Bite of the Bassotto
The first scenario had me commanding a ridiculously small number of German squads supported by some recently thieved Italian self propelled guns which had been dignified with the new name of StuG rather than the original semovente. I had to defend a village against a rampaging mob of New Zealand squads accompanied by some bulky, lumbering armoured cars with the improbable name of staghounds.
Being able to deploy freely allowed me to make at least a pretence of a defensive line although I kept one squad with an lmg back in the village. I was also able to set up my StuGovente HIP. This turned out to be a disaster as I set it up in the middle of the road and forgot to reveal it when Jamie had a line of sight. Since it was fair to assume that Jamie wouldn't waltz about in the open with a 105mm gun pointing at him the only fair thing to do was remove the damn thing from play. Jamie would struggle to inflict as many losses on me as I did myself.
Despite that piece of idiocy things went all right for the first couple of turns. Jamie came on hard in the south with his staghounds breathing more smoke than an asthmatic dragon. A smaller force pushed in from the east. Nevertheless my outpost line held like heroes. One half squad with a panzerschrek talked a good game and held up Jamie's advance by threat alone, I'm pretty sure he didn't actually hurt anything. By the time he was surrounded and destroyed time was running short. Fortunately for Jamie his eastern force had been pushing on. A minefield slowed up one squad and a reckless halfsquad was killed running through the open but the remainder shoved their way forward.
With the south finally cleared Jamie's staghounds roared forward to dominate the village. Unfortunately for both of us he roared one right next to my hidden squad. One panzerfaust shot later and the staghound was burning merrily, however the backblast also broke the squad and wounded the officer commanding. The resultant loss of firepower allowed Jamie to gobble up buildings in the east almost unopposed.
My third turn provided me with some reinforcements and another StuGovente. Sadly I mismanaged this one as well rolling it into range of one of Jamie's staghounds. It survived longer than I deserved but Jamie finally took it out with an intensive fire shot just before I would have been able to kill him. That was pretty much it, my reinforcing troops stopped Jamie's advance and even retook a building but he already had what he needed to win and I wasn't able to push him out of enough to make it competitive. My score so far; 0-1
Parting Shots
From Italy to Burma and fresh from my stinging defeat at Jamie's hands I faced Aaron Cleavin in the second scenario which featured a group of Gurkhas (me) attempting to hold off the advancing Japanese hordes (Aaron). Essentially I had yet another village to defend and yet again I would prove incapable of doing so. A railway line bisected the battlefield. I placed a small force west of the railway line and set up the bulk of my forces in the buildings to the east with a couple of halfsquads forward as bullet catchers, sorry, advanced guard. If I could last until turn five I would get reinforcements in the shape of another squad and a pair of Indian carriers. As it turned out I did survive to turn five, just.
Aaron swarmed his forces through the jungle aided by treacherous Burmese insurgents (or noble patriots depending on your viewpoint), banzaied through my speed bumps without breaking step and readied himself for the assault on the village. To the west of the railway line a smaller force did much the same thing. It really should have been over in turn three or four. The reason it went to turn five (and could have gone to turn six if we had been keen to play out a foregone conclusion) was that the impressive kill stack Aaron had assembled to break my defences in the east proved incapable of breaking anything. Elsewhere on the board we both had our share of good and bad dice rolls but here Aaron's troops couldn't catch a break (even pins were thin on the ground). Lest you feel sorry for Aaron I would point out that my return fire was equally impotent and a decent chunk of both our OBs spent the game not hurting each other.
Eventually Aaron had to do it the hard way. His western force fought its way through the buildings on that side of the railway line (although one mortar halfsquad of mine put up a heroic defence) and in the far east on the other side of the apparently harmless killstack a squad infiltrated around that flank as well.
By turn four with the western buildings finally swept clean Aaron could being a grand flanking manoeuvre which made the unlikely survival of my central troops largely irrelevant. My carriers rolled on and one was promptly destroyed. By turn five with my surviving troops effectively surrounded we agreed that I was completely screwed and called the game over. 0-2.
Block to Bataan
The next day and with defeat bowing my shoulders I sat down with Erez Ben-Aharon to play Block to Bataan. I was the Japanese in this one with a force of ten squads and five tanks looking to push out a slightly smaller grou of Filipinos supported by wire, mines an AT gun and a tank of their own. I won this one due largely to a Neilesque error by Erez when his misplaced most of his fortifications thus invalidating their positioning. With smoke from my mortars leading the way I pushed forward aggressively looking for an opportunity to take out the tank with a tank hunter hero. I brought my own tanks on in two platoons sending one straight down the road and the other down the west edge to exploit that way once his tank was eliminated.
