Panzershrek teams

When I purchased my Warlord Germans, I realized that I did not have the Panzershrek team that the Chain of Command list called for. Fortunately, Stephen had bought a large number of German figures while they were on sale from Black Tree Designs. I bought the Panzershrek teams from him right away.


The figures painted up so nicely that I bought the rest of Stephen's Germans. Now I have more Germans to paint but they are going relatively quickly. Lots of detail but easy to paint.

German Platoon for Chain of Command

I finished the two boxes of Warlord Germans, which is enough to give me 5 sections. Though one box was actually Panzergrenadiers, I did them as regular infantry instead. (A comment on the photos; the actual color of the mat and figures is more green in real life)



The Warlord figures paint up OK but they are a lot of work as the detail is not as raised as on their plastic Russians or on their metal figures. For some of the MG figures, I substituted a thin copper painted piece of plastic instead the ammo box.

Here are the front of some of the figures:


And here is the back:


Now that I have painted them, there are a couple of details that annoyed me. First is the epaulets are under the webbing instead of under. Not only is that wrong historically, it is tougher to paint. The second annoyance is the Sam Browne style strap they added in addition to the Y straps. I'm not sure why the gave both types of strap because hat that is supposed to be doing but it is something you don't often see in pictures of German soldiers. Unfortunately, it's molded in so I was left with the choice of either painting it or scraping it off. Painting seemed like less work.

I have 60 or so Germans from Black Tree Designs and I suspect that they will see far more table time than the Warlord plastics. They are just better looking and far more durable. I've already had to fix more German plastic weapons than I have Russians and the Russians have seen twice as much action.

In summary, while the Warlord plastic Russians are excellent, the plastic Germans are not all that good. I understand that Warlord have redone their panzer grenadiers and they are better. If so, make sure you are buying the new ones and not the old ones.

A Horde of Russians

Having basically completed all of my 28mm Russians, I thought I would take a picture of them. I basically have a full rifle company according to the 1944 TO&E (of course there's lots of disagreement on what that actually looks like).

I also have a scout section and a tank rider section. I could easily make a full platoon by moving figures around. The observer doesn't actually do anything in Chain of Command but I have the figure so I put him in anyway. The observer and radio men were for communicating with the division, not for artillery (or they used flags if the radio wasn't there or working)

The tank hunters can use a molotov cocktail, panzerfaust, or AT grenade. I just remove whichever AT weapons they are not using.

The mortar is actually an 81mm but I'm going to use it to represent the 50mm mortar that was with Russian companies earlier in the war. I have another one that I haven't finished and a 120mm mortar that I will use to represent a pre-game barrage.

Not pictured are my two T34/85s. One is finished and the other is partially finished.

Oh, and there's also one rifleman who got placed into the wrong box.

Game day at Stephen's

On Saturday, Stephen hosted a day of gaming with three sessions on tap.

First up was Mike running home brew rules for ANZACs vs Turks at Gallopoli. The Turks had a full division with 4 offboard artillery batteries, two onboard artilleries, and two machinegun batteries. The Aussies and Kiwis had three battalions, three MG batteries, and 4 batteries. Here is the battlefield with the Turks on the left attacking the entrenched ANZACs:

I had the Kiwis (having been binge watching Outrageous Fortune over the summer) on the ANZAC left and this was what I was looking at:


The Turks surged forward (moving 2 zones per turn, shooting, or removing wire). On the first turn, the Turks used their artillery to remove wire from in front of the MG position. Our rifle fire was pretty ineffective (as was the Turks when they finally tried shooting) but artillery was nasty. We chose to target the onboard Turk guns to get rid of them. (In hindsight, we should have targeted their offboard stuff afterwards).

The Turks overwhelmed the MG position rather easily and swept up to the first trench line.



