The bloody ridge.......

I must admit I did feel a little bit guilty...
A fantastic table to fight over and we spend the night fitting over a single ridge line 1 foot square....

Wednesday night saw the opening moves in our Late War Campaign based around Zhukov's push over the Oder in early 1945, the temptation was to go for massed armour, but we held back and kicked off with  with a Patrol game using the Too Fat Lardies Chain of Command rules.

The Russian's benefited from extra support options as they were facing off against a platoon of Regular Panzer Grenadiers..... who are tooled up with numerous MG34's....
I picked flame throwers.....

Worried by the volume of fire the German sections can throw out and my lack of fire teams, I pushed my patrol markers out wide hoping to isolate the German left flank and break their morale early.

That failed - the PZ Grenadiers secured the main buildings over looking the road and two of my 3 jump off points before I was able to deploy any figures on the table, as they were on overwatch I knew I would be facing casualties before I even fired a shot in anger.

With only one jump off point not under observation of German LMG's I cross the road hoping to out flank the German defenders, if I could get lucky on the dice and end the turn, I might have a chance to supress the defenders, however my German opponent countered this move by rushing to block my flanking move.

Boredom set in, I was not coming over the ridge and refused to deploy from the other jump off points giving the Germans nothing to shoot at, so over the ridge they poured.

Only to be sent packing by the combined fire of two sections and a sniper - The German force morale slowly crept down, broken fire teams routed and headed back to the twon their wounded leaders in tow.

Feeling rather cocky I pushed beyond the ridge hoping to exploit the heavily shocked German defenders, but two rounds of double 6's saw the Germans pepper the advancing Soviets and I was forced to regroup beyound the ridge.

And so it continued for another 2 hours, the Germans pushed up hoping to break the slowly recovering Russian sections, the Russians got their heads shot off every time they stuck their heads over the ridge line. A late rush by the German defenders to seize a Russian Jump off point was countered by a Flamethrower ambush.....

I really wished I had taken the mortar support option, a little smoke would have freed up my movement considerably.....

So victory to the Russians by a single force morale point, but hardly the push for the Oder....

Round 2 - Next week.