luckily for me, they both bounced off the tank’s front armour, and then a barrage of HE fire from the Tiger’s 88mm gun vapourised the poor Para before he could fire again.
Back to the narrative, and the fourth and final Para platoon was spotted lurking behind the objective house. They didn’t want to go into it, as they knew the Tiger would then quickly reduce the house to rubble. They did have another PIAT team, which they sent forward to the hedgeline to engage the big cat. I had now, however, managed to get most of three platoons of infantry forward in preparation for a final push, and fire from one of them shot down the PIAT team before it could fire.
The climax of the game was now upon us, but actually things ended witha bit of a damp squib. I sent a squad of infantry across the road to “occupy” the target house, with a good roll on the dice getting me just inside.
I was hoping this would force the Paras outside to come inside to displace my infantry from their game-winning position, at which point the Tiger would bring the house down on the lot of them (well, I was commanding SS troops) with the rest of my infantry then re-occupying the rubble to take victory, but in fact the Tea Break card arrived almost immediately and that was that!
A great game of IABSM played across a wonderful table set up. My thanks to Phil, Jenny and Vlad for a fantastic afternoon’s gaming.
