This Sunday at St Ambrose the infamous Soviet tank hordes, under the command of Dastardly Dave, made a brutal dash for the Kidderminster Corridor just beyond the Inner German Border.  Stood in their way was a small BAOR armoured battlegroup commanded by the unflappable Jon.  Gaming the Cold War with a set of rules they owned already, designed for 10mm scale, this was their first time in action with the Plastic Soldier Company's "BattleGroup: NORTHAG".

During the first two turns, the "recce phase" where minimal scouting elements deploy first, Jon's judicious dispositions picked off a number of Dave's screen with excellent ambush fire.  Despite a heavily-loaded high-firepower scouting element, Dave struggled to get good lines of fire or advance and improve his position.

Aiming to begin a push down the main road and secure an axis of advance for his follow on tank company, Dave was pounded every turn by on-call 105mm from off-table British Abbotts, pinning units every turn.  By Turn 3, Jon's four-strong Chieftain troop turned up.  Placing a pair on each flank, they tucked into some tasty Soviet armour straight away and hunkered down for next turn's arrival of Dastardly Dave's dreaded T-64B swarm.  With ten ATGM-armed modern Soviet tanks suddenly on the table, things looked dicey for Jon, but little did he know Dave's accumulation of Battle Rating tokens was taking his expensive but brittle tank force close to the edge morale-wise. 

Before Dave could dig into a vengeful turn 4, it was suddenly all over as Jon's latest potshots from afar had set the Soviets just above their BR limit.  The canny British forward screen, backed up by promptly arriving vanguard tank forces, had gutted the enemy scouting element and the Soviet tank thrust was left blinded and too confused to carry on.  The random points draw of the Battle Rating counters had a big say in this - could it have turned out differently?  Only a re-match between these two sworn enemies will tell us what the future holds for the peaceful consumption of bratwursts, tapas, long, crunchy, traditional breads and good old Fish and Chips. 

Ewan has produced a couple of useful templates for use with the game, one for Battlegroup army lists (available here) and a 'Type of Fire' quick reference sheet (available here).