Purple Heart Draw Tactical Mission 1

Played Lone Canuck Publishing's Purple Heart Draw in Early October with Tycho.  Just the highlights so I can get caught up on my blog entries!

An overview of the map.  US enters from the top and the objective is to clear the 4 intersections near the bottom of the map (Circled in red).  They have 5 Tactical Missions (TM) in which to do so.  A TM is similar to a campaign game being a random number of turns from 5 to 8 or so.

And a close up of the top of the map where all the action for the first TM would take place.  Note the illegal purchase at the bottom left!  Gone if a puff or rules!  My primary objective was to keep an armored breakout from trashing my line.  So I purchased two roadblocks (one on the far side of the bridge and the other near the town in the north) and an AT gun which is hiding to the woods just to the right of the bridge on the south side.  On the left side of the map I have a minefield and two hidden PSK armed squads (another oops, only 1 squad was allowed to be HIP - but the second one never revealed himself in the first game so I unhipped him at the start of the second and continued from there)

The US tried a blitz and ended up with a burning Sherman!  (HIP PsK squad one revealed himself to fire)

The situation at the end of Allied turn 1.

And the end of German turn 1.  Took a faust shot and pinned my own guy...

Another burning Sherman!  Ran into the minefield and went up in flame.  That made this flank a relative backfield for the rest of the TM.  Note that poor broken slob at the top, they never rallied the whole game.

The situation at the end of turn 2.

End of Allied turn 3.

End of German turn 3.

End of Allied turn 4

Pesky Sniper!

End of German turn 4.

The US has created a hole in the line and the Germans will be hard pressed to limit the damage!

End of US turn 5.

In my rush to try to cover the hole I make a major mistake - a squad dies and the attached leader goes berserk!  I could have had them stop back one hex and advance the final spot...

Following my major blunder my opponent makes one of his own, he allows me to roll for TM end and I roll a 1 of course...  Instead of a breakthrough the US units are stuck in a salient of no man's land.  This will allow me to purchase and place reinforcements to cover the threatened area.  To be continued...