Silly After Action Report - Testis Megalos

 Tenente Pollo Cacciatore gazed around at the village in disbelief.  All around him were signs of defensive positions being prepared, guns were being hidden, their ammunition stacked neatly next to the regulation white flags.  A couple of soldiers were stringing wire that looked like it had been sourced from a ball of steel wool and one soldier was scattering brightly coloured objects across the ground.  Normally Cacciatore didn't speak to his soldiers because, well one didn't.  That's what sergeants were for.  It was bad enough that he had to talk to the sergeant but this time his curiosity overcame him.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

Taken by surprise at being addressed by an officer the soldier surrendered but when it dawned on him that a trip to somewhere with decent food and a functioning command structure wasn't in his immediate future he sighed and explained.

"Preparing defences sir."

"Are those booby traps?" asked Cacciatore?

"No, they're lego blocks."

"Shit, don't let the Geneva Convention find out about that."

The whole "talking to one of his men" thing was going to the young tenente's head and he found himself unburdening to the rather tattered soldier who showed not the slightest interest.

"I don't know why we've stopped.  We advanced two miles yesterday, now that's what I call blitzkrieg."

"Only because you've never seen a dictionary," muttered the soldier.

"What was that?"

"We stopped on the colonello's orders sir."

"Why?"

"He's not well."

"What's wrong with him?"

"He's got a bad case of testis megalos."

"I heard they had penicillin for that now."

OK, I'm sure that's not the first time such a joke has been made but I couldn't resist it.  As stated in my previous AAR I have fled the grim battlefields of the eastern front and reverted to type by commanding a bunch of over matched Italians engaged in the military equivalent of self harm.  Having cunningly waited until the Autumn rains turned the fields of Epiros into icy mud the Italians launched possibly the most ill managed offensive since the Jameson Raid.  A couple of days and a few miles later and they altered tactics from half baked offence to panic stricken defence.  Never let it be said that the Italian army wasn't versatile.  There was no end to the ways they could cock up a battle.  

This is Testis Megalos which sounds like either a disease or an exotic type of dinosaur but is actually a Dezign Pak (yes, apparently I am spelling that correctly) production pitting a deeply mediocre but strangely well armed group of Italians against the pride of the Greek army.  Having captured an entire village from the Greeks my Italians now prepare to defend it to the death against a Greek counterattack.

To do the defending I have fourteen squads split between barely adequate 347 bersaglieri and deeply suspect 346 fanti.  Supporting this semi human material is a hmg, a mmg, four lmgs plus two 65mm guns, a 47mm AT gun and a single L3 tank (just because).  Four officers including a more than adequate 9-1 command.  My mission is to have an unbroken MMC in at least two of the village's four multi level buildings at the end of six and a half turns of no doubt furious Greek attacks.  Dave Wilson leads the vengeance happy Greeks who have determined not to leave an inch of Greek soil no matter how low rent in the invader's hands.  Dave's forces consist of some twenty three squads split almost equally between elite 458s and first line 457s.  A magnificent beast of a 10-2 leads them forward with some other officers basking in his reflection.  Clip clopping along behind is a wagon slowly hauling a 105mm gun to the general vicinity of the front line.  If the hay holds out it could be bad news for the Italians.

Below is my set up.  I had precisely three wire counters which I used to lock off one of the roads entering the village.  I set one of the 65mm guns up forward in the hope that it might take some Greek infantry unawares before its rapid and inevitable death.  The 47mm I set up in the road with a line of sight to the hill that overlooked my entire defensive position.  Other armies might think that was a good spot to defend, not apparently the Italians.  I scattered my 346s across the forward buildings and kept the bulk of my "good" troops back amongst the multi level buildings that would be my last stand location.

At start and I'm already feeling nervous

Dave brought his troops on in the east (top) and south (right) and promptly ran into trouble.  A 2 flat shot from my mmg broke three of his squads in the east and temporarily eased my concerns on that front.  Which was good as his southerners sneaked forward, keeping concealment all the way.  Even his wagon lurched along what must have been the only road in the vicinity sheltering under an oversized question mark.

End of Greek turn 1, despite his losses he's moving forward

It isn't my intention to give a blow by blow account of this game for reasons I will explain later so I'll just give you the salient points.

