Late-War Panzergrenadiers Vs. British Armoured Company

2,000pts Late-war 'Free For All'

I turned up to get seemingly pounded by Reds late-war British reluctant veteran armour, my opponent chosen for me because Lukes Yanks and Aidans Brits haven‘t made the conversion yet so I was the only other late war option. Managed to forget most of the golden rules of FOW, and this combined with the opposition turning up 8 inches away on their turn one, and their luck carrying on from where it left off with XXX Corp’s charge to Arnhem last night. Kickoff was around 19:20 and two platoons down (the 88's and the PaK40's) before I got a shoot off didn't bode well, neither did my Tiger platoons 50% loss ratio. The pioneers then got confused and attacked two platoons of Cromwells and were shot to bits, and the fat lady was tuning up at the end of the Brits turn 2 (German turn 1....). At 20:05 the StuG's were the only thing holding onto the right hand objective (just) and the heavy artillery where about to be squashed away from the left one, with my remaining Tiger looking somewhat panic-stricken and unsure which direction it was needed more.


15 minutes later and the fight back was on as I had decided that I had to bash at least one enemy platoon before conceding or suffer a humiliating 6-1 defeat. Luck sprang to the fore (and managed not to damage its hamstring doing so) as the artillery took two Cromwell’s with them, then my Panzerfaust-toting CO and his buddies swaggered out of the woods to delivery a sound smack across the chops of the remainder of the platoon as well as their backup - 7 tanks burning and one fled. In the centre another nutter with a panzerfaust did the dirty deed to a couple of careless Stuart light tanks and suddenly the opposition were at 50% of their company strength and teetering, three platoons destroyed. The StuG's nearly provided the final push, but a posse of Cromwell’s got behind them and that was the end of that. My solitary Tiger could have made it across to prolong defeat one more turn but at that point my CO decided it was probably for the best that his lot made a quick exit and left Tommie to tidy up the mess. A 4-3 defeat I can live with.

By the second turn I had started to wonder if I should have brought my Panthers to battle rather than my Panzergrenadiers, however that would have probably made for a much more boring match-up with the Cromwell’s forced to try and get a flank shot each time. As it was I lasted until around turn 5 when it looked to be over on turn 2, and with a better setup and tactics I would have been more competitive earlier.