One Last Roundup in El Paso

With a move back to California on the horizon, I wanted to get one last event in with the local group of guys.  Alex has taken over the TO responsibilities down at Military Gamer Supply in El Paso and wanted to run a V4 Late War tournament at 1850 points.  I ran my usual 1. Fallschirmjäger troops but used some support items that so far have gone untried with this force.  

In V4 this list would give me five Formation platoons and three Support platoons, making it tough to break.  

The first round would see me going up against Eric and his Soviet Peredovoye Otryad, or Forward Detatchment, in the new Annihilation mission.  I knew this mission would be a tough one for me, as you only win if you break the opponent's Formation.  There are no Objectives.  Two Fearless forces would likely make this a draw.

I deployed my small FJ platoon, the HMGs, and the Marder IIs here in this small patch of trees.

The large FJ platoon,  LG 40s,  Panzerwerfers, and the StuG IIIs would deploy here, with the Mortars in the center.  Two of my StuGs would immediately Bog Down, but I destroyed a couple of Stuarts.

Eric would continue his push down the side of the table, wary of my StuG IIIs.

His T-34/76s would use the other extreme side of the table, safely dodging from tree to tree to avoid the Marder IIs.

The LG 40s would bag a few more Stuarts, weakening their unit, but I would lose the Panzerwerfers.

My sniper would harass Eric's Heavy Mortars for most of the game.

As predicted, we timed out.  So many Soviet tanks and not enough firepower from my side, and too many Fearless infantry for him to dig out for Eric.  I lost my StuG IIIs and Panzerwerfers, and didn't destroy any of his units, making the score 3-1 in Eric's favor.

I learned several things in my first V4 tournament game:  Il-2s are really, really nasty!  They killed all four of my StuGs in one pass...  Tree templates need to be marked with the 2" zone of 'I can still see you', and I will be doing that with my terrain.  Woods terrain pieces will need to become larger to stay effective.  Infantry still can't do much against that many tanks, even if they move further.  Annihilation may not be a tournament mission, unless it's at the end of a long event.

In the second round I would be matched up against Aaron and his Finnish Jääkärikomppania in Counterattack.

I didn't really see myself being able to break through Aaron's defenses so decided to swing most of my force toward the open Objective.  He would move two of his units to counter, and rely on his reserves to assist.

I was able to thin out some of his infantry while it was moving to the objective, and had plenty of firepower to intercept his reserves.

I would lose two StuGs to a combination of T-34/85s and PaK40s, but the rest of my armor would survive.  After a string of disastrous rolls by his infantry, Aaron would concede victory.  

Aaron's Finns were really unlucky in this one, both of his Warriors would roll ones to run off the board.  This would leave him without much to contest the objective and I took this one 8-1.

In the last round I faced Vince and his German Schwere Panzerkompanie with Otto Carius in command.  The mission was Encounter.

Carius and his friends would rampage across the table without anything to fear from my list.  While closing, Carius and Kerscher could ignore modifiers for range and concealment.  They would take out my Panzerwerfers early before reaching my FJs.

I made a pretty solid push on his objective, but reserves move so fast now!  My FJs remained pinned for a turn and that would cost me big time.  Hs 129 B3s are nasty too!  Once my armor was done, so was I.

I had a slim chance here, but the delay sunk me.  I would destroy a battery of 3.7cm FlaK guns, but Vince would win 8-1.

In all, I still find the potential of V4, I just don't think non-mobile infantry have much of a future in a competitive setting.  It's early though, so I could be wrong, of course.  I just think that mobile infantry and armored lists can do everything better, especially since there's no advantage to sitting still now.  I'll be looking at a more mobile list soon, maybe Panzer Lehr or a Desperate Measures Panzer list.