The Turkish assault removed 3 of my 4 stands (as a consequence of being a bit softened up by artillery and then not rolling very well infantry vs infantry). The lone stand fell back and reinforced the 2nd line. On my right, the Aussies were in a similar pickle. But way over on the right, Stephen's Aussies were repulsing the Turks and then wiping them out.



I was holding on and gradually wearing down the Turks. But on my immediate right, the Turkish artillery managed to wipe out the troops in the second line. We had no choice but to put our last reserve unit into the open and assault the Turks occupying our second line. Atrocious shooting by our artillery meant that our assault was repulsed. The Turkish artillery then blasted our troops into oblivion, leading the way open to the beach.


The rules were a one page affair and very simple. Maybe a little too much was sacrificed to make sure the troops moved and did not get shot up. It's impossible, for example, for one infantry battalion to kill other infantry battalion by rifle fire alone. I'm not sure rifle fire killed a single stand all game. The other thing that bothered me was how quickly battalions recovered. If you took some hits, you roll a die. Beat the number of hits and you recover automatically and can do stuff. Fail and you don't do anything. But you rally all of the hits at the end of your turn. Perhaps it shouldn't be so easy to rally hits. Give the player the choice of falling back one square and rally all hits or roll. If you roll and pass, you rally the number of hits the die roll exceeds the number of hits and do an action. If you fail, stay in place and rally 1 hit at the end of the turn.

The game was still enjoyable as it was but it really was just a game of artillery wiping out opposing units.

We also played a game of Chain of Command with two full Russian platoons facing off against 1 2/3rds German platoons (all I had painted at the time, which I am rectifying). The Germans lost the patrol phase and then consequently lost the game. I had the German left and was the focus of the Soviet attack. I really should have been far more aggressive from the start. I probably would have ended up with the same result though. No pictures (conveniently) of this defeat.

Cancer sucks

I've done some gaming and a fair amount of painting over the last two months. I haven't been posting very often though. There's a reason for this. I find it takes a fair amount of time to review pictures and create a post. I found in the last couple of months I don't have the energy to do either. It's far simpler to go to a gaming session or blob out in front of the TV and apply paint.

My wife was diagnosed with DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ) a couple of months ago. We're extremely lucky that it was caught early. And the reason the doctors caught it early was all of the health problems she had earlier in the year. She's had the lumpectomy done (FWIW lumpectomy and partial mastectomy are one and the same operation) and now she's about to start radiation therapy. All of this has left the both of us drained emotionally and physically.

In terms of this blog, I've had neither the energy or will to post anything. But I am starting to come around again. I've finished my Warlord Germans and starting to feel the need to spotlight them. Painting 55 28mm figures is an accomplishment and I feel the urge to document it.

And I still don't have a complete group photo of my Soviets. I have a full company of them plus plenty of supports. That's worthy of a post or two as well.

UPDATE: I've just learned that my father has a small tumor in his bladder. He's going to have an operation to remove it in a couple of days. I guess we'll learn more about it when they do a biopsy on it.

Full Thrust: Convoy Escort

Back in August, we gathered at Stephen's house for some Full Thrust action. Stephen had laid out his star cloth and placed a large number of dust clouds. I arrived latest so I got command of the convoy and a few light escort ships. Here's the opening layout with my ships circled:

In the scenario, we knew that we were being pursued by a large force. We figured that we would also need to fight our way across the board. Most of our gunnery is forward facing so being aggressive seemed the best plan.

Our admiral had done a wonderful job of setting things up. The convoy could run at high speed and also avoid most of the dust clouds. We just needed them to make one turn. The dust clouds would start doing damage to any ships that go faster than 6. Because the convoy's course avoided the dust clouds, I gave them a healthy 12 initial speed.

