Another Silly After Action Report

On September 1st 1942 elements of the German army on the eastern front prepared to launch a counter attack to eliminate the Soviet bridgehead at Serafomovich.  But who cares about that?  A little further down the line the soldiers of the Italian "Tridentina" alpine division are hitching up their belts, chasing the chickens out of their tanks and trying to remember where they left their ammunition.  They too are preparing to attack.

Yesterdays ASL game saw me pitted against Ivan Kent in Scenario J130: The Art of Dying.  Ivan and I have similar skill levels (he's new, I'm an idiot) so the signs were auspicious for a good game.  The Art of Dying pits a force of fourteen Italian squads (half elite, half first line) attempting to capture a small village against a defending force of six and a half Soviet squads.  The Soviets have a medium machine gun, a pair of 76mm artillery pieces and a 9-0 commissar to tend to the men's political needs.  The Italian attack force is bolstered by a mmg, a flamethrower, a pair of demo charges and five L6/40 light tanks.  Starting on turn 2 the beleaguered Soviet garrison is reinforced by nine more squads (three of them elite), a pair of T-60 tanks (easily a match for the L6s in general crappiness) and an awesome 10-0 commissar.

So, to begin:  Ivan set up the bulk of his force a little back from the front line defending the woods and the graveyard.  The halfsquad with the mmg was naturally in the church steeple, lord of all it surveyed, and a squad each in the two outlying buildings in the west.  The commissar lurked on the ground floor of the church ready to issue the "last ration of the Soviet state" to anybody who broke under fire.  One of the 76s was placed near the church to cover the road and the graveyard and the other nestled in the western hex of the X13 building overlay.

My initial attack plan focused on taking out the two immediate threats, the mmg and what was obviously a squad with an ATR set up in 19N2 a little separate from his main defensive line that was obviously hoping to take out a tank or two.  These two locations plus a little preparation to deal with the upcoming reinforcements dictated my initial deployment.  I set up the bulk of the elite troops in and around the eastern edge of the woods to deal with that outlying squad and hopefully set myself up for some mmg shots at the steeple crew.  I put a 346 with an lmg in the grainfield from where it could easily establish itself in a building and cover the southern part of his reinforcements entry area.  Two 346 squads plus the 7-0 leader were placed far to the west to do a diversionary loop round the hill mass and hopefully give the his mmg something relatively unimportant to shoot at.  I brought one tank in straight up over the hill in the hopes of taking out that mmg while the other four advanced up the open ground to the east to cover the rest of the reinforcement entry area.

Oddly immediate success turned out to be almost unsettling as failure.  True, first blood went to Ivan when I idiotically moved a 346 squad up onto the hill only to have it killed outright by the mmg crew but everything else went according to plan.  My diversionary force (which diverted virtually nothing) made it around the hill and advanced daringly into the open.  The remainder of my force crawled forward through the forest, elite units on the right regulars on the left, to position themselves for a brutal struggle next turn.  Only it didn't quite happen like that.  True his mmg broke and ELRed one of my diversionary squads sending it yelping back to the 7-0 waiting in the woods for just such an occurrence but everything else went my way.  A lucky shot broke the mmg HS in the steeple and his isolated ATR squad in N2 crumbled before my elite troops the surviving HS surrendering.  I began my second turn with much of my firepower in the east against no opposition while three first line squads and flamethrower and DC toting halfsquads were pretty much all that could directly attack his main defensive line.

In my second turn I made some gains and also a dreadful mistake which almost cost me the game.  My tank on the hill rolled down to freeze one of his building squads in VBM thus affording a certain amount of security to the left flank of the main attack (although it also managed to break its main armament at the same time).  Safe(ish) on the left I moved 346 squads up to the graveyard hoping to draw some fire and give an easy path for my flamethrower and DC half squads.  It didn't work quite like that.  The DC half squad broke while trying to place the DC and the first of the 76s was revealed covering the graveyard.  The elite squads spent the turn reorganising themselves and moving up to support their 346 brethren and start flanking the church.  Fire was exchanged on both sides and broken units of both nationalities fled to their respective leaders for succour.  My two 8-1 leaders, lurking modestly in the woods did a sterling job of rallying the faint hearted (even newly created conscripts) and sending them back into battle.  Unfortunately for Ivan his 9-0 commissar went on a demented killing spree.  Starting with the HS crewing the mmg this charmer murdered a squad and a half of his own troops in unsuccessful rally attempts.  I think Ivan was more pleased that I was when the flamethrower reduced him to a greasy stain on the church wall.  I left one elite squad with the mmg in the forest covering the open ground to the east.  This would turn out to be a critical act particularly in light of the mistake I made.  What was this mistake?  With four L6/40 tanks strung out along the board covering the anticipated entry of Ivan's reinforcements I decided they would shoot even better if they they had a good view so I made them all crew exposed.  I had forgotten that the L6 has a one man turret and if the commander is looking around at the countryside he can't be firing his gun.  In one brilliant stroke I had converted four tanks into free standing steel sculptures of no particular value just as his reinforcements started pouring out of the woods.  Matters weren't helped when the mmg broke on its first shot.  Ivan sent his pair of tanks around the grainfield in the south, parked right next to one of my helpless L6s and cheerfully shot it to bits.  This would be the only tank on tank success for either side.  I should have been swamped by the reinforcements but fortunately my only well positioned squad (he of the broken mmg) managed to kill a 7-0 and CR an elite squad with him after which the remainder showed some circumspection which bought me just enough time to capture the church.  Broken units from this attack were rallied by my officers and I sent them east to form at least a pretense of a defensive line against the oncoming horde.  The propensity of Ivan's commissar for killing his own men greatly helped the attack on the church and when a morale check caused by the 76 resulted in an elite 447 going berserk and charging the gun crew I managed to capture not just the church but the gun as well.

