Milton Keynes Campaign 2013 AAR

Hello All,

Ben here with a Event AAR. Last weekend myself, Winner Dave and honourary Breakthrough Assault member Cid formed the Bournemouth 'A' Team for Milton Keynes Campaign Flames of War League. The event has teams of 3 players each using an army from a different era playing each other in a Round Robin style event. The event has a nice element in that each year teams can be promoted and relegated between the 3 Divisions, as we we're a new team were started in the bottom division. So slightly bleary eyed we turned up on the Saturday morning with the 19 other teams and found are first opponents.

I had chosen to play Late War and decided to give my new Market Garden US Paras a try out. It's a very different list from the Nuts US Paras I had used at Brighton and Corrivaly, the loss of the Tank Destroyers possible did hurt me at times but having 3 big infantry platoons meant the list had an offensive possibility the Nuts list could not match. My list was:-

Fearless    Veteran	Parachute Rifle Company (82nd with Guards)	USA Late-War
Infantry Company

Platoon	Qty	Unit	Points
Headquarters
Parachute Rifle Company HQ (82nd)  p.68	2 3	Cmd Carbine team Bazooka team	90
Combat Platoons
Parachute Rifle Platoon (82nd)  p.68	1 1 1 9	Cmd Panzerfaust SMG team Bazooka team M2 60mm mortar Rifle/MG team	375
Parachute Rifle Platoon (82nd)  p.68	1 1 1 9	Cmd Panzerfaust SMG team Bazooka team M2 60mm mortar Rifle/MG team	375
Warriors
Major Julian Cook  p.60	1	Warrior and Higher Cmd Rifle team Maj. Julian Cook	50
Weapons Platoons
Parachute Mortar Platoon  p.69	1 4 2	Cmd Carbine team M1 81mm mortar Bazooka team	165
Support Platoons
Airborne Engineer Platoon  p.70	1 1 3 4 2	Cmd Pioneer SMG team Pioneer Supply Handcart Pioneer Bazooka team Pioneer Rifle team Pioneer M1919 LMG team	305
Airborne Anti-tank Platoon  p.71	1 4 4	Cmd Carbine team M1 57mm gun Bazooka team	215
Parachute Field Artillery Battery  p.70	1 1 1 4	Cmd Carbine team Staff team Observer Carbine team M1A1 75mm Pack howitzer	135
Air Observation Post  p.83	1	L4 Grasshopper AOP	40
Company Points:			1750

www.EasyArmy.com

Source document: Market Garden

My first attempted at this list had a very bad baptism of fire getting run over twice by Robin Spence's Soviet Matilda Horde. I made the brave and choice of rewriting the list 4 weeks before the event and the even brave choice of dropping a lot of painted platoons. But despite being very ill for a week of that I managed to get the whole army finished with 3 days spare.

Game 1 - Vs Bunshop not 2B - Dust Up

So the first game I ended up facing Jay Mercer and his Welsh Guard Armoured Company. I decided early on to deploy my 2 platoons of Paras in reserve to assault Jay's objective and rely on my Engineers and Anti Tank Guns to try and hold my objectives.

Jay's Deployment

My Deployment

Jay got the first turn and really surprised me by how aggressive he was. He doubled a platoon down my open flank out flanking my anti tank guns (I really should have seen that coming as I play Cromwells!).

Turn 1 Moves

 Jays used the out flanking Cromwells to run my Artillery off, but got a little to aggressive and I counter charged with my Bazooka teams from my Anti Tank Gun platoon.

I do love letting the Bazookas from the Anti Tank platoon off their leash.

 I got my reverses before Jay did and this was pivotal in the out come of the game, I was able to quickly assault his 25 pounders off the objective while Jay had to start assaulting my engineers on my objective.

Hi Ho Silver!!

My Engineers proved their worth during this game. Jay assaulted 3 Cromwells into my flank where I only had one platoon to try and pin the platoon, I lost a team but my counter attack wiped the platoon out. Then Jay sent in a second platoon with the Company Commander and Second in Command into my now pinned Engineers, with 4 shots hitting on 5's I bailed a Cromwell and destroyed another. The delay gave me time to take Jay's objective.

Pinned Infantry, what could possible go wrong....

That ended the Game 5-2 to me. A really close game were a few things could have made a massive difference. But still a good start to the weekend.

Game 2 - VS Oh! Parker! - Free For All

Game 2 was against a stand in team as the team that was meant to take part had to drop out at the last minute due to a medical issues (hence the name of the team). I was facing Paul Harvey and his Fallschirmjagers, the same Paul and army I faced at Corrivally game 3 which ended in a 3-3 draw. I did feel I didn't play well against Paul last time out and I was determined to right the wrong.

Being Free For All I decided to bunch up my infantry during the deployment as I couldn't get attack by artillery before I moved. Thanks to the terrain I was able to send most of my infantry into a pair of woods and out of sight for most of the game.

Deloyment

 Paul was aggressive with his StuG to try and slow down my assault while he ran up my right flank. This was perfect for me as I used the StuGs to range in my smoke on and block line of sight from Paul's Observers.

 I took a chance and assaulted the StuGs to try and remove one of Paul's few mobile platoons. I then used the smoke bombardment to hide in. On the right flank (sorry I didn't get any photos of that part of the table) my mortars were doing a good job of slowing down the attacking Fallschirmjagers infantry.

 At this point my Engineers had to to assault range of the middle objective which was only defended by one HMG and a platoon of Pak40's. A quick Smoke and normal bombard (thanks to Major Cooks ignore smoke rule) and my Engineers took the objective. Paul had nothing that could stop my from holding the objective and so tried to get a few VP's but failed.

So game 2 ended 6-1 to me. So far so good on my front.