Being experienced with Stephen's ways of running scenarios, I figured something was up. I scanned ahead and got a result. There was something on that large asteroid ahead. I didn't, however, roll well enough to identify and fire on that something until it fired a couple of very heavy beams. Being NAC, we immediately retaliated with missiles. (red dotted line is the convoy's track)

The thing about the missiles is that in Full Thrust, you plop the missile targets first, move, resolve the missiles, and then resolve other fire. Stephen had designed the scenario with a nasty base. Then just before the game, he decided to make it even nastier. I think he went from 40 points to 60 or something like that. He didn't think, though, that we would hammer it with our missiles. And missiles are the absolute best weapon to use against bases because they don't move. 

Meanwhile, the enemy finally showed up. I was delighted to see that they were behind us and on both flanks. We sent some missiles in their direction as well.

Our missiles devastated the base. It wasn't quite dead so we used the fire phase to finish it off. Our missiles also took out a couple of pursuing ships and a couple of ships to the right. It wasn't a one-sided fight as I lost a light cruiser and the biggest ship in our rear guard blew up.

The convoy continued its run past the destroyed base and we continued to send missiles at the enemy to the right. 

But we were running out of missiles and also losing ships. Most of our ships were NAC and the problem is that they are garbage once they've shot off all their missiles. Most importantly, the convoy was getting away.

Here, I've taken the pictures from the opposite side. The convoy is making the only turn it needs to make. A couple of smaller enemy ships are harassing it, though. The rest of our escorts are taking a pounding and are beginning to get severely outnumbered. 

But victory is ours as the convoy leaves the board. The sacrifice of most of the escorts is not in vain because the convoy lost only one cargo hold in total.

Sails of Non-Glory

A couple of weeks ago, David hosted our first go at Sails of Glory. Much like its brother products, you have a miniature, a deck of cards to control movement, and a set of chits to dish out damage. The big clunky bases I had seen were not as bad in real life as I had imagined from the product photos.

The first game was more of a practice with me in a British 38 gun frigate vs Ray in an 20 gun sloop and Derek in a 30 gun frigate.

Naturally enough, I went after Ray first. In a portend of things to come, I took 9 points of damage and lost a mast to a measly 4 points or so to Ray. This despite me outgunning him 2 to 1.

And it only went downhill from there for me.

In the second game, I teamed up with David. Having concluded my ship was cursed, I flipped the card and took a different frigate. Once again, Ray and Derek were the French and they took two frigates.

After a miss-step in which I oversteered and David understeered into a collision, we resumed out plan of attack to steer down on Ray, who was in the aft ship. Once again, I came out the worse in the exchange.


Despite drawing 8 chits, Ray managed to get 6 no damage chits. I took more and was once again dismasted. My ship was rapidly pounded into striking while Ray and Derek largely managed to avoid crooked numbers in damage. David was a bit too late in coming to my rescue and was not able to reduce the numbers against him.

Thoughts: Dropzone Commander

At Hold The Line, I bought some raffle tickets. Unusually, I won something. Specifically, a copy of the Dropzone Commander rules and a box of figures for the rules.

This isn't really a review because I haven't played the game yet. So what we are dealing with is basically a set of first impressions. My first thought was to sell the two to make some money to buy something that I really wanted.

Now that I've read the rules (how could I not when I actually have a copy in my possession?), I'm more inclined to keep them, but I realize that it means that I need to spend money too.

Anyway, so you get the book and there's about 10 pages or so of background fluff that I still haven't read (and probably won't). Then there's about 14 pages of rules. The rules engine is basically IGOYGO but it's by group instead of the whole side. Units move and shoot or shoot and move. The wrinkle is that all shooting occurs at the same time and you have to designate targets before shooting. The emphasis is on movement, but the real key is on using the dropships and troop carriers to do the movement.

The combat is very deadly. Stuff dies quickly and easily. Especially, it looks like, infantry. Yet infantry are crucial because they are basically the only units that can enter buildings. So you are forced to protect them, even at the point of sacrificing other units.

