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.