Slinking forward under smoke I took full advantage of the close combat abilities of my soldiers to dismantle Erez's defences bit by bit without commensurate loss to myself. My tank hunter hero eliminated his vehicle and gave my western tanks free reign but the real disaster came for Erez when he broke his AT gun on an intensive fire shot. With his forward defences crumbling and now virtually nothing that could stop my tanks he conceded. The victory was not really very much to do with me but by this stage I would have claimed a win if Erez had simply had a heart attack at the table and been carted off to hospital. 1-2
Blue Ridger Blues
The story of this particular scenario is swiftly told. I lost. I lost big time. I lost in a wretched and humiliating fashion and I don't want to talk about it.
Oh ok, I played Shaun Hodgman in this one taking the defending Americans trying to hold off a rather eclectic group of German AFVs and supporting infantry. I made one mistake (well ok, I probably made a bunch but I made one critical one). Over in the west a squad, leader and mmg were ensconced in a building too far forward for long term life expectancy. Sure in the first turn they managed to mangle a German squad that got too close for its own good but it became rapidly obvious that the only long term activity they would undertake in that position was to die. So I attempted to withdraw them, only to have them shot to bits on the way out. Taking out that position unhinged my entire western position, with it gone my other defenders could be (and were) taken out individually wiping one half of the board clean of American troops in a couple of turns.
Over in the east I was hanging tough and my troops up on the hill were still lords of all they surveyed but with half my OB dead and German AFV roaming the streets with impunity there was nothing I could do. My personal morale collapsed and I fled the building in floods of tears. 1-3
Hammer Time
I approached the final scenario with trepidation. I was playing Mark McGilchrist who was advancing with ten squads and seven early war panzers against my heroic Belgian defenders. I had nine squads, an utterly useless mortar, a 47mm antitank gun and a hero. Coming to their allies rescue were four pretty impressive French tanks and a pair of not unimpressive armoured cars.
Once again I was defending a village. The wrinkle was in this case that the Belgians don't set up in the village but rather some way in front of it. They have to fend the Germans off while simultaneously moving rearward. I detailed the anti tank gun, the useless mortar and a small group of squads as the designated sacrifice. They would hold their positions at all costs while the remainder ran for the rear. In turn two the French armoured cars and a pair of Somua tanks (pretty awesome for the time and place) would roll into the village to bolster the no doubt thin defences. On turn three a pair of slow but sturdy Hotchkiss tanks would enter behind his onrushing attackers and take them (very slowly) in the rear.
Bizarrely this is pretty much how things worked out. Certainly Mark's tanks rolled forward avoiding my ATG and treating the mortar with the contempt it deserved but his infantry had to battle through my stay behind troops and this took them a few turns. Some of my troops (not as many as I would have liked but still) made it back to the village for the last stand while my Somuas and armoured cars stood ready to trade blows with the panzers.
OK, I was lucky. On at least two occasions low odds rolls by Somuas took out moving panzers despite Mark's frenzied shrieking at the dice gods, a third was nailed by snake eyes from an armoured car which was definitely icing on the cake. Still Mark got a fair amount of armour down into the village where he attempted to capture buildings by driving tanks into them. In one building he drove in a tank and then advanced a squad into CC with my occupying force. With both of us having survived CC one of my Somuas then reduced the tank to a blazing wreck, the blaze spread to the building and burnt both squads to death before they could get away. Another tank Mark charged into a building wound up as a shattered wreck in the cellar.
Meanwhile a powerful amount of his infantry was in the rear trying to deal with my pair of Hotchkiss tanks which were crawling forward making menacing noises. Mark had captured the AT gun but its shells bounced off the Hotchkiss's thick armour. Eventually he took both of them out in close combat but while his infantry were doing that they weren't getting any closer to the village. Ultimately I clung on in a wreck littered landscape for a victory which I like to think wasn't totally undeserved although Mark may have a different opinion. My suggestion; get yourself a blog, it makes rewriting history so much easier. 2-3
Well I didn't improve on the previous years record but neither did I go backwards. Altogether I'm not terribly disappointed with that result (in general, there were specific things I was very disappointed with). Much thanks to Andy Rogers who organised the entire thing. The only disappointing thing was that we didn't get time to go to the war memorial. I dearly wanted to get a photograph of myself next to the L3 tank they have there. Much thanks also to Ivan who gave me a lift to Canberra and followed that up by giving my lifts around Canberra.
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