After the rules, there are a healthy number of scenarios. Most are quick with only 6 turns or so. The focus is typically on grabbing an objective. You can win even though you lose 90% of your force and your opponent loses nothing. Basically, killing your opponent is a secondary thing used to break victory point ties.

The final part of the book is a reference with lots of pictures and stats.

Overall, it's a decent package. The rules are pretty straight forward and there isn't many of them. I still haven't made up my mind about them but they are at least under consideration.

Big Chain of Command: Russians vs Germans

This is David's report of the game:

Last Friday we had 5 people (Ian, Stephen,John,Ray and myself) chewing up the tundra in Mother Russia using Chain of Command. 

Stephen, Ian and I were trying to end the evil machinations of the Nazis but with mixed success.  We were the attackers and had 6 squads of inf, 1 T34 tank, 1 team of anti-tank inf, 1 sniper while they had 3 squads of inf, a Herzer tank, an anti-tank rifle team, a minefield and a stretch of barbed wire.

It started well with a Russian arty barrage having an impact on the arrival of die Krauten although they did get more people on table faster than the  Germans did the last time we played this. Stephen's right flank inf platoon moved ahead as did my left flank platoon while Ian had the tank, sniper and anti-tank team.  My leftmost squad had terrible movement rolls leaving them in the open for Nazi fire to hit.  My other two teams got to a hill where they could shoot down at  the Germans.  

Stephen moved a squad into a field and eventually used a CoC die to relocate a jump-off point to beyond the barbwire.  He then brought on a squad which inflicted casualties on the Nazis over there but they stabilized the situation with their tank. My rightmost squad inflicted damage before they took a pummeling from the Bosch and had to pull back into the woods and down a slope.  My left somehow held on under the withering fire of 2 squads (one in a building) for most of the night before they had to retire during the last phase.  

Our tank rolled along in a big circle on the right and back towards the centre where it poured HE into a machine gun nest in the building until an anti-tank rifle team appeared beside the house and scored a lucky hit on it.  Tank gone!  Stephen's forces in the field inflicted damage on the Krauts and my centre team dealt out some hurt to a machine gun and others.  

All the while, morale was dropping and the Germans were getting so close to getting to roll only 4 dice per phase.  12:30 came so we packed it in but it could have gone either way.  It would be the Russian turn if we continued and we just needed a couple of kills on one almost gone German team and on the anti-tank gunner and that probably would have been it (thanks for a number of German leader casualties).  However, the Stephen's morale status was almost as bad and mine was a bit better so it could have gone either way.  Thanks to Ian for running this.

Second Thoughts: Warlord's Panzergrenadiers (30 figures and 3 vehicles) and Late War Germans (25 figures)

While I was initially impressed by these boxes, now that I've been assembling them, I'm feeling let down, especially when compared to the Soviet box.

There are a number of problems:

• There are only 5 poses so I now have 11 of each.
• Warlord compounds the above problem by repeating three sets of arms. 
• There is no prone figure so you have no choice but to make the LMG gunners into Rambo.
• The right hands of the rifle arms don't hold the weapon well, unlike the Soviet figures.
• The arms don't integrate very well with the bodies. The shoulders stick out far too much and you don't get a nice joint. Each shoulder requires some knife work to make them far more seamless.
• The one accessory that I expected was some MG ammo belts to add to the figures. The late war Germans, especially Panzergrenediers, are notorious for lugging belts of ammo around with them, but none are included. There's sort of an ammo box but it seems awfully thin. Belts would have been far more useful.

And on top of that, I cannot even borrow the extra Soviet arms I have. The Russian arms are significantly bigger.

It's my understanding that the Soviet box is a later product. The experience that Warlord gained from these inferior German figures shows up.

Bocage

I have created some test bocage. I' rather pleased with the randomness and bulk of them so I plan to go into production of them (about 3 feet worth at a minimum) after Hold the Line next month.

Yes, there's a rather lost Soviet officer but he's the only fully painted figure I have for scale.

