Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Operation Case Yellow : Week 2

After the minor set-up back suffered against Arzmi's French mechanized company last week, the elite pioneers were eager to get back into the fray and prove themselves worthy. An enemy movement of a French tank company was detected and the Luftlandesturm were quickly dispatched to stop them.

Mission : Hold the Line
Opponent : Shukur's Escadron de Combat
Points : 1750

I'll not get into the nitty gritty of the game only because I'm lazy/don't know how  to write a proper bat-rep. Suffice to say we managed to win this encounter. Deployment for the gliders and parachutes were faster this time because of the experience gained previously. The picture above was during my first turn. The wind was good and all gliders managed to land near the enemy...though 2 gliders crashed resulting in the deaths of 2 teams.
1st and 2nd platoon together with the CC managed a first turn assault resulting in 3 destroyed enemy tanks. Guess the pioneers got over their fear of French tanks this week. I passed all of my tank terror rolls. What a relief.
3rd platoon was equally successful in their landings on the other side of the table. Though they needed an extra turn to get rid of the French tanks which they ambushed.
This picture was taken the round after the tanks were destroyed. Should've taken a picture without them...amateur me :P

Playing the Luftlandesturm is super fun. You've got to be super aggressive landing those gliders and hope for good dice rolls. I won't say there's less tactics involved but it's fun once in awhile to just immediately dive into the attack.

Though my supporting parachute platoons veered so far away from their weapons canisters. No wonder the glider pioneers cost so much. You get to land right into the enemy's face and assault :)

Thanks to Mousier Shukur for a nice game. Next up is Captain Mark Smith of the British infantry company.



Thursday, September 13, 2012

Operation Case Yellow : First game with the Luftlandesturm

Played my first game using the German paras last Friday. It was against my younger brother who played a French Compagnie de Chasseurs Porters....whatever that means haha.

I'm not going to do a battle report but just want to share my experience of the game I had. I lost the game in the end but it was a very close fight. It could've gone either way but in the end it didn't go my way. We played the Death from Above mission.


Lessons learnt.
1. Deploying your gliders and 3 parachute platoons is gonna be fun but time consuming. I had 10 gliders and platoons dropping by parachute. First you have to place your gliders and weapons containers. Then roll for the distance each gliders and containers. Lastly place the infantry teams. All that will take some time. But fun!

2. The French Chasseurs are MG teams. That means pinned down they still shoot at ROF 2. A full platoon has 7 teams. Pinned down, they still have 14 shots for defensive fire. I couldn't assault his infantry platoons the entire game. Too much fire going back at me

3. Against tanks, we're quite helpless. I only had my Pak36 which is only AT6. Against CharBs, they were practically useless....and my brother had 6 of them..ouch. I tried to assault them with my pioneers but would you believe that I failed 2 consecutive tank assault rolls.

4. After the initial rounds, you're gonna be defending like mad. Even dug in paras are gonna find it tough to last 6 rounds trying to defend objectives without effective long range AT elements.

Overall I had so much fun playing the Luftlandesturm Company. It's an aggresive list and you have to play it such.

This Friday I play against a French tank company. Let's hope I can manage to assault some pinned down tanks this time around.



Monday, September 3, 2012

Luftlandesturm Company Completed

That's right gents, my 1750/2185 points  elite glider assault force is completed and ready to fly in and invade France this Friday night :)

I wish i had more pics to share but i need to learn how to take better group shots. Plus you've seen the painting progress for the past couple of weeks. I'm really not sure how effective they will be. I'm hoping the extra troops i get from the Death from Above mission will help me at least put up a fight.

I'll share my experience after i've played the first game. 

What should i paint now.....