Skirmish in the Ardennes 1944

I had another game of Battlefield Evolution against Steve the other week. I with my American Armoured Infantry again, and Steve with his Waffen SS.

I decided from the outset of planning my army to do two things: one, play defensively and two, to take a load of tanks. Therefore I ditched the Half tracks and instead went for two Shermans and a M10. Steve seemed shocked to be out-tanked, and perhaps expected me to opt for aggressive tactics, but instead it turned out he would attack whilst I defended.

Looking at the options I made it a corner to corner advance, meaning I had a very small area to defend, far from his starting lines. However, by the nature of the scenario I also began with only three of my seven units available. One squad of Infantry and two tanks would be enough to hold out for the start though, after all, for the first two turns, the Germans couldn’t even see the Americans.
When and where they did see us, the Germans threw everything at me, but the arrival of my reserves steadily compromised his advance. He lost both his half tracks, though managing to destroy one of my tanks eventually. When My HQ arrived, their heavy artillery support was able to pound German positions. Late thrusts by the Germans ended up close, but not close enough to my defensive perimeter.


A quick analysis of the result left me thinking I was on the back foot of a draw. But in fact the inability of Steve to get in to my deployment zone meant his losses were too heavy and he was instead narrowly defeated.

One of Steve's officers calls off the attack, when American reserves begin to arrive in force.

As a set of rules, I’m really liking Battlefield Evolution, and look forward to getting a copy and looking in to the other options.

Next door it was the usual Flames of War type of game, but still warrants a nice photo:

I should probably try the game one of these days; it seldom looks much like WW2 on a table to me, but that could be the fault of how it is played at the club, not the rules themself. Oh well, one day maybe, there are to many other things I'd prefer to be doing!