Operation Brushstroke

Mission:

To complete enough 28mm troops and support units to run a game of Big Chain of Command at Hold the Line on June 20th.

Assets: 

I have an number of friends who have some German troops that I can use if I don't get mine done. I also have a semi-dedicated painting space. I also have a good uniform reference book.

Description:

As listed on my inventory page, I have the following things to paint:

• 95 or so Russian figures to add to my existing 46
• 1 45mm AT gun
• 58 German figures
• 1 T34/85
• 1 Hetzer
• 1 Sdkfz 222 armoured car
• 3 Sdkfz 251 halftracks

I have about 6 weeks to complete them.

Plan:

1. Assemble all the figures and vehicles, scrape flash, and clean joins. Status: 55 Russians done. Target: May 4th.
2. Prime everything. Target: May 8th.
3. Paint the Russians. Target: May 25th. 
4. Paint the vehicles and other supports (except for the halftracks) Target: June 1st.
5. Paint the German figures. Target: June 15th.
6. Paint the halftracks. Target: June 16th.
7. Dulcote everything. Target June 18th.

Other items:

• Scenario design
• Scenario briefing
• CoC reference sheets
• More JOP markers
• Moar terrain!

In the Box: Panzergrenadiers from Warlord

I traded a box of 15mm Flames of War Afrika Corps figures with Richard for a box of 28mm Panzergrenadiers from Warlord Games so that I would have an opponent for my rapidly expanding Soviet force.

Let's see what I got. First, here's the box art:

Inside, you get 6 sprues of 5 figures. Here's a front and back shot of two sprues:

Credit to Warlord here: they modeled the figures so you could load them down as ordinary infantry who need to carry everything everywhere or you can lighten their load as panzergrenadiers who leave their packs in their trucks.

Update: I bought the 25 figure Late War Germans by Warlord and they have the exact same sprues. So I now wonder whether they were helping their customers by allowing them to choose what type of infantry they could build or saving money by repackaging existing sprues, Probably both views are correct.

You also get some weapons sprues, bases, and decals:

As panzergrenadiers, the box also comes with 3 sprues to build 3 halftracks (and one gunner figure who, unfortunately, really cannot be used outside of the halftrack):

Here's one that I dry fit together:

Hot Lead 2015

On the last Saturday of March, I had my annual pilgrimage to Stratford. As was usual, Hot Lead was well attended and organized. After signing up for the first game session, I hit the vendor tables to pick up some more Warlord Russian 28mm soldiers. I also picked up a box of 28mm late war Germans. I then went to MeepleMart and pick up a 45mm gun to provide my Russians with a little AT support. Having spent my budget, it was time for some gaming.

Unfortunately, the game I had signed up for was a no-go. With the pickings being rather slim, I ended up in a DBR game set in 15th century Italy with the French attempting to exit with the Italians attacking to the flank and rear. I commanded the far right of the Italians acting as the cork to bottle up the French and prevent them from exiting to the right. Here is the general battlefield with the road that the French are on off camera to the right:

I did really well rolling to maneuver and get my troops into position. I did incredibly poorly rolling for combat, resulting in me losing a lot of troops or missing out on opportunities to destroy enemy units. Here are two shots of my rapidly disintegrating command:

Eventually, my command broke. The other Italian commander near me had his attention split between two separate commands. Unfortunately, he didn't realize how dire things were for me and wasn't able to get his units in position in time to exploit the gaps I had created. The game ended and the GM ruled that the French would have been able to push our troops aside and escape along the road. I have to agree.

In the second game, it was Barbarossa but with Romanians against Russians in a battle of tin cans with cannons and infantry. The rules were Brigade Commander and they are extremely simple and stripped down. A little too stripped down for my taste. The action was a meeting engagement with the Romanians tasked with capturing the village as their objective. I placed my artillery and mortar on the hill, T70s to the left and had my infantry run to the village to occupy it.

