Firestorm: Stripes

I rolled a 3+, so Warpac attacked and I choose to go from Plzen towards Leipzig in the hope of cutting off their advance. As is NATO custom in our store, they choose a static defence, as there were no points to be gained in the area where our attack would come from, so holding would be their primary choice.

With a minefield stretching across the left hand side of the battlefield, I opted to push most forces through the center/right and have a firebase across the overpass. Nato started with 2 Leo2 in Ambush, Gepards down the industrial left side of their deployment, near their Leo HQ and a Marder platoon on my left most objective. Carnations were Ranged In on the forward most objective, with the BM-21s on the middle

WP first turn was rather uneventful, some Dashing and no Shooting as it was night time.

Nato first turn saw the other Leo2 platoon arrive from Reserve and moving up to the center.

Turn 2
No real excitement from the WP side as we were still moving up and having trouble seeing stuff at night.
Nato dropped the Leo2 ambush, and moved forward with both platoons, having a go at some T-72s. They took out my left hand platoon, co-operating with the infantry overlooking the objective.

Turn 3
Finally saw some WP shooting, taking out half of the Gepard platoon, but they would hold. One of the Leo platoons lost a tank, but they held as well. Infantry dismounted from their rides and moved through the woods in the center.

No dawn yet, but that didn't trouble the Leo's, as they kept on putting round after round into the poor T-72's coming at them, killing more and more every turn.

Turn 4
No dawn during the WP turn. Shooting took out some more German teams, but nothing ran away although the first Leo platoon went down fighting.

Dawn broke in Nato turn 4, and more reserves arrived. Leo's kept at it, having killed most of my tanks by now and starting with the infantry who would fail an extraordinary amount of saves in a single turn.

Turn 5 & after
WP ground on, taking out some small platoons. Gepards finally went down, Redeyes on the forward objective bolted and another Leo2 bought it.

Nato now had good fields of fire, and their infantry had a blast, unleashing their Milans and Fausts at my advancing troops who swerved, swayed and whatnot, but that wouldn't prevent them from going down hard.

With time running out I had one last go at blasting Nato out of their positions with arty and last units in their half, but it would be to no avail. I couldn't shift them and with only remnants in their half it turned into a hard-fought draw.

Unfortunately, but for the recon images of the area there was no war-reporter anywhere near so there are few images taken by our troops, and hardly any of them left the field intact!