Silly After Action Report Part 3 - And Men Shall Become Heroes

Monday dawned cold and clear.  Once irrelevant preliminaries such as breakfast and the working day were safely dispatched it was time for Ivan and me to finish off our epic Italian v German slugfest.  Lives would be lost, hearts broken, battles won and heroes made.  So many heroes, four of the bastards plus three battle hardened squads.  Ivan what in God's name are you doing to me?

The days play started harmlessly enough delayed only by my apparent inability to operate Skype like a normal human being.  This was the turn that Ivan decided to invoke the great Italian withdrawal option forcing me to take a task check for every Italian unit that hadn't prep fired or otherwise invalidated itself from moving.  I didn't come out of it too badly.  My battered little L6 now virtually surrounded by German squads thankfully fled to safer climes and one of my unarmoured gun trucks left the board completely never to be seen again.  Aside from that a handful of squads in not particularly important places moved rearward but not so far that they couldn't be herded back towards the battle again.

The beginning of the end.

In the movement phase I nudged some squads forward and also eased some vehicles a little closer to the action.  One vehicle already too close to the action was the surviving (not for long) gun truck now looking at not one but two adjacent German squads.  Recklessly exposing the crew I fired at one for an 8+2 shot.  Ivan's subsequent morale check battle hardened the squad and generated a hero, this would become a trend.  Ivan would battle harden two more squads and generate three more heroes as a result of morale checks I imposed on him.  Newly invigorated his squad leapt into close combat with my gun truck.  Amazingly it survived but undaunted Ivan blew the thing apart in my next turn as I was trying to exit. 

In the woods near the bridge entry the battle went finally and definitely against me as Ivan gathered his full force against my remaining squad and a half.  He killed the half squad and broke the other my return fire doing nothing more than giving him heroes and fanatic squads.

I moved my semovente up to the top of its hill and made another futile attempt to gain hulldown status.  This was actually a mistake.  I had moved the semovente to the hill when I had assumed I would have to make a last stand against an onrushing German horde.  The horde, however was still tangled up near the bridge and it would have been more helpful for me to bring the semovente forward to somewhere its firepower might actually have been of some use.  As it was it sat unharmed but impotent in the rear area for the rest of the game.  The only contribution it made was to be a target for Ivan's recoilless rifle which was some benefit because when Ivan made the mistake of intensive firing he only succeeded in destroying his own weapon.

This left Ivan with only one of his three vehicle carried weapons, the 81mm mortar but he wasn't unloading it any time soon.  Rather he drove for the bridge looking for the exit hex on the other side.  In doing so he drove straight through the line of sight of a conveniently placed armoured car.  I took the shot and promptly broke the main armament and Ivan's truck, mortar and crew sailed off for the exit location.  The destruction of my gun truck and the exit of his mortar truck had tilted the victory point scales significantly back in Ivan's direction and not even a couple of hot snipers which managed to kill one of his officers could tilt it back.  Desperate measures were needed and with my infantry reinforcements too far back to pick up the slack it was all down to the armour.

My semovente was up on a hill too far away to intervene but I still had my plucky L6 with the broken gun (I'm pleased to say he survived the entire scenario) another totally unscathed L6 (he didn't) and a fully functioning armoured car.  Now that Ivan's troops were piling up in the woods I rolled both L6s up next to them for some point blank shots overrunning a pair of heroes along the way and actually managing to kill one of them (sadly no VPs for heroes).  The armoured car I sent looping up over the hill mass to approach from the rear.

The middle of the end

Of course the danger in having my armour up this close and personal was that Ivan could attempt to engage it in close combat, particularly now that he had a disturbing number of fanatic squads at hand.  At first things went well,  The armoured car broke a stack, killing a half squad along the way and one of the L6s killed a hero.  Sadly that was it for good news.  In his turn Ivan poured in squads led by heroes in attempts to take out my armour.  The armoured car survived as did my battered veteran from early in the game.  The fresh L6 couldn't take the strain however and went up in a burst of flame and low grade steel.

That was pretty much it.  At the end of the game Ivan had managed to exit off his mortar truck plus another squad and leader and had held onto the bridge throughout.  He had also killed a semovente, an  L6 and a gun truck plus a mass of infantry.  I had held the north south road, killed a portee and a surprising number of German soldiers but in the end I came up just short of the points needed for victory.

The end of the end, the picture is blurry because it was taken through my tears.

This was actually a great game that we both enjoyed very much and which up until the final turn was definitely in the balance.  Thanks to Ivan for the game.  I will now retreat to Africa to tend to my wounds before I return for more battles in October.