The Second World War,  Battlegroup Panzergrenadier, 15mm

It usually takes a lot to talk me into playing a 15mm game – to me these little figures lack the visual appeal of 20mm Second World War, or even 28mm. However, when my wargaming chum Kevan Gunn offers to take along his snow terrain its well worth making an exception. He built this series of 2×2 foot terrain boards after a trip to the Ardennes, and he did a pretty good job of making things look a lot like photographs taken around Stavelot, La Gleize  and Stoumont during the days between 17th-24th December, 1944. He plans to expand the board collection soon, including tiles of the River Ambleve (or the Ambleve River to our American cousins), and the hillsides beyond Stoumont where the spearhead of Kamfgruppe Peiper was halted.Anyway, on to the game. This was a fictional encounter – a clash between a force of German panzer grenadiers (with tank destroyer support) and an ad-hoc American mechanised blocking force, supported by armour. We’ve played this sort of game before, but this time there were a few surprises. The first was the arrival of the Luftwaffe (unheard of in a Bulge game), when a low-level run by a pair of FW-190’s pulverised an American armoured recon unit and one of my M-10’s. Then came the artillery, which pinned the Americans, which meant they couldn’t bring down the firepower they needed. Consequently the Germans infiltrated the village, driving the defenders back to one corner of it.The American players thought their luck had changed when the Shermans appeared, and they went into reserve behind the town, waiting for developments. It came in the form of a platoon of Jagdpanthers, which wasted little time wiping out the American anti-tank screen, and trundling on into the village.One daring Sherman commander managed to score a lucky flank shot on one of the mosters, forcing it to retire for a little, but it was clear that the Germans had the edge. Their objective was to clear a path through the village on the road leading off the table towards the west, and they achieved that without much of a problem. At the end of the evening victory was awarded to the bad guys, leaving us battered Allied players wondering just how best to deal with big Nazi tanks when you don’t have a cab rank of Thunderbolts flying overhead… 

Tags: Battlegroup Panzergrenadier