With Ivan's reinforcements not yet in the battlezone I was able to deploy most of my firepower to winkling out the two squads now sitting isolated in the buildings to the west.  More VBM sleaze from my helpful L6 gave the one surviving squad from my diversionary force the opportunity to capture a building abandoned by a routing squad despite a positive rain of ATR fire.  Over to the east my tankers dropped back into their turrets and looked to see if there was anything they could do.  Seeing how useful VBM could be Ivan promptly brought his tanks up to freeze the bulk of my defensive line while his reinforcements scurried across to the woods near the X13 building which Ivan had obviously identified as his last line of defense.  The contribution my tanks made to all this?  One of them fired on a T-60, broke its main armament and then failed its repair roll and discreetly exited the scene.  At this point things stabilised for a while.  I had the flamethrower in the church, a captured mmg and the 76 next to it throwing firepower into building X13.  Ivan had his remaining 76 holding one hex and kept feeding reinforcements into the other hex to replace the ones my flamethrower burned out.  His 10-0 commissar was obviously made of sterner stuff than his 9-0 comrade because he managed to drive his singed troops back into battle with inspiring quotes from Stalin and blood curdling threats to their families.  I had four buildings and one gun.  I needed another gun or another building hex but I didn't see how I could get it.  His seventy six and rotating reinforcements solidly held X13 and I couldn't quite apply enough firepower to suppress enough of them to convince my (now predominantly conscript) force to dash out into the street.

My breakthrough came when Ivan decided to boost the firepower of his defending force by infiltrating one of his tanks (he didn't fail an independent movement roll all game) into the street between the two buildings.  Unfortunately in doing so he presented it as a target to my freshly acquired 76.  Captured use penalties be damned.  Hit, kill, burn.  Suddenly a pall of smoke was rising between us and with this impromptu smokescreen my conscripts felt a little better about stepping out into the street.  It also meant I could concentrate all my firepower on just one hex.  A few surviving squads with an lmg were sent through the woods just to completely divert the occupants of the eastern hex of the building and then I opened up with everything I had on his gun position.  The results weren't particularly impressive but Ivan obviously saw the writing on the wall because he took a move that astonished me completely.  On the theory that both the building hex and the gun occupying it were now significantly more vulnerable he used a squad to help the gun crew manhandle the gun out of the building to what he considered the safety of the open ground to the rear.  The 10-0 commissar also joined the fun.  It would turn out disastrously for him though.  Firstly with the gun gone my conscripts became very brave indeed and stormed into the building hex (my forest dwellers in the east having lost much blood to divert the troops in the other building hex) and then one of my L6s finally earned its pay.  I looked at the squad, gun crew and commissar in the open, counted the hexes, said a quiet prayer and launched my nearest tank on an overrun mission.  His shot with the 76 went wide and suddenly six tons of clanking, badly designed death was upon them.  The commissar and the squad broke, the gun crew was pinned and my little L6 emerged out the other side covered in glory (and body parts).

With five out of six building hexes lost, one gun captured (and the other about to be seized in CC from its pinned owners) and his sole surviving officer down Ivan conceded giving me a not entirely deserved victory.

Hero of the Week award goes to the flamethrower team who behaved like a pack of pyromaniacs on PCP.  Idiot of the Century award goes to me for that one man turret screw up and finally the Most Stereotypical Italian Behaviour award goes to the diversionary squad which if you recall was broken right at the beginning of the game and reduced to a conscript.  These heroes failed their first morale check (ok they were under DM).  They then rolled snakes on their second morale check and subsequently attempted to surrender.  With no Soviets in sight they settled for disrupting.  On their third morale check they rolled snakes again and again attempted, without success, to surrender.  On their fourth morale check seeing that surrendering wasn't working for them they attempted suicide, boxcars reducing them to a disrupted, conscript half squad.  On their fifth morale check what was left of them actually rallied by which time they were far too far away to make any sort of an impact on the battle but just managed to turn up at the end and pretend they had been there all along.  Heroes every one of them.