Xenos Rampant in the Kuban

Huzzah! I finally got a game in this year. After four weekends of plans being canceled by weather or illness it was nice to roll some dice.

Dan has been working on some Eastern Front figures, thematically inspired by the movie Cross of Iron and the southern parts of the Russian Front east of the Black Sea.

The game featured Soviet infantry with Lend Lease armour probing a defensive line held by German Mountain Troops and Huwi auxiliaries. The landscape was pretty bleak. Arid scrubland in the summer and swamp in the winter.

German Huwi Cossacks in reserve, who didn't do anything. The dismounted Cossacks in the background did add some weak rifle fire.

Soviets advance 

Valentine tank

Pak36, which struggled to have any effect on the Valentines

MG34 

More Soviets advancing. Urrah!

M3 tank. Trying to beat this down with an antitank rifle and a 75mm infantry gun was tough.

Sgt. Steiner and his troops from the movie.

75mm iG. This attracted much of the Soviet fire. 

Valentine approaching the wire

The wire is breached!

That was the high water mark of the Soviet attack. Infantry tried pouring into the gap behind the Valentine, but attracted all the MG, rifle, and off board artillery we could pour onto them. The Valentine broke, taking 5 hits. The other Valentine (in the background) failed a roll and was knocked out. The M3 and the T70 on the other flank were also heavily damaged and falling back, each with 3 or 4 hits on them,

Dan was testing some ideas for making the tank and antitank rules in Xenos Rampant less vanilla.

Currently his thinking is a weapon will get "Antitank" (which halves the target armour value) up to a certain Armour Value, then only "Armour Piercing" (which reduces target AV by 1) for targets with a higher AV. So the Pak36 got AT vs targets with AV up to 4, then only AP after. So firing at the Valentine with AV of 6, it only got AP.

The M3 had similar for its 37mm gun, but the 75mm gun got "Engulfing" which ignores cover. My 75mm infantry gun hit on 4+ but without any AT or AP it was tough going to get any wounds on the M3 with it's frontal armour of 6.

Plus any vehicle hit by an AT or AP attack had to test, and on a roll of 11+ it was knocked out. This could get modified to a 10+ somehow that I wasn't sure about. Perhaps bigger caliber antitank weapons?

Fun was had anyway. Dan's figures are always enjoyable to play with.