Partisans VS Germans... BOLT ACTION STYLE!!!

Today Brad and I ran through a game of Supply Run (5 objective grab from the MOAB player pack) with my Germans against Brad’s Partisans. I was running what I considered to be a reasonably tough German list without taking the piss or going over board in any way:

2^nd Lt with 1 rifle

6 Volks Grenadier with 1 rifle 5 ARs

6 Volks Grenadier with 1 rifle 5 ARs

7 Heer Pioneers with 3 rifles 4 SMGs and a flamer

6 Regular Heer Grenadier with 3 rifles 2 ARs and an LMG

6 Regular Heer Grenadier with 3 rifles 2 ARs and an LMG

1 Art Observer with 1 guy

Inex Medium Mortar

Regular Sniper

Regular Anti-Tank Rifle

Regular Light Arty

Regular Puma

Inexperienced Stuka Zu Fuss

Brad had:

2nd LT Regular with 2 buddies with SMG's

2nd LT Regular with 1 buddy with an SMG

Regular Liaison Officer with a pal with SMG

8 Regular Late War Partisans, 4 with SMG

7 Regular Late War Partisans, 3 with SMG

6 Regular Late War Partisans

9 Inexperienced Partisans, 4 with pistols

10 Inexperienced Partisans, 5 with Pistols

6 Vet Guerrilla Fighters with SMG's

Regular Medium Machine Gun

Regular Medium Mortar

Regular Light Artillery Piece

Regular Anti-Tank Rifle

Regular Anti-Tank Rifle

Flaming Hetzer (Inexp)(From Additional Unit PDF)

^^^^ Suffers from the Unreliabe Rule ^^^^^

Captured Heavy Field Car (Inexp)

Four out of the Five objectives were clustered around my left of the board, as were most of the units from both. Out of the gates my plan had been to dominate that side of the board with a lot of units and fire power while trying to keep B-rad at bay by out shooting him.

 

The set up from Brad's point of view

In practice things did not go that well in the early game, turn 1 my arty observer got shot and ran away before he had activated, a volks grenadier squad blew the hell up on a booby trap and most of my units on the board refused to come on.

 

The worms were objectives.  Clearly the Germans had been messing with the occult again!

Over the next couple of turns I was successful in outshooting Brad for the most part, despite the booby traps taking out my anti-tank rifle on the second and much of my army being pinned to shit.

As the turns went on a bit of outflanking chess happened as my pioneers jumped on a unit of Party-sans who died badly.  The Pioneers then got jumped by Brad’s veterans, who were, in turn, shot up by volks grenadiers.  They were outflanked by a flame tank and killed.  The Flame Hetzer was then out flanked by a puma and killed, who was shot by an ATR and killed. All in all, the entire left flank got messy like the LRDG on a bender. At the end of the game I had secured one of the objectives on the left flank while the other was lost to an uppity ATR.

 

And there goes my Flaming Hetzer!

In the middle it was a bit of a cluster hug as well with each unit running towards the all-important objective (was worth twice what the other objectives were) before dying on the next unit’s sword. At the end I was able to hold onto the double point middle objective with a regular squad to hold it down for a draw. On count back I got a win by killing more of B-rads naughty partisans while losing most of my forces in the exchange.  It was a brutally bloodly game.

 

Some of Dave's newly paint Germans

Thoughts on my list: I think out of the list the real standouts were the howitzer, the Stuka Zu Fuss, and every ones assault rifles. The howitzer kept whittling units down near the objectives and holding off Brad’s meaty advance. The Stuka Zu Fuss spent half the game failing to pass its leader 8 test (1 pin with command). However, in the second half it really came alive and pinged a unit almost every turn. The assault rifles were just huge, though I was not massively impressed with the regular squads and my volks all died very cheaply, the presence of the ARs really allowed me to keep the fire going on the opponent while staying mobile.  The power of the ARs in comparison to the buzzsaw LMGs was huge, if I was going for power I’d drop both LMGs and buy more assault rifles. Actually, forget that, I’d drop the regulars for 4 squads of volks grenadiers. Though they were the ones that survived having double the numbers with ARs would have been huge.

 

Hiding in the middle of the board!

Thoughts on Brad’s partisans: I really like this list. I felt that Brad was a bit crippled by going later war rather than early with his regulars and having to take SMG’s over pistols that resulted in his force being a lot smaller than the ones I have been designing. Despite this, the range of options that the partisan list can have makes the list very powerful and versatile. What I really want to see out of the list is a decent unit of cav, more cheap pistols and a second mortar. Overall, I really like the list though and think it should scare some folks running more vanilla set ups.

Thinking HURTS!!!

Brad’s Thoughts:  Well, it was brutally bloody!  The game swung one direction and back so often we lost track of who was supposed to be in the lead.  A truly great game!  I got stupidly lucky with my hidden demo charges and they really made a proper mess of three of Dave’s units.  On the flip side, my air observer rolled a one a crippled my own howitzer which I desperately needed to hit Dave’s units dashing for the center objective.  I also outflanked too many units (hey, it was an experiment) and I could not get anything to come in when I wanted them.  Had I gotten things in earlier I could have made the game far more interesting on the heavy contested left flank.  Turns out units need to be on the board to do anything…  I still love the partisans though, I am still learning to trust them…  If that makes sense?  They just don’t deliver sometimes and I need to learn to plan for that more appropriately. 

Thanks for the game Dave! It was a ripper!