Another go with these enjoyable, yet frustratingly written rules.
We played another scenario from the Blenneville Or Bust! supplement with Stephen using his Yanks against my Germans. I had two StuGs and two Tigers backing up a mixed Company of Fallschirmjaeger and Infantry against ten Shermans and a full Armoured Infantry Company with some Recon assets. We both had access to air power, although the USSAF had rocket-armed Jabos, whilst Luftwaffe had MG strafing only.
I did manage to brew five Shermans but lost one Tiger to laser guided munitions of the Jabo (and the second Tiger nearby was lucky to escape unscathed) whilst my two StuGs retired with guns knocked out.
My Infantry were badly handled by Yank tank fire and incessant 60mm mortar attention (the Yanks had four of these annoying weapons).
We failed to finish but I think it would have been hard for me to wrest control of the bridge objective from the Yanks.
Again we came up against some rules issues this time being unable to find any rules covering on-table mortar fire!! Not covered directly (amazingly!) in the actual rules but is in the late war supplement Battle for Liberation. Another was use of MGs on half-tracks, with rules covering their firing included but not how to crew them. Again I found an answer later in another supplement (a no-brainer as such but at least it spells out that you need to leave crew to drive a half-track and two additional crew to fire any onboard MG at full effect).
Such issues are very annoying with IABSM especially with such basic stuff, easily enough resolved but much time wasted trying to decide what rules say, or don't say and making a house rule.
Still an enjoyable game and we both like the scale of IABSM and its system overall, but just wish the writing was a tad 'tighter' and less left to Kriegspiel approach.
Sergeant Steiner
