The next morning; bright, early and not in the least hungover we made our way to Exhibition Park for CanCon. It was a revelation. There were people everywhere! Milling hordes of folk who apparently rarely saw the sun (or the gym) sizzled gently in the morning heat. Attendees seemed to prescribe a sort of human sine wave; teeth and bellies protruded, chins and hairlines receded. It is rare that our little bunch of wargamers can be accounted some of fittest and best looking human specimens in a group but so it was. None of which helped us at all as we dragged our equipment up a modest flight of stairs and collapsed gasping and drenched with sweat at the top. Except for those of us who had collapsed halfway up the stairs and were now looking for somewhere to throw up.
Eventually, and once they'd taken me off the oxygen, it was time to play. Five scenarios in three days I hoped perhaps to win one or two.
The first scenario was FrF30, Biderman's Escape which sees a group of Germans, backed by a couple of AA gun toting halftracks attempting to flee Soviet Russia in 1944. I commanded the red banner heroes attempting to stop this flight while stewardship of the pusillanimous Germans went to Eric Topp.
Eric had nine squads, plus the afore mentioned halftracks. He needed to get three squads off the south edge of the board to win. A halftrack counted as a squad. To stop him I had six squads, an mmg, some concealment counters and reinforcements in the form of two slow, elderly, radioless T-26 tanks. I set up my initial defences in two clumps. On my far left where there was a ratrun down the side of the board I placed a squad, lmg and a leader with another squad in support. In the centre right I had my 9-1 leader, mmg and a squad covering the direct approach down the road plus the other two squads protecting him and covering the right flank. The centre was covered by one squad in a wooden building and my prayers.
Eric came in hard on my left while sending a token force through the buildings against my right. One of his halftracks rolled down the ratrun with squads in support while other squads filtered through the woods probing for openings
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| Germans have to exit off the bottom edge of the board |
My lmg squad managed to stun one of his halftracks and then he and fellow defender fought like heroes against overwhelming odds. Eventually they fell of course but by this time I had pulled my centre defence squad across to the left to reinforce and my tank reinforcements had clanked slowly towards the fighting. By the time Eric had cleared the buildings I was defending and made it to the road there were a pair of T-26 tanks covering the crossing.
Over on the right a cautious secondary defence met a cautious secondary attack, there were a couple of breaks and a certain amount of trading ground for time on my part but I managed to tie him up sufficiently so that his right hand force couldn't get through.
On the left things got brutal as Eric was forced by time pressures into increasingly risky actions. He did eventually get across the road and into the building but with my tanks sweeping the area with fire he could get no further. Highlights included my generating a hero while passing a ridiculously low morale check and taking his 9-2 officer and a squad prisoner only to lose them the next turn as their guards finally succumbed to the inevitable.
Completely out of time Eric ran his troops for the exit under direct fire from my tanks on the left and my mmg on the right with predictable results. One victory for me, unfortunately it was a "friendly" introductory game and didn't count towards the competition.
Scenario two did count and of course I lost it. I played Paul Seage in BFP30 Melee Near the Coast. If you have a retentive memory you might recall that I have actually played this scenario before in a competition. Then I was the Chinese and my opponent was David Wilson and I lost. If you substitute Paul's name for David's you probably don't need to read this. Another parallel with my previous match with Dave was that our mortars turned out to be useless. Neither of us got any value out of them and would have been better off leaving them at home.
I was the Chinese again (through choice) attempting to defend a village against onrushing Japanese. I had thirteen squads, a pair of mortars, a mmg and a reasonably decent officer. I also got four elite squads as reinforcements.
Paul had thirteen and a half squads of Japanese, a trio of mortars and some lmgs, He would also get three squads of reinforcements. The Japanese have to capture 10 buildings which are split between a clump down by the river and another bunch behind a hill on the right. Jungle, kunai, bamboo and palm trees mean that anywhere you think you have a line of sight you're probably wrong. My intention was to use the bulk of my at start force to delay Paul's attack and use my reinforcements to garrison the rearmost buildings. By this time Paul's weary (and hopefully depleted) force would lack the time to push them out.
