AAR: U19 Hasty Pudding

Jay Harms

Germans: Walter Eardley
British: Jay Harms

Sat down with Walter the over the last month and we just finished playing “Hasty Pudding” out of one of the recent scenario packs (Turning the Tide). It is an old scenario that was redone recently, and featured a “speed bump” force of Germans (two 467s MMG and 9-1) covering a board 7 bridge initially against ~9 squads of brits led by a 9-2, two 94* art guns and 7 rolling pillbox Matildas. On turn 4, a powerful German counterattack enters and then has 6 turns to fight through a town and at least get 1 MMC onto the bridge by game end. The German counterattack has about a dozen AFV’s, a 9-2, and ~12 squads, including four 838 Assault engineers toting bombs. We diced for sides and I got the Limeys. The first 3.5 turns were a blur as I rushed the bridge and wiped out the speed bump at the end of turn 2, but not before immobilizing one of my 3 “good” matildas. I then rushed to set up a perimeter prior to the German counterattack. Having 2 turns to do so, I was able to get most of my units in place, except for the 6 MF Matilda I’s which were also radioless and road MF not allowed. Talk about the slowest tanks ever! Walter initially came at my right flank but as all but about 4 of his tanks had 1 armor, everything was vulnerable to MG fire. His “heavy” tanks had a frontal armor of 3. I was able to slow the attack down, and thanks to Walters’ dice, was able to break and wound his 9-2 and almost 40% of his infantry. The 9-2 eventually rolled a snakes on a rally, but promptly then rolled a 12 on the HoB, and ended the game as a wounded broken disrupted leader…never did rally. I expect the SS shot him afterwords for cowardice. The 838s were no better, and rarely passed MCs. This really slowed the German advance, and by turn 7, Walter had switched the axis of attack to my left flank, and in the one brief showing of good dice on his part, his big tank Mk IV 75* went hull down and shot up and pinned one of my gun crews, broke the other gun crew, and trashed some infantry all in one phase. His armored car then overran the pinned crew, and another tank then finally shot it up and broke it. This opened up my left flank and I was scrambling. Thankfully Walters dice then went cold and both 838 were broken while crossing the roads (under cover of wrecks) by long range 2 even and 4 even shots. With Walter down to only 3 good order squads, and only 2 turns to reach the bridge (where I had my 4 Matilda I’s parked we called it a game. Very fun scenario that has a lot of interesting give and take on both sides. I would recommend it. Early war armor is a challenge, and is a totally different flair than late war monsters roaming the battlefield.

Jay