"I thought I told you to take that .50 cal up to the second floor."
"Give us a break Comrade Major, the damn thing weighs a ton."
"Oh stop whining," snapped Kosteffectif reaching for the weapon himself, "Jesus Christ! What did they make it out of? Uranium? Oh ok, just stick it out the window and cover the road. I'll get Somnolenski to take an lmg up there instead."
"He's already on the first floor and he won't go any further, says he's scared of heights."
"This is some crack commando force we've got here."
"To be fair we usually operate at sea level."
"Somnolenski gets seasick in the bath."
"Good thing he doesn't take many then."
As you can see my deployment in the latest scenario ran into some labour relations problems. After CanCon I was looking for something reasonably simple. David Wallace suggested we play something from the Deluxe redux pack he'd just acquired. For those of you with short memories David Wallace was the guy who stomped me in about five minutes flat playing Jackpot Jones at CanCon. As evidence that I don't learn from experience I agreed. David produced Back to School - AD3 which pits a tough group of Soviet commandos against a pretty impressive pack of Germans attempting to serve them an eviction notice. Dice gave me the defending Soviets.
I had eight elite squads, four 458s and four 628s plus a hero, a pair of decent leaders, three lmgs a demo charge and a .50 cal machine gun. What could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot actually. David had a mixed bag of thirteen German squads ranging from awesome 838 elite squads to a couple of somewhat shabby 447s making up the numbers. He also had a pair of demo charges, a pair of medium machine guns and a flame thrower. This probably helps answer the "what could possibly go wrong" question asked earlier.
I set up at one end of the board, David's troops have to enter on the other and exit 7VP worth of troops through a reasonably narrow corridor to win. Standing firm in their way are my gallant commandos.
I should have set up the .50 cal on the second floor of course. This would have allowed me to take some decent shots at David's troops as they approached. The reason I didn't? Despite rereading countless times I have never been able to work out line of sight rules when elevation changes and blind hexes are involved so I simply avoid them. If somebody else uses them I simply take their word for it when they say they have a line of sight. I realise this doesn't make me look great but I take comfort from how much worse the people I've managed to defeat must feel at this point. Instead I matched the .50 cal up with the hero and put him in the ground floor along with a 458 squad in the hopes that I might be able to get a fire lane down the road. I put a squad with an lmg on the first floor directly above them. I covered the centre with a few squads (one too many as it turned out) and had an outlying squad covering my right flank as below.
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| My set up. Not exactly inspired |
David took one look at my defence and loaded up on my right with a smaller force trotting down the left flank which he admitted to me afterwards was purely to stop my left hand defenders from moving back to cover the exit locations a role they played to perfection. The first turn went quickly as I had nothing to stop David's troops from gobbling up territory. By the second turn he had a powerful force hovering on my right flank and the execution could begin. My .50 cal was out of position and my left flankers were staring myopically at his diversionary force. The sole squad I had out on the right was broken in short order and I was in trouble pretty much from the start.
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| Yep, this is going well |
For reasons I can't begin to explain I actually reinforced the left with another squad while my most forward unit was sitting in impotent isolation as the battle raged behind him. I didn't leave it entirely like that of course. I shifted my hero and his .50cal to the other end of the building and my squad/lmg combo on the first floor shuffled across as well.
It has to be said this wasn't a good day for super weapons. David had a flamethrower but he boxcarred the first morale check the squad carrying it took and when he finally rallied the surviving half squad the first thing they did was break the flamethrower. As for my hero with the .50 cal? Well he moved into position and was promptly sniped to death without firing a shot.
Back in the real world David poured the firepower into my defenders on the right and still had enough troops left to send a squad and 8-0 forward to see if he could sneak them past. I was so concerned by this that I sent a squad and 8-1 leader into close combat with them. Stupid move. Despite the leader and gaining ambush I couldn't kill him and one of my dwindling number of squads was tied up in CC.
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| Things started out bad and have got worse |
Over on the left David's diversion was taking casualties but succeeding admirably in looking sufficiently dangerous so that I felt I had to leave troops there to counter them. In the centre and on the right he simply shot my troops to pieces. It took him a couple of turns but eventually he had broken sufficient of my force that he cheerfully fired into the melee to try and clear it out. He succeeded in breaking his own squad (David did as much damage to his own troops over the course of the game as anything I managed to achieve) and I finally cleared out the CC. Unfortunately by this stage I only had two squads left alive blocking the exit area a number David reduced to one in the next turn when he succeeded in breaking my recently successful close combat heroes.
Just to show off David didn't bother shooting at my remaining squad, rather he dropped not one but two demo charges into their hex which reduced them to the point whereby they could be buried in a matchbox. I conceded at that point. My defence had been poor and David had simply ripped it to pieces. My only consolation was that it took somewhat longer than our previous game. I like to consider that as a sign that I'm improving. Many thanks to David for the game, one day I will manage to complete the full number of turns in a game we play.
Major Kosteffectif pushed a large piece of rubble of himself and looked around dazedly. A commando he recognised as Somnolenski was vomiting in a corner but there was nobody else alive.
"Are you wounded Somnolenski?" he asked.
"No, I just came downstairs too quickly."
"Where's the lmg?"
"It jammed, I may have thrown up on it."
"Where's the rest of my command?"
"I'm it sir."
"This is going to take a bit of rewriting when they come to this volume of The Great Patriotic War."
"Not to worry sir, I have a cousin on the censorship board, he'll see us right."
"I knew I kept you around for some reason."
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