Silly After Action Report - The Citadel

 Hauptmann Gnu von Wildebeest tried to encourage his somewhat disheartened troops.  The blitzkrieg was three days old, panzer spearheads were tearing through Soviet defences and plunging deep into the heart of enemy territory.  Shattering victories and mass surrenders were the order of the day.  Von Wildebeest was feeling pretty shattered himself.  His own unit's part in this staggering triumph was to advance across a canal and capture a building.  The Soviets had then promptly recaptured all the buildings around and were building up a frankly obscene number of troops opposite his hapless spearhead.

"The division will send a relieving force immediately," he announced.  "Once they have finished relieving the previous relieving force they will both then relieve us."

"Well that's a relief," muttered a gefreiter whose principle role in the unit appeared to be to undermine his commanders.  "Who's going to relieve them?"

"They will not require relief," retorted von Wildebeest whose previous role had been commander of the Reich Wild Animal Park (non-carnivorous division).  "Once relief happens our advance will continue until we are relieved, again."  He was aware that as speeches go it wasn't quite as inspiring as he had hoped.  The gefreiter got up and made for the door fumbling with his fly.

"Where are you going?"

"If its all the same with you Herr Hauptmann I'm going to relieve myself."

Well this is a nostalgia trip, ASL Scenario 10 - The Citadel.  Dave eagerly wanted to play this one.  I dug around in a pile of mouldering ASL gear and found the scenario card gathering dust and cobwebs.  I don't know if it has been updated since but Dave and I went old school and played the original scenario from the original Beyond Valour module from 1985.  ROAR has this somewhat weighted towards the Soviets but Dave offered me the balance if I would hurl my Germans against his defences and given that I have foisted some much worse crap on him over the years I didn't feel I could decently refuse.

The scene is the Brest Litovsk fortress in what was then Soviet occupied Poland and is now unoccupied Belarus.  The Germans charged across a canal in the teeth of furious defensive fire, got themselves cut off and are now desperately hoping that the remainder of their division can put together a rescue attempt before the milling Soviet troops reduce them to a footnote in military history.  Since I'm commanding the rescue attempt their chances aren't good.  The Germans occupy building 20H3 at the start.  Victory will go to whatever side is the last to solely occupy said building.  This means that the Soviets have to push me out while simultaneously holding off the relieving force.  Both sides have significant firepower at their disposal.  As the Soviets Dave commands 32 first line squads led by six officers including a 9-2 and a 9-1.  They have two medium and three light machine guns at their disposal plus sixteen concealment counters to spread German fire.  In support are a pair of 45L antitanks guns and a 37L AA gun plus three tank turrets emplaced as impromptu pillboxes each with a hmg.  They also have two actual pillboxes just in case a mass of stone buildings don't provide protection enough.  Oh yes, and his sniper number is 6, guess what was the most common number I rolled throughout the game.

Cringing inside an ancient church (the scenario card's description, not mine) I have the remnants of the spearhead.  Seven first line squads with an mmg and two lmgs.  Three officers command this doomed outpost of the Reich including a 9-2.  Steaming to the rescue are nineteen more first line squads led by eight more leaders including a mighty 10-2 who astonished me by surviving the game while the Soviet sniper shot everybody around him.  The infantry had a hmg, a mmg and two lmgs plus a radio which connected them to a battery of 100mm artillery.  Bringing a little heavy metal to the battle were four (due to balance) StuG IIIB self propelled guns to help shoot the infantry forward.  The relieving infantry can set up within four hexes of 23BB5 on the north side of the canal (and controlling the only intact bridge) or anywhere south of the canal.  Since north of the canal is where I need to be I set them all up around BB5.  By SSR the Soviets can only move MMC equal to the turn number plus the results of a die roll.  I didn't notice that this hindered Dave terribly much.

At this point I have to admit that a piece of self imposed computer idiocy resulted in my losing the pictures from the first couple of turns of the game so you will need to rely on my increasingly decaying memory for those turns.  You shan't lose much as there was not a great deal of movement.  Dave set up a significant amount of his force around my defenders in the church including one of his hmg cupolas, the 37mm and a 45mm gun.  His intention being to simply blast my defenders out of there with firepower and take the building.  Once the last German squad was gone the victory conditions meant that I would have to evict the entirety of his force to win.  In addition to this he set up a defensive line anchored on the buildings mid board and supported by another cupola.  Closest to where I set up he had his third cupola, a pillbox and a few troops in the buildings opposite my set up area just so I didn't get an easy start.

So here is the map with the position of Dave's guns and fortifications

For my part I had my radio man and a kill stack led by my 10-2 up on the first floor of the building.  The remainder of my troops were on the ground floor ready to move forward should my initial shots actually succeed.  I also had a section of troops set up to advance northward.  I suspected (accurately) that he would have an atg covering the one functioning bridge and I determined to find it and deal with it before my StuGs turned up.  Find it I certainly did.  

Things started modestly enough; my radio operator dutifully connected with his battery and gazed around in some confusion looking for something to kill.  My kill stacks at the very least stripped concealment and threatened worse to the handful of units thus revealed should they not make themselves scarce very quickly.  In return his sniper wounded my 9-1 leader.  My northern thrust pushed forwards and did indeed discover the AT gun where I thought it would be.  Bereft of StuGs to shoot at this thing promptly killed a squad and a half of German troops courtesy of a critical hit and a couple of low rolls.  My StuGs rolled on, I detailed two of them to support my troops with cross canal fire while the other two approached but didn't cross (damn AT gun) the canal bridge.

