Draw nearer, draw nearer
The smell of smoke was borne to me on a chill Winter wind. Across the thousands of miles and decades of time the siren song of battle called my name. The message although faint was clear; Poland was in flames and even such an inept, flabby warrior as myself must answer the call. I stumbled around banging into walls and whimpering helplessly until I found my contact lenses after which I still banged into walls but at least I generally knew which ones. With a bowl of sugar laced stodge in my belly and hope in my heart I gathered together such weaponry as I possessed and set forth to join battle.
Yes JunoBear is upon us once more. This is less an ASL competition than it is a charitable effort to provide Paddington RSL club with sufficient revenue to prevent its closing. Nevertheless for my comrades to justify their absence from home and family some ASL must be played and play it we did with a decidedly Polish flavour. Ivan Kent was organising the competition this year and it has to be said that he's getting a little obsessed with the "Poland in Flames" pack put out recently by Bounding Fire Productions (of course we need 7-1 officers, how can we charge this much without them?). It isn't sufficient that he and I are currently going through the scenarios on VASL (there are about 183 of them) but three of the four scenarios for JunoBear were also sourced from PiF.
I had no hopes of doing well. I have long put such childish dreams behind me. Perhaps, I told myself in an excess of confidence, I might win a scenario. Perhaps but not today. Today brought nothing but defeat which I bore in a noble fashion only whining and bitching until my opponents told me to shut up rather than continuing long into the night. Oh wait a minute, that's what I'm doing now. Anyway, for the tale of woe Part 1 read on.
Silent Bayonets
I have actually played this scenario before against Ivan and despite winning it was on the record as not liking it particularly much. Since I had the Slovaks in my previous outing I generously told my opponent Neil Andrews of my experience and offered him the Slovaks, an offer which he accepted. To avoid confusion as is usual when I play Neil I shall refer to him as Evil Neil to differentiate him from the noble essayist who is your companion on this journey through the first level of Hell.
Evil Neil set up in the centre with his officer and mmg well forward. As the Poles I could set up in brush, orchard or woods and took the opportunity to bulk up opposite his forces and also place some forces in the woods in the south. Strangely for the first turn things went according to plan and my troops swept forward, particularly in the north where I snatched undefended buildings with ease. In the centre things were slower but I was pushing through and as my southern troops came up Evil Neil's forces were squeezed in an increasingly diminishing area in the centre.
Unfortunately that's as good as it got for me. Time is of the essence. The Poles have to brutalise the onboard Slovak force before their reinforcements arrive in turn two. Despite my achievements the brutalisation level was insufficient and when Evil Neil brought on his reinforcements it was my southern troops who were caught between two fires. They held up bravely for a turn but once again close combat turned out to be a disaster for me which was exemplified when I advanced a squad into a building held only by a hero only to have the entire squad killed in CC. When I lost a squad and a half in a second close combat the next turn (having already lost two others) I simply didn't have enough troops left to even pretend I could win.
Szacked
This scenario saw me commanding Soviet troops defending an ill gotten Polish village from the vengeful locals annoyed at what I'm doing to the front garden. Peter Palmer commanded the Poles who had to sweep through and recapture said village despite the fact that I had two heavy machine guns and a 37mm gun (plus nine squads) to stop him. With firepower like that stopping him shouldn't have been too hard right? Wrong.
Oh there were moments. I set up to defend the main village cluster with an outlying squad or two covering the flank. One of these stood up like heroes killing one half squad and breaking another. Unfortunately that was about it for the good news. The most effective weapon was my sniper which killed two of three Polish officers, broke a squad, pinned a squad and broke a half squad. When I mention that my sniper number was three it gives an indication of the type of dice Peter was getting. He just shot my force to pieces. I conceded halfway through because I had practically run out of troops. I killed some Poles most certainly but I would have had to kill every single counter on the board to have any sort of effect. I may have had some sort of a breakdown at that point. When I woke up we were at a Lebanese restaurant and my compatriots were telling the waitress that we didn't want a belly dancer for some reason. I'm now sitting at home wondering whether or not to bother going tomorrow. I probably will if only so I can write part two of this blog entry without which I will feel uneasy and incomplete.
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