Grille my Stummel !

A couple more additions for my FoW Wehrmacht forces...

Grille H

First up a pair of Grille H self-propelled infantry guns. I got these some time ago to add some fire power to my German half track forces. My regular Brit opponent had an annoying habit of hiding his Para's in buildings, close to objective markers, so I sought a solution, and found the idea of the 'bunker buster' grille would do the job quite nicely.

For those not familiar with the rules of the game, this allows the weapon to fire on troops in the building, if it hits, all teams in the building are hit, and with a firepower of 1+, and no saves allowed, that means dead troops...

The Grille also has the ability to fire a bombardment from long range, landing with a mighty thump.

Sounds great eh? Sadly this mighty beastie is effectively castrated in the game - it only has a 16" range when fired directly, which means 9 times out of 10, it will be dead to enemy anti-tank fire long before it gets in range of using its behemoth cannon...

OK so stay at range and bombard I hear you cry... well, with only two weapons firing in the platoon, this means a fairly ineffective bombardment too on average...

I tried them out anyway in a game against my regular foe, though this time playing MidWar vs Soviets... predictably they sucked big time and were effectively; 'chased off the board'... I feel they will remain display pieces in my cabinet from now on... Shame as I think they look rather cool!

Stummel

Next up a pair of SdKfz 251/9's better known as the Stummel.

These half tracks sported a 7.5cm short barrel gun for direct fire support for the mechanised half track platoons. I got these to either start the ball rolling for a cannon platoon for my Lehr forces, or use to fill up the GPG 'Heavy' platoon, adding them to the half track mortar carriers and HMGs I already have.

Again they got a try out against the Soviets , and once again didn't do a lot, though to be fair I think I was  rather timid and indecisive in my approach against a foe and scenario I was unsure of how to deal with...

The problem with both these units is that despite being 'armoured' they are also open topped and any half decent artillery has become the bane of my half tracks lives...

Consequently after Friday nights experience, I am going to retire my mechanised force, and start my force composition afresh, based around a core Infantry company, rather than mechanised, and add in as much armour (tanks) and artillery as I can cram in. It sounds cheesy and geared to winning tourney games, but the truth of the matter is, many games are defensive battles and when this is the case, infantry will defend against mech and armour, and a 50/50 vs other infantry, and in a defensive battle, all the defender has to do to win is just hang on to the objectives, and hope to hang on, till time runs out...

Tournaments and Rankings

On the tourney scene, the Rankings were updated on 1st of September, and my performance from 'FRACAS', appears to have earned me a debut on the rankings table of 116th out of 159 registered players. Not too bad for a first crack at it.

There are still the results of the CTA to add in, and though I didn't fare terribly well there, the more games you play the further up the rankings they may take you. I don't fully understand how it is worked out, but I guess it's some formula based on games played / tournaments attended, and wins, loses and 'draws' and points scored in the process...

As yet I am not sure when or where the next one will be that I will chance my arm at...