This game I had some pretty impressive die rolling and managed to take out half of the Romanian tanks before I suffered any losses. The Romanian tanks settled for dueling it out with my tanks. The infantry formed into a massive column and tried to assault the building held by my troops. It did not go well for them.

The third game was Dux Britannia, where the Britons were defending a village. It was pretty much laid out as three separate battles and stayed that way throughout. Here is the left of the Saxon line. I had the right.

It took me a while to work around the mine to engage the Britons actually in the town. The Saxon cavalry did manage to keep the Britons a bit distracted. However, while this was happening, the Briton cavalry charged the center Saxon units and wiped out two of them. The remaining Saxon unit did manage to hold its own and eventually defeat all of the cavalry units, with the assistance on one Saxon unit from the far left. On the far left, it was two Saxon units frontally against a British shield wall. Predictably, this did not go well and eventually the entire Saxon left routed.

On the right, things went much better for the Saxons. After an aborted charge, my second charge managed to break a two unit British shield wall. My other unit chased the third British unit from the walls and into the village. However, with the rout of the Saxon left, my attacks were just too late and my command had to break off because of the collapse in morale.

The third game was the most fun of the three.

Coniferous Trees

Early in December, Michaels (a big box craft store) had a sale on some Christmas "village" stuff (50% off). For example, fences, cobblestone street mat, and Christmas trees. I bought the mat and I bought two bags of trees. The trees come in multiple sizes and someone brushed thick white paint on them to make them more Christmas-y. I shall probably keep one bag with the fake snow and white bases. For the other bag, I gave the trees a bit of a trim with scissors to cut off most of the white paint and some green paint to get rid of the rest. Then some paint and flock to finish the base. Here's the after and the before:

Wings of War King of the Sky

Stephen and I faced off against David and John in Wings of War. We started by picking some planes. Those that brought planes chose to use them, which is why I ended up flying a UFAG two seater. It's a surprisingly good plane. All of the other planes were arranged in two rows, one per side.

I was doing quite well popping off with front and back guns and taking relatively little damage in return.

Stephen in the green Fokker triplane "Kempf" shot down one of the allied fighters, John's SE5a. I took one shot from long range and drew the dreaded explosion card.

 I reappeared flying a Pfalz DIII, which is basically a flying brick. John reappeared with a Spad XIII, which is also a flying brick, but also much faster. Meanwhile, Stephen shot down David's Sopwith Tripe. But in doing so, Stephen retired "Kempf" and returned to the fight in a Albatros DV.

 I bagged David with the lucky explosion card. His plane was relatively undamaged to that point. However, John then shot up my Pfalz pretty good. Despite taking some revenge fire from Stephen, John used the Spad's speed to escape.

 I took the hint and retired the Pfalz while it could still fly. I returned as the Baron but my flying was distinctly un-ace like and I got shot up pretty good by both David and John. I beat a hasty retreat with only one damage point remaining.

Good fun all around. 

David's report:

Friday saw Stephen, John and Ian joining me in the skies above Europe for a game of Wings of War/Glory.  We had a line of German planes and one of Allied planes.  Stephen and Ian were the Huns and John and I were the Tommies.  

We started with one plane and if you left the warzone you then put your plane aside and picked the next one in line so we had a continuous stream of planes. I don't remember all the details but my Tripe caused a beautiful explosion on Ian's plane (Pfalz ?) but was then shot down by Stephen who was the big winner with 2 victories for the night before he flew away. with one hit point left .  

My second plane was a Snipe and that suffered a fire and pilot wound and flew off the table just putting out the fire before landing with 1 hit point left.  I then came on with a Camel and retired after suffering a pilot wound.  I then came back on with another camel and Stephen and Ian withdrew while John (who was on his second or third plane) was shot up pretty bad but did a lot of damage to the Huns.  