Despite the early losses Dave's eastern troops (led by the 10-2) pushed forward until I unveiled my 65mm which broke several squads (and the 10-2) and delayed him for a while.  Up on the hill Dave had amassed a pair of squads with two hmgs and a leader which opened fired on my 9-1 guided hmg on the first floor of a convenient building.  Both leader and squad broke and fled downstairs but I had prepared for this eventuality and had another squad with an 8-0 on the ground floor which advanced upstairs to reman the hmg.  Dave tried the shooting trick again but it didn't work and in response my hmg went on a rate tear which killed everybody in the hex.  Dave would lose more troops trying to get his hmgs back into action.

Dave's hmg position is gone

Dave's wagon finally arrived at what he considered the least inconvenient place to unload his gun and caused a desperate fumbling for the rulebook.  My little L3 shot up the wagon as it was unloading and rolled low enough to destroy it.  We searched in vain for any indication of what might happen to the gun in such circumstances.  Eventually we decided to reverse engineer the rules for hooking up which state that if the wagon is destroyed while hooking up then so is the gun.  Working from that we presumed that the act of hooking up had taken place when the fire was laid and therefore working the other way that the gun would have been unhooked (and thus survived) when fire was laid.  So Dave's wagon was gone but his 105 survived.  It would celebrate by bouncing a 105mm shell off the frontal armour of the L3.

Eventually of course the 105 got the L3 and massed firepower (guided by the recently reinvigorated 10-2) took out my 65mm but delay had been caused and the number of broken (or killed) Greek squads was reaching embarrassing levels.

In the south Dave pushed troops up near one of the multi level buildings he needed to capture but pointblank firing from the building and supporting fire from my remaining 65mm broke a couple of squads and actually garnered me a squads worth of prisoners.  Things weren't really helped when Dave rolled snake eyes on a morale check and a Greek half squad went berserk and charged the building all by itself while its comrades cringed under DM markers.

Dave pushing forward but is it too late? Spoiler alert, "yes!"

 

Dave did manage to struggle a squad and 7-0 through the wire in the woods and get into CC in the adjacent building and there they stayed for the next few turns.  I reinforced the melee with a squad but Dave promptly killed it but on my next turn the Italians fixed bayonets and butchered the Greeks hand to hand (no I can't quite believe it either).

Finally at gruesome cost Dave's troops in the east managed to rout or kill my defenders in the forward buildings and positioned themselves for the final assault across the road.  Then the 47mm sitting in the street stepped forward and shot his troops out again.  Finally when my 47mm gained its second critical hit and took out three squads Dave conceded.

So that was the game.  You may notice that I haven't dwelt on it at great length and I don't seem to be rejoicing too much in my first victory over Dave in quite a while.  The reason is simple.  Dice!  We play on VASL and I don't know what drugs the dicebot was on that night but it was incredible.  I literally could not fail.  My average IFE shot only rose to 6.5 in the last third of the game, for a while I was averaging 5.  I only had to shoot to gain results and conversely Dave could not get a decent roll to save his life.  It was genuinely embarrassing.  I was actively considering cheating in my opponents favour.  I can't imagine that the game was fun for Dave to play and frankly it wasn't that enjoyable for me either as I know I can't take the slightest credit for my victory.  The only dice rolls where my average was above 7 were morale checks but that didn't matter because Dave wasn't inflicting many.  As one example among many, Dave took a 20+1 one shot that didn't result in so much as a pin.  I took a 6+2 shot and broke two elite Greek squads and an 8-1 officer.  That was repeated continually throughout the course of the evening.  I would probably have been in hysterics (I am a total drama queen in case you hadn't guessed) if I had been on the receiving end of it.  Dave took it all with good natured stoicism but the second critical hit with the 47mm was his breaking point and he conceded a good two turns after I would have thrown my computer out the window and sworn off ASL for life.  Apologies to Dave but it really wasn't my fault.  He gets another chance to beat up my Italians next week in Dangerous Crossroads.

Prisoners!  Tenente Cacciatore stared at them in astonishment.  He had heard that other armies sometimes captured enemies but he had never expected it to happen to him.  A surly looking Greek officer, limping badly, was brought before him.  The Greek ripped off his boot and upended it, a single lego block fell out.  Cacciatore ignored the man's accusatory glare.  Staring fixedly at the ceiling he muttered,

"Your kid must have dropped it into your boot on your last leave."  Behind him came a plastic rattle as one of his soldiers became very busy with a dustpan and brush.