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| Paul's forces pushing through the jungle. I was incapable of stopping him |
OK, I did make one howling mistake. I set up my medium machine gun on the hill on the right in a position which meant that thanks to bamboo and other hindrances it couldn't see a damn thing. Other than that I don't think my plan was too bad. I set up about a third of my force in the village guarding the stream. Another third (plus dummies) went into the jungle to put a wall of arms and legs in Paul's way. The mortars set up on the other hill. I also set up one squad in the rear building cluster guarding the right flank just in case he pushed through my defence on the hill a wise but futile precaution.
Paul pushed aggressively through the jungle and (a little more circumspectly) towards the stream. Each of our mortars failed to support our respective efforts with smoke or high explosive. Once Paul closed up with me in the jungle I learned an important lesson. My troops were not just cardboard, they were wet cardboard. They collapsed the moment pressure was put on them. Paul cleared me out in close combat without taking a single casualty (killing my dare death squads while doing so).
Over at the stream things were slightly less one sided and fire was exchanged and blows were traded for a turn or two. Paul finally lost patience and one of his squads went berserk. This guy managed to kill at least two squads in advancing fire and failure to rout before he ever actually went into close combat. Seeing the writing on the wall I tried to withdraw the (now somewhat tattered) remnants of my force behind the hill to the rear village. Unfortunately my idiot mmg set up had allowed Paul to walk straight up to it and kill the owners. He then swarmed the hill thus dominating my retreat path. A rare beautiful moment occurred when he got just a little too eager and moved a squad straight down a road at me and a crew killed it outright with a 1-2 snake eyes. Still the hill was his, my reinforcements were panting towards the buildings but needed another turn to get there. Time for my rear defence squad to earn his pay. Sadly at about this time my rear defence was broken by a sniper and the entire village was wide open. It could have gone on for another turn or two but I decided enough Chinese had died that day and conceded.
So, a defeat. This meant I was out of the running to win the tournament. But there were still games I could humiliate myself in. Games like the next scenario AP86 Milling About. This pits a British (actually Gurkha and Indian) force against the Japanese (with some Burmese in tow) in a rather unusual situation. The objective is simple enough. The Japanese need six more victory points than the British which they can gain either in battle or by exiting troops off the south edge of the board. The unusual situation arises in that both sides set up pretty much on top of each other without either side being aware of where the other will be.
I took the defending British and my namesake Neil Andrews took the Japanese. Dense jungle is in effect meaning no multilocation firegroup and movement hindrances. Neil (the other Neil, I don't usually refer to myself in the third person) also had a couple of Burmese squads who could help the Japanese move swiftly through difficult terrain. The set up is below.
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| The Japanese need to get off the bottom edge of the board, this they did in spades |
What happened was a race for the flanks. If Neil could get around my initially very clumped up forces it would be impossible to prevent him getting enough troops off for a win. What happened was Neil got around my initially clumped up forces and got enough troops off for a win.
The British need to pull back and at the same time spread out to form a defensive line the Japanese have to fight through. On my right flank I more or less achieved this, Neil got one squad past but after that nobody else got out that way. On my left it was a different story. With less cover I thought I could allocate fewer troops and still manage to shoot up anything going that way. As it was Neil pushed vigorously on my right and I focused so tightly on stopping him there that I didn't pay enough attention to what was happening on my left. He filtered a large force through and it rapidly became apparent that I didn't have the force to stop him.
By the time I noticed and started pulling some troops back and across I was already playing catch and this allowed Neil to press in the centre as well. The most impressive of my troops were on the right where they did their job but were out of position to deal with the remainder. My left flank came under fire from both sides and essentially disintegrated leaving Neil a clear run for the exit. Salt was rubbed into the wound when I made an attempt to cover the exit of his middle troops by moving an elite squad, 9-2 leader and the mmg around to a position where they could fire on anything that passed. To do this I had to move through just one hex of open ground giving Neil the opportunity for a 2-1 shot. He killed them, he killed them all and what might have been a defeat was turned into a humiliating rout.
So three games and two losses but more importantly two competition games and two losses. Fortunately in my next game I would be commanding Italians so my victory was assured.
