Firestorm: Stripes

This weekend found my battlegroup in action once again, this time against the dastardly Redboon (Kevin), who took command of a force of East Germans and their Polish Paratrooper support.

Redboon chose to keep all of his tanks in immediate reserve, hoping to work my troops over with artillery for a few turns before assaulting. He also admitted later that he hoped that I might be tempted to attack one of the objectives, then get slaughtered by armored counterattack.

With his Hinds an issue, I chose a standard deployment of a platoon of infantry on each objective, the Tracked Rapier covering the table, and the scorpions and recon HQ in a position to threaten either side.

He put the air assault infantry on his left objective with the Grads behind, Gaskins, Observer and Battalion CO in the center and Grozdivka on the right.

Early German artillery fire proved ineffectual, and on the left, three SP Guns guarding an objective was just too tempting a target. I dashed up the Scorpions and their commander, hoping to sneak in and pick them off before they could retaliate. If I got lucky, I could snatch the objective. Chances were, he'd be forced to put his reserves on that side, opening up the other for attack. That's pretty much how it went down.

Reserve T-55s arrived to eliminate the Blowpipe section, which had been dropped in ambush, then spent a few turns and cat-and-mousing with the Recon HQ and the surviving Scorpions. On Turn 4, Redboon rolled FOUR reserves, and rolled on Shilkas, 2 units of T-72M, and BRDMs. The Shilkas went to support his left flank, everything else was sent on a head-long dash at my left.

There was some clever use of smoke by Kevin and some crack blitzing by my boys, but I don't have pictures of that so just imagine.

The Polish Hinds showed up to Gatling gun whatever they could. The Tracked Rapier took two out on the first volley and wiffed there-after. However, it was not enough from stopping 2 Platoon. On the left, arriving Scimitars peppered the rear armor of T-72s, and 1 platoon continued to give the DDR boys a bloody nose.

British take the hill on their right, holding the left and losing only 2 platoons. Redboon adopted a variant of Vasquez's strategy, overwhelming tank assault. With a few more rolls in his favor earlier, he might have prevailed, but luckily I was able to get up on the right and end things on Turn 6.

Interestingly, my heavy-hitters, the Lynx and Strikers, never made it onto the board and weren't needed.