Somewhere in Normandy with Blitzkrieg Commander

Not sure blitzkrieg is the right term at this stage of the war, but Blizkrieg Commander were the rules we used to have a successful game on Sunday of US versus Germans.  Richard organised the game and provided the German forces from his collection and nearly all of the terrain (I provided some boccage and a few entrenchment markers).  Mark W provide the US forces and took command of the paratroops holding the village.  I took the command of the US relieving force.

Signature shot. The wooded hills separated the two battlefields.

The Germans were concealed and it was always going to be hard for the US recce force in the Greyhound to survive first contact.  The Pak 40 took it out.  In the background can be seen the Pak 43/41 monster.  The German AT guns were in gun pits, their infantry just in the softcover provided by the woods.

A closer view of the Germans spotted by the US.

The US Shermans approach while the infantry lag behind.

The remaining US forces in my command come under fire from the Pak 43/41.

The Shermans.

The Infantry.

The WTF!  

A command blunder on the second turn saw the US Infantry take half a move back with the result that over half of them exited the table and thereby considered "out of action".  Oh well, I guess higher command had a better use for them.  The paratroops later had a command blunder that saw them vacate their defenses and mull about in the village square.  Not to be out done the Germans also had a command blunder that saw them go backwards into an airstrike.

The FAO.  

I'm not sure if he is looking for the missing US infantry or bird watching, but whatever he was doing he called in some devastating artillery barrages that destroyed the Pak 40 and the Pak 43/41 along with the German mortars and a lot of their infantry.

The guns.

The village.

Spot the dice and plastic bag of explosions.

My command faced a third German AT gun.  It proved very hard to destroy.

The few infantry who stayed with my command move up to protect the tanks which have come under determined panzerfaust attack.  When we tallied up the US units remaining we were well over our breakpoint.  However we hadn't been keeping a close watch and when we checked the Germans I was facing they were also spent.

The paratroops fought on and hopefully will feature in a post by Mark W.  If they do I will add the link to that post here.

We were strangely rusty with the rules and had to look a number of things up.  Not a big ask with the rules only being about 30 pages or so (once you takeout TOE information and examples).  

As we found with our previous games, infantry in entrenchments are hard work to neutralize.

It was a fabulous looking game with some great miniatures and played through in about five hours.