ASL: J210 Moment of Truth

 

My on-line call for a PBEM game was answered by Miguel M.  We agreed to play this smaller scenario which sees 1st and 2nd line German units slogging up a hill to knock out two Slovak artillery pieces.

i got the Germans and have 16 squads trying to get the job done against ten 347 Slovaks.  The artillery guns are 100mm and I have to eliminate them or make the Slovaks unman them.  The hill is fairly steep, and I start offboard.  Miguel gets a few dummy counters, the guns can't set up HIP and I have 5.5 turns to get him to give up those guns

No real action on turn 1.  Turn two I start the assault up the hill.  5.5 turns gives me one real shot to do what I need to do as the fighting really doesn't even get ramped up until turn 3.

Miguel does get a KIA on a frisky half squad that was probing at the top of the map.  At the end of turn 2 I am moving onto the foot of the hill, trying to set up a MG firegroup stack in the grain.  I play aggressive with my half squads....it's just who I am I guess and i advance one of them CX into a stack under a trench.

The half squad got what he was looking for, sniffing out some dummies.  In Miguel's turn 2 prep, he breaks a German squad and a half, both pushing close enough that he couldn't pass up on the shots.  He fires the closer gun, but fails to get a result so intensive fires and malfs it.  One less thing I have to worry about.

I move up, trying to push the action, I have a long way to go and a lot to do.  Time's a wasting.  I finally get my MG firegroup set up in the grain ready for turn 3 defensive fire.  I also get another half squad into CC in the I14 trench, any result there will be good.  I end up taking an enemy half squad with me.

 Miguel's turn 3 prep does a lot of damage that I can ill afford, including an intensive fire shot from the other gun on my 8-1 stack in the grain scoring a K/4 and making a general mess of everything.

I get the medium assembled and am looking for some payback in German 4.  I suddenly have a lot fewer units to attack with, but time is running out.  I get the rest of my units forward and push the issue.

I survive enough fire to get some units into melees.  His gun and medium are still active and I'm starting to run thin on units.  My turn 5 defensive fire phase gets the results I'm looking for, breaking the Slovak squad with the MMG and the unit between me and the gun in K12.

After the rout phase, things look much different.  Suddenly my path to the gun is open, I just have to get enough people up there.  If I can get the crew locked up in melee, or flat out kill it, victory.

After recovering the enemy LMG, I prep with J11 and the 467 in I14.  I14 won't be able to get to the gun without CX, then it would be unable to advance uphill into the brush.  I drop the MMG in H13 and CX the squad to get adjacent for advancing fire.  Everyone else who is capable of getting there does so.

Miguel whiffs the shot with the gun, so everyone is going in except the squad I doubletimed up the hill.

The CC for the gun wasn't a fair fight, giving me the win.  Can't get much better than the last CC of the game.  I was fortunate with the end game, because I couldn't seem to rally anyone.  I still had two stacks of broken units at the bottom of the hill.

Miguel took a big risk with the second intensive fire shot.  If he had broken that gun it would have been much harder for the Slovaks.  But he got the result he needed when he did it, and almost turned the game right there.

A good game.  

Thanks for reading.

ASL: BRV 1 Tactical Doctrine

Reconnected with John Barkoviak.  We hadn't played squad leader in quite a long time.  John said he had been away from the game for a bit and was going to start playing again.  I was looking for a game in the old HOB campaign offering, Berlin: Red Vengeance.  We decided to start at the beginning with BRV1: Tactical Doctrine.

My favorite historical subject in WWII is Berlin in 1945.  For some reason I find it interesting.  This scenario is based on a counterattack, following German tactical doctrine, even to the end of the war.  The Russians defend with a full array of units, from elite to conscript, some MG support weapons and +3 TEM.  The Germans attack with a few elite SS and some second line Landsers, the usual array of machine guns and a single King Tiger, representing one of the last functioning German tanks of the battle.

Dice gave John the defenders, he sent me his setup and I prepared to attack.

My victory conditions were to have more Casualty Victory Points than the Russians and take 4 location VP.  With 5 turns, I was figuring if I took a beating on turn 1, I could probably recover and try again.  A disaster mid-game and I wouldn't have enough time to have another go.  I would lead with the SS, if they couldn't get in there, the 447's certainly weren't going to.  I set up to get the big boys into the street in front of the enemy buildings at the end of turn 1.  The King Tiger had one job, keep those big Russian machine guns suppressed.

Turn 1 prep fire went well, and the enemy Heavy was down.  A good start.  My desperate troops stepped off.

At the end of turn 1, we are nose to nose with the Russians.  This scenario doesn't take much time to get right to brass tacks.  Mr. 9-2 is leading the assault, looking to take some Russkies down with him.

In turn 2, my front liners do some damage.  John has had some wicked luck, a theme that would plague him the whole game, but he re-manned the HMG in his turn.  The big tank has that unit double aquired.  A stack of broken Russians occupies M8.  I use a 447 to find out what is behind door number N10/N11 and get punished.  A 658 also breaks.  The follow up SS get their smoke down and push the attack.

Things continued to go badly for the Russians.  The 9-2 was simply taking what he wanted.  The SS were too much for the Russian defenders and it was just going to be one of those games.  By the time we got to the end of Russian turn 2, the Ivans were on their heels, and my best leader had gotten himself into a pickle.

Well, that close combat went the way the rest of the game did.  Two Russian squads eliminated and the 9-2 free to continue the abuse.  Things were looking very good for my Germans.  John was hanging in there.  Sometimes it takes a lot to stick with a game that hasn't gone your way at all, but John had good humor through the whole thing.  By the end of the turn, it seemed as if I was going to be able to take both of the front buildings, I would need to get set up to repel a counterattack myself.

At the end of turn 4, it was all over.  My Germans got the job done.  John's dice were terrible the whole game and while my dice were better, it wasn't a true dicing.  If anything, John's dice did him in.  In a small scenario like this, a couple of different rolls in a couple of situations and I'm in trouble.

Thank you to John for the game.  It was good to play him again.

It's good to be blogging again.

Thanks for reading.