Close combat did wipe out the gun crew and a pair of StuGs rolled over to bring close range fire support to the troops.  In its only success of the day my artillery managed to break a squad in a building some way from the front.  Kill stacks slowly (too slowly for my liking) started whittling away at his forward defenders and some squads started to ease forward.  In the north I started a flanking movement hoping to eventually hit the Soviets from two sides at once.  This eventually succeeded but first ran into a bit of a stumbling block from troops in a stone building.  In a rare moment of glory one of my StuGs vapourised a cupola with a critical hit while I eased my 10-2 kill stack into a position where it might do me some good.

The next couple of turns saw me slowly improve my position grinding slowly forward against his forward troops and bringing a third StuG across to help its comrades.  With a lucky shot I broke the contents of his pillbox and took them prisoner and slowly pushed forward to the next defensive line.  Up in the north my flankers did a little flanking and I pushed forward some other troops to help them.  My remaining StuG across the river dropped a smoke round on one of his surviving cupolas just to make shooting out a little more difficult.

But what about the citadel itself I hear you cry.  I had spread my troops out on the ground and first level hoping to split his fire.  I was successful in this but he had amassed so much firepower that it looked unlikely to make a difference.  He poured a wall of metal in at my defenders.  They hung tough the first round and threw out some troops who tried to make an inroad in bloody rout but after that weight of firepower slowly started to whittle me down.  Dave had so much firepower surrounding the building it honestly made you wonder what was taking my relieving forces so long.  The truth is this was a ten turn game and I thought I could afford to be cautious.  In actual fact its rather important that the relieving German troops turn up while they still have a presence in the citadel.

My artillery by this time was out of the game.  A sniper killed the radio operator and then for good measure killed another officer who merely glanced in the direction of the radio.

End of German turn 3

At the end of the third turn things were progressing but a little more slowly than I would have liked.  I had pushed back or killed the bulk of his forward defenders (a handful of squads) and so far my troops in the Citadel had clung on but more and yet more Soviet troops were pouring into the building.  I eventually had to abandon the ground floor which meant that my surviving defenders were subject to upper level encirclement but there was no way I could face up to the firepower Dave was bringing.

 

Next turn. Dave's first attack on the citadel has been beaten back

 

Undeterred by his initial rebuff Dave poured more troops into the Citadel and my defenders looked for safety on the rooftops.  It was starting to occur to me that my relieving troops might want to get  move on.  Unfortunately it was occurring to me a little too late.  An over ambitious attack on the northwestern front delayed things a turn in that area while a surviving officer tried to revive his troops enthusiasm for the war.  Down at his main defensive line I was slowly crumbling his defences but the operative word was slowly.

Things are looking iffy in the citadel

Things looked a little better at the end of the next turn.  A fluky CC result in the Citadel preserved my position for another turn despite the presence of half the Red Army and a second assault on the northwest building put it in my hands for what that was worth (spoiler alert; not much).  Being unable to take out the forward machine gun cupola I was reduced to sneaking around it which I managed to a certain extent at the cost of yet more time I didn't have.

This is about as good as things got for me.

The next turn I finally relinquished the ground floor of the Citadel and my remaining defenders, now encircled cringed in the upper levels and prayed.  Meanwhile Dave's forces moved forward and preyed.  Meanwhile facing my relieving force Dave reorganised his defences.  I was so close I could smell it but the final leap would be beyond me.  Dave might have captured the Citadel a little earlier only he seemed become obssessed with a broken 6+1 German officer lurking in the vicinity.  Every turn he allocated some firepower to keeping it under DM despite the fact that the likelihood it would turn the tables of victory was pretty low.  The foolishness of this became apparent when I rolled a snake eyes on a morale check and the useless bastard went berserk.  Sadly he achieved nothing but I am pleased to report he survived the battle.

The writing is on the wall in the Citadel

It has to be said that my Citadel defenders did everything one could reasonably expect of them.  As Soviet troops popped their heads up the stairwell to roust them out my troops, encircled or no, managed to break the bulk of them and buy a few more seconds of life.  And a few seconds of life was all that they had.  With his infantry temporarily stymied Dave returned to the antitank gun pointed directly at my defenders.  Two critical hits in a row wiped out my surviving infantry but also battle hardened by 9-2 into an heroic 10-2.  Now proudly alone could this mighty superman cling to some part of the building while my relieving troops covered the remaining few metres of ground?

The end when it came was sudden and almost anticlimactic.  His sniper had been brutalising me all game and now I rolled yet another six and his sniper shot my 10-2 in the head killing him outright.  Suddenly I had nothing in the Citadel and I would have to exterminate virtually all of Dave's remaining OB to take it back and fulfill the victory conditions.  I faced up to the inevitable and conceded.

And that's all she wrote.  Nobody left in the Citadel

 

This game is rated as being a little pro Soviet and I think that's correct.  It was enjoyable to play but at no time did I actually think I had a chance of winning it.  I also couldn't find any great use for my artillery although it was pretty academic by the fourth turn when it became obvious that anyone who touched the radio would be sniped to death.  Many thanks to Dave for the game.  I shall now attempt to patch my shattered psyche back together before our next game.

A handful of battle scarred German soldiers peered out from the building they had taken refuge in.  A short distance away they could hear the sounds of battle as their relieving force ground forward.  Sadly it was all too late.  The gefreiter (of course he survived the battle) jerked a thumb towards the shooting.

"Do you think we should tell them not to bother?"

"Why spoil the surprise?"

The gefreiter glanced back at the Citadel now swarming with Soviet troops.

"Somebody's going to have to capture that again."

"Yes, but not us."

"Colour me relieved."