More Desert Tankers

The U.S. Labor Day long weekend has arrived. I had mention in a previous blog post that the NHMGS Enfilade miniature gaming convention had been shifted to Labor Day weekend. Enfilade is normally one of the big yearly events for me (as you can see in these older posts) and usually I would have been busy preparing games and off to the convention. But this year some health issues have kept me away from the convention. So instead I invited some fellow misanthropes (okay, not really, they were just guys who couldn't make it to Enfilade either) over for a What a Tanker in the desert game.

This time around we were using tanks from around the time of the Gazala battles. The British started out with a Grant, Honey, and Crusader II.  

It's a Honey

A Grant on the lookout for the Germans

The German side started with a Panzer IV F1 with the short-barreled 75mm gun and a Panzer III H. I was on the German side and we added another Panzer III after a couple turns to balance the sides. 

The Panzer IV watching for the enemy

My Panzer III looking to make a flank run

The terrain had hills, rocky outcrops, and some scrub brush. So there were places to hide (although maybe not enough) and that blocked line of sight. 

An aerial view of some of the terrain

The Panzer IV was a little more exposed. It took hits that reduced its command dice and was eventually abandoned by its crew. I was trying to move up on the British without exposing myself too much, but that wasn't helping the Panzer IV. 

Hiding behind a short hill

After losing the Panzer IV, we brought on a Semovente 75. Initially it shrugged off the British shots, but one set of bad die rolls let to a quick kill on the SP gun. That gave the Axis side two tank losses to none for the British.

The Semovente arrives, with the abandon Panzer IV in the background

And good-bye Semovente

The second Panzer III had been hiding out in the scrub, using it for cover. It was finally able to draw a good bead on the Crusader and destroy it.

Panzer Bush

Scratch one Crusader

The British replaced their loss with another Crusader and the Axis brought in an Italian M13/40. Overall, things were still looking good for the British.

The three British tanks in good positions. You can just make out the M13/40 in the upper right (near the burning Semovente)

I decided to push forward, hoping the other tanks could cover me. This would put my Panzer III into direct confrontation with the Grant. Meanwhile, the Honey tried to move around my flank. Over the next couple of turns both sides would get hits, but the target rolled for saves against the hits. Then the M13/40 got around on the Honey's flank and blew it up. My dice got hot and I did the same to the Grant. 

Good-bye Grant

At this point we decided to end the game with the Axis getting a slight win. 

While this didn't really make up for missing Enfilade, it was a fun time. It also gave me a chance to play with my new What a Tanker dashboards from Dark Ops.

I did mine up in desert colors to fit my tanks. I still have a few more to put together and may vary the scheme a bit.

On a side note, you can see some photos from Enfilade (along with the normal posts of Dean's nicely painted miniatures) over at the WAB Corner blog.