Silly After Action Report - Starting the New Year With A Whimper

A friend from my wargaming club had a serious accident at work recently that left him in the ICU of St Vincent's Hospital swimming in morphine and hooked up to various machines that go "ping".  With the new year meeting of our club however he rose like a giant from his sickbed and agreed to play a game of ASL with me.  Suggestions that I may have hoped to improve my rather dreadful win/loss ratio by taking advantage of a semi invalid will not be appreciated (and it didn't work anyway).

So, David Wilson and I sat down to play "Alaric Returns" a scenario pitting a somewhat desperate bunch of Italians attempting to protect the eternal city (that's Rome apparently) from the depredations of their erstwhile allies.  Just for once I would be playing the Germans attempting to push the Italian defenders aside and get to the Colosseum before all the postcards were sold.

To do the pushing I had nine first line squads, a collection of troop carrying halftracks, a small mortar, an armoured car and a trio of StuG III self propelled guns.  All in all a nicely balance combination of firepower and movement.  Over on the other side of the line lurked David's Italians; three elite squads, nine first liners, a pair of Semovente self propelled guns, an M15/42 tank, and an armoured car.  Oh yes and two massive 150mm artillery pieces.  To win I had to exit 24 victory points worth of troops and vehicles off the north board edge, David set up concealed on the northern half of the playing area while I had to enter from the south.

Dominating all my thoughts were the two guns.  They were easily capable of destroying any or all of my armour and the execution they could do to my infantry was equally gruesome.  Having identified the threat I then completely failed to deal with it.  I sent a small diversionary force (a squad and a half, a halftrack and the mortar) up the east side of the board.  The guns would be set up on the hills I thought (correct for a change) and if the mortar survived the approach it might be able to pound them to good effect (correct in theory at least).  The mass of my infantry I loaded into the remaining half tracks and sent them through the grainfields in the west hoping that this hindrance might hamper his guns from shooting at me.  In this I was correct if only because the guns were too busy tearing my armour apart to worry much about the infantry.

I entered my three StuGs separately from each other and moved them nervously forward to places where I hoped they might be able to take his guns under fire in the next turn.  I succeeded in this, I know I succeeded in this because his guns took me under fire in the next turn and promptly destroyed two StuGs.  Suddenly I was largely reduced to an infantry force.  My surviving StuG lurked out of the way waiting for opportunities to support my infantry.

The beginning, my troops have made it through the wheatfield but my StuGs are about to die

The next two turns were marked by a gradual creeping advance by my infantry and irritatingly low roles by David's medium machine gun which managed to kill a squad and a half by itself.  Over on the right my I assembled my mortar and started pounding one of his gun crews.  I did this for most of the game with little result but at least the mortar crew felt it was contributing.

On the left I finally managed to break the single squad that was David's first line of defence and surged into the trees.  Facing me was a hedge lined road behind which lurked a couple of squads and his tank.  Up on the hilltops his guns reigned supreme and directly in front of me was his deeply annoying medium machine gun.

This is about as far as I got.  Out of shot mangled StuGs litter the battlefield

Seeing the force of my attack David started moving troops and his armoured car across from the east to bolster his defences while I proved incapable of getting through the guys he already had in place.  A half squad advanced into the street toting a panzerschrek in an attempt to take out his tank only to be killed by that damn machine gunner.  A second attempt the next turn was successful and his tank went up in flames but I was still pinned down with time running out and no appreciable ground gained.

Getting desperate I started getting silly.  I moved a half track and the surviving StuG up the road adjacent to his infantry.  This meant risking a shot from his gun but by this stage risks had to be taken.  Risks were taken and punished.  His guns smashed my last StuG and also my armoured car when it went on a despairing (and frankly ridiculous) deathride in an attempt to take out one of the guncrews.  Then David went a little silly himself and advanced one of his squads into close combat with my halftrack in the street.  I survived the close combat and slaughtered the squad in the next prep fire phase but it didn't alter the basic situation.

Having had his "Neil" moment David went back to a well thought out defence.  With all my StuGs gone he got brave with his amour and advanced one of his semoventes against the mortar team which had been futilely popping away at one of the gun crews for most of the game.  Now that it was too late to make a difference my mortar broke the gun crew and for good measure immobilised the semovente as well.  Unfortunately it didn't matter.  Time had got away from me but most of all the armour kills had left me desperately short of the victory points I needed for a win.

Endgame. David's defence is largely intact.  My attackers not so much.

I stumbled about in the woods for a turn or two trying to build up some sort of firebase that could clear my path but I was unable to do it.  David's guns (and that damn mmg) ruled all.  Even the late game breaking of one of his gun crews couldn't alter the fact that I had been stopped cold at David's first defensive line.  Most of his infantry didn't need to fire a shot.  Sigh, yet another defeat.  Not an ideal preparation for CanCon which is coming up later this month.