Inventory page for my 28mm stuff

I decided it would be worthwhile to start documenting the lead/plastic mountain. I've started off with my 28mm stuff because the number of items I have isn't all that daunting.

Link to the inventory

Chain of Command: Debut for my Russians

A couple of weeks ago, David hosted myself and Richard. I brought my Russians and David used his Germans.

For support, Richard and I chose a T34-76, a preliminary bombardment, and a sniper. David, with the Germans elected for an Adjutant, a minefield, and two wires.

The game started off with Richard aggressively sending an entire section moving quickly towards the the enemy JOP on the left. I chose a more conservative route by sending a two man scout team on a circuitous route on the right. My objective for the scouts was to threaten the JOP on the right and force the Germans to deploy a section there to defend the JOP.

It took a couple of phases before David could deploy anything. That Russian bombardment is nasty.
By the time he did, the Russians had overrun the leftmost JOP. This started a firefight in the wheat field.

Because the Germans outgun the Russians, Richard upped the ante and brought on the T34 (disguised as a T34/85) and a sniper to add support to the Russian section. I probably should have brought on my section too but there never seems to be enough 3s.

Eventually, the superior firepower for the Germans routed the Russian section. At this point, David realized he had not put his minefield and wire down, so we put them in place.

To replace the routed section, I brought a section on top of the hill. David ran his damaged section to safety behind the hill. He also managed to deploy another section. He put my section under cover fire while he moved the rest of his section up behind the shelter of the fence.

With its initial target vanished behind a hill, the T34 turned its attention to the new target. This time the Russian shooting was much better and the German casualties began to pile up.

In the climax of the game, David deployed a panzershrek team. Needing only 6 or better on 2D6, he rolls a 5, which caused the tank crew to duck, but nothing else. In retaliation, I deployed my last section to wipe out the panzershrek team. On my far right, the scout team was finally ready to go for the German JOP. But David deployed his final section and wiped out the scout team. However, this left the weakening center section in trouble and David decided to pull back and concede the table.

In hindsight, the Russians should be very aggressive when they have a bombardment happening. If I had coordinated my scouts with Richard's section, we might have overrun two jump off points and really put David in a bind.

Finally, our best wishes go out to Derek's father and we hope that he recovers nicely.

Bonus:
Here's David's account of the affair:

Well, last Friday saw the Germans being attacked by the Ruskies.  While the Reds raced across the table to capture a jumping-off point their artillery barrage kept the Germans off the table for quite a while.  Finally the Germans scored a 5 or 6 and one squad appeared and laid into the Ruskie squad that was in the process of capturing the jump-off point.  Unfortunately they only killed 3 and it turned into a slogging match with a Red tank appearing to take part in it as well.

On the German left flank a Red scouting team stole through the woods to get close to another jump-off point while a second German squad finally arrived in the centre and came under sniper fire then a squad appeared on the hill to fire down on them.  After much shooting the German right flank squad finally broke the Red advanced squad and their 2 survivors ran for the table edge.  The German squad then recaptured the jump-off point and hid behind the hill crest.  They lost only 3 men and are now known as The Immortals.

The centre squad though was hit by the sniper, 2 Red squads and the tank.  The vacated the centre position for safety and ended up with 2 survivors as well but they did not rout.  A German panzershreck team  popped up and suffered from the bad dice luck that plagued the Germans all night.  Needing a roll of 6 on 2 dice to hit the tank they rolled 5 and on the next phase were wiped out.

Meanwhile on the left flank the third German squad finally appeared  and immediately fired  at the scout team.  Again, the hapless Germans' luck was bad and they were able to kill only 1 of the 2 scouts.  The next phase they managed to kill the last 1.  At this point the German commander decided that with 2 full strength squads and a tank closing in the Germans should retire.  The Germans lost about 1/3 their forces and so did the Russians but that tank was getting close.  Good job by Ian and Richard who were the commies.  We were down to 3 players as John and Derek had to cancel at the last moment.