Firestorm: Stripes

Scenario: Hof Corridor Hasty Attack
Points: 100
Attacker: NVA (2 T72 formations, 1 T55 formation, 1 BMP-1 formation)
Defender US (Abrams Armoured Combat Team)

For pictures see Stingrays report: American Army Ambush at Autobahn A9

After getting honorably mentioned on BF’s homepage for Stingrays report for our table set-up I decided to also post some comments from my perspective.

This game was the second field test of my MultipleSmallUnits approach for a TeamYankee army. And the first with Volksarmee.
Compared to my previous East German army list this MSU netted me 50 % more tanks, but I could not make them count in this scenario.

To begin with playing from the long table edges the spearhead gains were minimal. Add to this the quite open Autobahn area between the two armies I was not able to close my “heavy hitters” – the T72s fast enough to the entrenched Abrams.
Only my “slow” T55s use of the Bridge by a Road Dash allowed them to wreck some havoc amongst the Americans (the artillery and the formation’s commander M1).
Both small augmented Mot-Rifle units were also of limited use: the one on the right assault prong could not unpinn for two turns and reached the the houses after their supporting tanks and BMPs had been killed and were then slaughtered by the entrenched American infantry. And the one unit defending the objective in my deployment zone had also no support left when at game’s end the M113 and Vulcans closed in.
Add some almost perfect fast approaching American scattered reserves and you loose (edited, as the first reference to poor T72-armor saves was not correct – you loose a tank most of the time when your frontal armor of 15 is hit with AT20…)

For the next battle I will definitely change my deployment strategy regarding T55s and MotRifles…
But I won’t change the general unit composition – the idea behind this army is not to use Resin-modells, so no BRDMs etc.!