Game 3 - VS Scimitar A - Pincer

Last game of day one and I was facing Rich Hardy and his Finnish Infantry. After an epiphany in the bathroom (no joke) I used Major Cooks rule and choose to Auto Attack. I thought this was a good idea as Rich had 10 platoons which was going to be hard for me to defend against with only 3 platoons until my reverses turned up. Also when I auto attack all my Infantry gets a spearhead move so it seemed to make sense to me.

Now this was a bloody game! Both sides took a kicking and the game really did swing one way then the other. The board was dictated by a large group of buildings, I decided to not attack them and so the focus of the game was on a 2 foot section were the board was more open.

 I managed to get to Rich's lines mostly intact, some good luck, smoke and terrain kept most of my infantry safe.

My Infantry get into the Finnish lines.

 The fighting for the objective boiled down to my 3 platoons of infantry lead by Major Cook, taking the objective and then being assaulted turn away turn by the reinforcements, and the infantry that had started the game defending the buildings. Every time I thought I'd taken the objective another platoon turned up to counter attack....

The ISU -122 appears from Ambush, but is quickly over run by infantry.

After what must have been 3 or 4 turns of slaughtering each other we were both on company moral checks, at this point we we're just getting stuck in as the game was going to be 4-3 either way.

The dead pile mounts up......

In the end my company broke first, but I was happy with such a great game. We both ended the game with a dozen or so models each, with 2 infantry armies that tells a tale of just how much stuff died. Still great game and my favourite game of the weekend. 3-4 to Rich.

Day One Summary

So day one ended with the Bournemouth 'A' Team in second place only 2 points behind the leaders, the Dream Team. Cid has won all 3 of his games and Winner was 2-1. We set off with the other Bournemouth Team (The Toy Boys) and a few other teams to a very odd Chinese/Indian/Thai restaurant and then later the pub for what turned out to be a heavier night then I had planned..... (note to self Steve Chalton can handle his drinks far better than I can).

Game 4 - VS Ronin - Breakthrough

So a very hungover Bournemouth 'A' Team made it's way to the venue for day 2. I don't really remember getting back to where we we're staying if I'm very honest.... Anyway I was facing Will (very nice guy who seemed very understanding about my condition) and his Soviet T-34 Horde. We were playing Breakthrough one of my favourite missions. I was on the defence and being trackless ignored the mobile battle rule. My hangover made deployment a little bit of a problem, I must have moved the Engineers three or four times as I kept on forgetting what I was planning on doing with them.... Will put two of his T-34 platoons in reserve s I knew I'd need to be quick to get to the objectives as I didn't fancy assaulting 16 tanks.

Deployment

Right from the get go Will's Spetsnaz were a pain, I forced his T-34's to go the long way round thanks to my Engineers placing a minefield at the cross roads of the Village but his Spetsnaz kept up the early pressure on my  infantry as they fell back to the objectives. Wills Rocket artillery were less than useless failing to range in once after turn 1. His Anti Tank guns were also an annoyance they kept getting into 16 inches so I had to deal with them. A few turns in Will got a little too aggressive with them and they were in assault range of my engineers who made short work of them.

Objectives Secured!

 I got to the objectives before Will's reserves turned up. They didn't turn up until turn 5 which left them in the bad position of facing Dug in and Gone to Ground Veteran infantry. The other platoon of T-34's meet a horrible end thanks to my Anti Tank Guns so all my focus ended up on the 2 reserve platoons.

The T-34's came on but couldn't do much against my dug in and gone to ground paras. I shot up one of the platoons with my AT Guns and bazookas bailing 5 out of the 7 tanks, my assault finished the platoon off and with that the game ended 6-1 to me. The game could have been a lot closer than the score line suggests, Will's reserves  not turning up until turn 5 really hurt his plans, if a platoon had turned up on turn 3 I would have still been in the open and that would have really caused some damage. Still I survived my hangover with a 6-1 victory and the team had a good round as a whole, we we're only 1 point behind the leads and we faced them next! The Division 3 championship would come down to the last round.

Game 5 - The Dream Team - Surrounded

So the last round, the crunch game and my lest favourite mission.... I was playing Vinny and his Hungarians. I decided not to use Major Cooks auto attack rule in this game as I wouldn't get much out of the spearhead move as we start so close and I quite fancied defending., but I "won" the dice roll and had to attack. 

Vinny deployed well and I went for an all or nothing attack at one point of his defence line (this would turn out to be a mistake). I was able to use cover to get my infantry into assault range but I was struggling to find anywhere to attack. Vinny had brought his Tigers over to cover the objective once he saw I wasn't going to attack the other objective and with the Panzer IV/70's, two HMG's and my artillery all having firepower 6+ I was stuck.

This is going to get messy.... (sorry for the lack of photos in this game I was too tired and too heavily involved in the game to remember to take more photos)

I attacked where I could and got two platoons off of Vinny quite quickly but the objectives were out of the question. Still great game and great opponent, I hope to face him again some time.

3-4 to Vinny, we spoke after the game and I should have sent my Engineers towards the other objective, there was a wood I could have hidden in and that would have forced his Tigers and a second infantry platoon to stay on that objective. I would then have had a chance at the other objective as I would have only had the Panzer IV/70's to deal with, so lesson learnt.

The rest of the round belonged to the Dream Team as they all beat us and so we missed out on promotion by 8 points and good luck to them in Division 2 next season.

The Hungover and 2nd placed Bournemouth 'A' Team. Winner seems to be glaring at the cameraman, not sure what he did to him!

Great event and myself, Dave and Cid have already started planning for next year! I'm hoping to do Early War with some sort of desert army and next year we will get promotion to Division 2!

Thanks for reading I hope you enjoyed the write up.

Until next time

Ben