Operation Nachteule 3

A sunny 24th June 2018 saw the 3rd Leeds Night Owls escalation tourney.  Nachteule 2 was last Summer and the 1st outing was technically labelled Operation Rudolph.   The scenarios and format were the same as Nachteule 2 and our Soviets fielded very similar lists with the big change being swapping out the 1,000 point army flamethrower for a light howitzer.

The first game against Finns with the 3 objectives in a row, the back objective being in the house that is chock full of Finns.  Our boys tried too hard for a win pushing onto the centre objective but only getting close enough to contest and stupidly leaving our own objective unclaimed.  The quad maxim on the Gaz performed much the same in all the games.  Its targets invariably went down meaning it killed very little but consistantly neutralised far in excess of its own points of enemy.  Taking the centre proved a tough problem as the Finns could go into ambush covering the approach and due to their special rules shoot at -1 to hit.  A clear loss for our boys, mistakes were made but the Finns played to their strengths and put up a good game.

750 points against US marines.  They had a flamethrower Stuart at 1,000 points but thankfully only an infantry flamethrower in a jeep at 750.  That caused some worries to my infantry and they eventually took a hosing but amazingly passed their morale check and stayed in play.  The 5 objectives can be seen forming a cross shape.   We fed the lads in but found the marine ability to move and fire togther with the firepower of BARs quite an obstacle.  Another loss with 2 against 3 objectives held.

Our boys were sliding down tables very rapidly which also increases the chance of a win with the Swiss matching system.  The final 1,000 point battle was against Germans with a strong mechanised element of a light tank, armoured car, 2 small hanomags and small but veteran infantry teams.  The lads played to their strengths and planned for a bloodbath.  Figures were lost, pins were taken but Soviet infantry re-roll tests for rout and the inexperienced squad are fanatics so don’t even worry about that.  The Germans probably lost less models but those small squads were reduced to insignificant firepower or forced to go down to survive.  Special mention to the Zis that lost half the crew to autocannon fire but kept on going to the end of the game.  My opponent played well but small elite units are pushing uphill against Soviet numbers.  The 2 hanomags chew up the points for basically a mobile expensive machine gun.

Thanks to the organisers for running this and somehow scrounging a pile of prize support so we all got to take something home rather than the top scorers raking it all in.