A second stab at a mini: Round one

I'd been entered into the Street Fighting mini due to a mix up with the booking form - I had no problem with playing in any of them and so was paired up with Jeff Walden.  Jeff was in the Marines for 21 years serving as an infantry man - he listed off the countries he'd been deployed to, and it made an enviable list (assuming there wasn't any hostilities going there) - he certainly has seen the world.

We diced for scenario selection from the 3 on offer, and ended up with Dying For Danzig, one that we'd both played as the Germans before.  To win the Germans must have 1 Good Order squad remaining from around 12 equivalents at the end of the game.  The Russians have pretty much everything going for them except time.  Two flame-throwing tanks, two IS2s (I think), two flame-throwers, a 9-2 leader, and a hatful of 628 and 527 squads.

I got the Germans by random selection, making it my fifth axis side in succession, and set up expecting the worst.

Jeff came on strong on one side which helped me in a way because it gave me a natural corner to drift towards.  I caught 3 squads in the open from the heavy machine gun with the 9-1 directing it, but only broke one squad.  That could have been much worse.  The machine gun fired once more before it broke but then Jeff's approach of parking the flame-throwing tanks behind the wall meant he couldn't utilise the deadly 32FP on  either his advancing fire or my turn.

Jeff, safe with his knowledge of how to kill me
 in 4 different ways with his hands tied behind his back

Continuing my streak of players having some misfortune, he broke the MA of on of the big tanks on a smoke shot and the other went down to low ammo.

I played a game of refusing to drop concealment, opting to skulk back whenever I could.  This took Jeff by surprise and he was very cautious for the first 3 turns.   Suddenly with the last two turns he upped the pace and began to rush my position.  The 88LL gun did its job flaming the two large tanks but smoke from the blazes had done a good job of covering the approach.

Horders of Russians piled in but in the end I had managed to spread too thinly for the Russians to suppress everywhere.

The heavy had been repaired in time to come to the aid of a concealed squad who were hoping to escape any ensuing close combat for the win - and managed to break the adjacent squad.  In the end I had 2 and a half squads available, just doing enough to hold on to the win.

Jeff was a great guy to play against, and Jeff Coyle wandered over to lament the poor showing by the Jeffs.  In truth they were both good players who with a few better dice rolls could have won either scenario.

The semi final against Jason Eickmann awaits...