Scenario 4 was ESG106 Splatter Spray which pitted the last battle worthy elements of the Italian army on Sicily making a last ditch attempt to defend Palermo from Patton's onrushing Americans. As the Italians (of course) I had fifteen squads divided evenly between not very good and outright bad. However I also had a 9-1 leader, hmg, mmg and three lmgs. My opponent, Peter Howard, had fourteen squads, a mmg, a pair of 60mm mortars and a pair of M3 halftracks to carry them around. Fourteen squads doesn't sound like much to take on fifteen until you realise that the American squad has double the firepower of its Italian equivalent.
Peter had to capture sixteen buildings which were for the most part grouped in three clumps. One clump was perilously close to the American entry location and would no doubt fall swiftly, a second clump was in the north east near a sort of lake thing. The final clump (and naturally the key to the whole defence) was behind a ridge. Peter needed sixteen buildings and he couldn't get the necessary number without taking at least a couple behind the ridge. Thus the ridge became my main defensive line. Expendable diversionary forces went into the other two building clumps to force Peter to split his troops but the best of my men, the officers and both the hmg and the mmg were nestled in foxholes guarding the ridge.
Peter brought on his forces in two more or less equal groups. One he sent off to capture the other two building clumps while the second worked its way towards the ridge. The M3s rolled on and a machine gun shot promptly recalled one although not before it had unloaded its mortar. The story unfolded as one might expect over in the east as Peter's forces sliced through my expendables like a knife through butter but along the ridgeline it was a different story. I had some open ground to work with and I was sitting in foxholes. A critical hit from one of his mortars on my hmg position wasn't helpful but I managed to hang on.
Eventually Peter, perhaps feeling the pressure of time, ran out of patience and launched a frontal assault on the hill. The results were ghastly, I three American squads were broken (two surrendered) and his preparations were thrown into disarray for a turn. Peter did eventually pull himself together and started making a more methodical attack (aided by his mortar which was killing everything that moved) along with a flanking squad to get around behind the ridge but he'd left it a turn too late and when the game ended my gallant Italians were still clinging to the ridgeline by their eyelids and covering the last clump of buildings. Below is a picture of the midpoint of the battle just after Peter's doomed charge. If you think you can't see many Americans near the ridge that's because I've just captured or killed most of those conveniently to hand. Over in the northeast he is closing on another group of defended buildings but these are being defended with throwaway troops and are soaking up a lot of his available bodies.
Which only leaves the final scenario, J103 Lenin's Sons. Returning to where it all began, on the eastern front I would command a pretty high quality force of Soviets attempting to defend a small village from a very high quality force of attacking Germans. The role of Germans was to be played by Mark McGilchrist. I had six elite squad equivalents, a pair of first liners making up the numbers plus a 10-0 commissar, hero, mortar and a pair of demo charges. In return Mark had ten elite squads, an mmg, a flamethrower and a pare of demo charges of his own. With such awesome troops and amazing firepower this one would surely be spectacular.
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| My initial set up, defending the woods at the top and covering the more or less open ground at the bottom. Mark will be arriving from the left. |
Well actually no not so much. This wasn't really the fault of Mark or myself. I had set up with a forward defence in the woods and further troops back in the village itself covering the open ground. Mark set up a firebase opposite the open ground (just out of shot in the picture above) but sent most of his troops through the woods. So far so good but it became rapidly apparent that neither of us could shoot anything. Each of us had ridiculously bad dice, Mark had difficulties pushing me back but I couldn't hurt him either.
In four turns he gradually cleared me out of the woods and positioned himself for the final assault on the village. He had the numbers and the firepower but he didn't have the dice. But then neither did I, as the noose drew tighter I shot away at anything that moved with very little effect. Finally, on the last turn numbers and firepower told and with his last move Mark managed to capture the final building required for victory. Highlights included my not once but twice tossing a demo charge into an adjacent hex (in keeping with our dice rolling this hurt me more than it hurt him) and in one solitary piece of amazing rolling my winding up with a fanatic 10-0 commissar which certainly steadied my defence for a while. In the end Mark played well enough to beat bad dice and I didn't.
So that was CanCon. Five games three defeats but at least I won with the Italians so I'm going to call the overall weekend a success.
A huge vote of appreciation has to go to Ivan Kent who arranged our accomodation, rented our car, drove us around everywhere and put with questions like "Is that a cow?"
Fascinating!
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