One Hour Skirmish Wargames: Tiger Recovery Operation

1945: Germany is in retreat and they can't afford to leave any functional vehicle behind. A German team has been assigned to secure a disabled Tiger I until the tank recovery vehicle can get there. The Soviets have already gotten to it

This is based on the Capture the Cannon scenario from One Hour Skirmish Wargames. There is a 5 turn limit.

The Germans were plagued by poor leadership (initiative and phase draws) , confusion, and an inability to concentrate fire effectively.

This squad would spend most of the game behind the hill.

For most of the game, the Germans didn't draw enough points on their phases to move this fire team up to the edge of the trees and therefore bring them into the firefight.

It took far too long for the Germans to get their act together. Finally the hanomag was able to disembark the team on-board. The leader quickly jumped into action, dropping one of the Soviets.

But getting close to your enemy is not without risk and the Soviets decimated their attackers.

Eventually, the German squad on the left tried to close on the Soviet LMG team in the trees to their front, but it was too little too late (end turn 5).

From start to finish the game took about an hour - with a lot of reference to the rule book. I still had time, so I reset and played again. It went much the same.

The hanomag moved up quickly, but was caught by a barrage of Soviet grenades which succeeded in disabling the half-track, taking out its crew, and leaving the team on board temporarily out of action. The Soviets pounced on the opportunity and raced up to finish off the Germans half-track passengers.

They were successful but were left exposed (attacking ends a figure's actions) and the German MG42 fire-team in the woods extracted repayment.

The German squad behind the hill got into the action sooner this time, but were mowed down by SMG and LMG fire from the trees to their front and advancing Soviet infantry from the trees beyond.

Deja vu-ish: two Germans reached the LMG in the trees, but once again it was too little, too late.

The bean is to show that one of the crew is down.

***** Thoughts *****

I very much like the One Hour Skirmish Wargames rules. It has been a few weeks since I last played so the first game was shaking off cobwebs and a lot of referencing the rule book, but the second game lasted just 36 minutes with minimal reference to the book.

For the first game I drew the maximum cards allowed for defenders in the woods, every time, even if they scored higher on the first card. I forgot how fast one chews through the deck that way. So, for the second game, I stopped as soon as the defender drew a higher card. This appeared to result in more action between Jokers.

In both games, the Germans generally drew poorly on their phases, allowing minimal numbers of figures to activate.

By way of example, here are the card draws for Game 1:

Turn 1 Germans Phase 1: 3, Phase 2: 5.
Turn 2 Germans Phase 1: N/A (Russians won initiative and drew a Joker)
Turn 3 Germans Phase 1: Joker
Turn 4 Germans Phase 1: 2, Phase 2: Queen (the only good one and it was cut short by a Joker)
Turn 5 Germans Phase 1:  8

Mistakenly, in both games,  I opted to have the Germans fire on the Soviets with the SdK's MG, rather than race up and disembark the infantry on-board.  In hindsight, the Germans needed to close assault and do it as fast as possible. Any effort to attack from range is inefficient when there's a strict 5 turn limit (and consider, that in Game 1, detailed above, the Germans only were able to do anything in 3 of the 5 turns). Close combat is decisive, range combat is not.

In both games, Soviets that were downed recovered - with just two exceptions. The Germans on the other hand went down and were out of the game in all but one case. Obviously this is the luck of the draw, but the attacker in this scenario has to be prepared for that.

In what I'm sure is a coincidence, both games ended on Jokers drawn during the close combat with the Soviet LMG.