AAR Fistful of TOWs: tank clash

One of our local gamers, Nate, has been quietly beating the microarmour drum for a few months. Having completed some units, and with a new gamer having an impressive stock of microarmour a game suddenly materialized. Nate essentially GM'd it having played solo once of since. The system is fistful of TOW's (3 perhaps?). He wanted to simplify as much as possible so there was no artillery, air support, and very limited infantry. Tank clash, 1982 cold war goes hot!

Warsaw pact troops race in from the left, while the imperialist lackey running god NATO troops (myself included) engaged at their extreme range to attempt to thin the ranks of red. 

My own command had subpar equipment so the gentlemen on my side kindly gave me the better training (and even before I arrived!). Canadians in Leopard 3's took position on a hill in heavy woods to snipe at the Ruskies, while M48 Patons and M1 Abrams rushed forward. My second unit was APCs with infantry who moved forward to contest the central town.


Immediately Russians were getting brewed up at long range. There are a satisfying number of dice to roll for most sets of firing, though penetration can be bananas (10+ dice) we we used an alternative rule to cap it (less dice succeeding on lower numbers).

Nate's archaic T55s clank up on the far left flank ignored by everyone.

 T-72's race forward to get into the grille of the NATO forces. The Paton have been whittled down in the tree line and are about to vamoose from a morale failure.
The abrams tanks, on overwatch, manage to brew up 3 T-72s, but the counterfire is manages to ice one.They elect to go onto overwatch again, to hit the T72s as they break cover, and then scoot behind the village.

This probably would have worked except for the reinforcements pouring into the area for the Soviets and pouring shells into the Abrams. The remaining 2 are taken out. 

The Canadian Leopards are feeling the pinch and elect to reposition off the hill to avoid the T-72s and attempt to crush the advancing T55's. They destroy 4 of the 6 tanks, but lose 2 in response. Luckily the Soviet formation breaks and disappears.
Those T-72s look to have an open run at the NATO baseline, their objective. 

Meanwhile on the NATO right flank things have been going peachy. The soviets have already received reinforcements they've been losing tanks so fast (that cloud of white on the right). This is, of course, ahistorical as the soviet battle doctrine calls for reinforcing winning breakthroughs, not stalled losses. 

Above can be seen 3 Abrahams on the left of the pic near the bottom. They popped over from the centre to score a bunch of side shots on the Soviet push.

With this flank well in hand, and the right collapsing hard they wheel around and go top speed back to the village crest and find......

 The rear armour of the second formation of T-72s. They destroy all bar 2, which turn around and manage to kill one of the Abrams before dying. It's been a satisfactory scenario for all with tanks brewing up left and right. Points wise we were surprised to see that the NATO came out ahead. Apparantly the rule book advocates to ignore points for scoring and work on objectives, a point I whole heartedly agree with. The group seems to be keen to take these rules out for future games.