I bought BKC IV when it came out, and painted several forces
for it and Stephen had been playing BKC II a good many years ago. We
kept talking about giving it a go, and both being without a game this
week, we finally did. Both forces totalled 1405 points with similar infantry
units and the British with many more tanks, but miuch worse quality. The
Germans also had much better command. I brought both sides and the
terrain, and off we went.
Sides randomly assigned, I got the British; ignore the fact my command stands are missing vehicles, they are being ordered tonight. I won the initiative, so Sir Tristian Antrobus (the sort of officer who thinks 1/Beds means 1st Class Sleeper compartment) of the 3/139th Borcester Light Heavy Infantry (a unit so far down the Order of Precedence they march after the Catagory 'A' Prisioners from HMP Slade) deployed and moved a turn on.
Then I got the armour on, 6 Vickers Cruiser Tank Mk III/IV A13s and 3 Crusader IIs with a Humber armoured car of the Desert Rats. They moved well, swinging int the gap to take on the lesser German forces. These were meant to be my good troops.
German infantry shows how good it is, by getting a double move on.
The tanks rumble forwards, but Antrobus blunders and his units pull back to their start line. The joys of being their first time on table.
The Germans stopped just outside everyones initiative range, and the British tanks and infantry both had a good three turns where all they did was to exceed their command rolls and sat there hopelessly opportunity firing to little or no effect, while the German tank commander on (CV10) ordered his tank line to gun down cruiser after cruiser.
The British tanks, even on massed opportunity fire, could not score enough hits to kill a thing. When they did hit, Stephen's saves were incredible, whereas I was getting a few lucky saves, but not enough to survie (the difference between a 5.6 save and a 6 is quite telling, as was the extra hit most German tanks could take).
At this point, I was running out of armour, while the Germans had lost nothing. I really hate historically accurate games!
Finally! A Panzer III platoon sucumbs to 2lber fire!
What is it, turn 6?
Both command teams leg it back to support the infantry, and bizzarly 3/139th spring into life, moving forwards with anti-tank rifles proudly used, scoring hits but failing to kill (we did manage a surpression).
Too little, too late. But we did manage to surpress another Panzer IV!
What did I think?
Even though I took an absolute hammering.
It was hilarious.
Great game, great rules. It all worked really well and felt right. the Germans having a CV10 command game them so much more flexibility and adaptablity on table, they could just do so much more! Pretty sure in the next game the German commander will be downgraded to 2 x CV8s...
I did get a lot of compliments from my clubamtes about the quality of my forces. Stephen is off to check his base sizes on his Italians for a rematch in a couple of weeks! I am actually looking forwards to it!
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