Act 1
Well in my last AAR I noted the remarkable absence of air support for the Germans trying to conquer Poland. I'm pleased to announce that in the next scenario I'm taking the Germans and there is a mass of air support. Unfortunately its all Polish. Scenario BFP112 - Killer Carp has a set of decidedly second rate Germans (that's even before we factor in my leadership) plugging through the woods towards a Polish village. On the other side is a roughly equivalent group of Poles plugging through more woods to the same Polish village. The skies are ruled by Polish aircraft. I'm definitely going to be writing a stern letter to the local Luftwaffe commander about this.
There is little to report for the first couple of turns. My forces came on and made their way villageward without too much interference from a non existent Polish defender. The air support turned out to be a damp squib as Ivan tried three times to attack the same group of concealed troops and failed each sighting task check. So much for the air support. Over on the other side of the board Ivan's forces also moved unhindered through the trees towards the village.
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| Ho hum, trudging through the forest |
Let me see if I can inject a little excitement into this. The German forces moved forward cautiously, a foe could lurk behind every tree. Overhead the drone of Polish aircraft searching for targets chilled every man to the bone but orders were orders and Europe wasn't going to devastate itself. Guns at the ready, eyes narrowed, ears straining for every whisper of sound the German troops moved from tree to tree, wriggled cautiously through grain filled clearings and always cast one eye upwards for the dreaded Carp of the Skies.
At the other end a gang of Polish ne'erdowells shambled forwards shouting and singing kicking badgers and shooting at endangered species as they came. Pausing only to belch and toss beer cans all over the place they wandered in the general direction of the village because it was the only place for miles that sold cheap vodka. The noise of aircraft overhead and the sound of gunfire as the Polish troops shot at them for fun added to the din. The Polish officers were either drunk or back in Warsaw trying to arrange for their mistresses to be evacuated to France. As they blundered into one end of the village the Germans crept stealthily into the other. Which didn't stop Ivan rolling a snake eyes to obliterate what I was hoping to be a kill stack before it could fire a shot.
Both Ivan and my troops have reached the village now and have occupied about half the buildings each. In order to win one of us will have to take at least one building from the other (or move troops onto the other side's entry board, a prospect that seems to be lessening by the minute).
Act 2
I approached the resumption of play with trepidation. Two mmgs were sitting alone in a building while a pair of broken squads cringed in the nearby woods accompanied by a wounded officer weeping and holding his leaky bits. But things were about to look up. Panting along a little behind my main force were my reinforcements, three squads each one toting a large, cumbersome but ROF 3 heavy machine gun. This allowed me to reinforce my right, left and centre more or less simultaneously. I also benefited from the terrain which gave the Germans a wooded area more or less in the centre of the board where forces could mass unharmed (or recover from breaking) before moving forward into the village. Its fair to say the next couple of turns went badly for Ivan. Over on his right he had a concealed stack six counters high. I knew that meant a pair of squads, a pair of support weapons and, no doubt a competent leader to go with them. Over in the centre his 10-1 commanded the hmg unit which had crucified my kill stack while other units filtered through the woods. On his left a mortar, plus an mmg team had stopped an over optimistic flanking manoeuvre in its tracks.
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| Not great, a pile of unattended MMGs sit in the centre while broken squads cringe behind and their officer snivels about his quite trivial injury |
Nothing much happened for a turn or two on the left. Ivan shot at me a bit, stripped a little concealment and broke the occasional squad but my guys slunk back into the trees and I pushed other concealed units into their place. Unfortunately with a range of five to my meagre four I wasn't confident I had the firepower to deal with him. On the right the gods smiled on me. His would be kill stack failed to scratch my troops in the building and in return a meagre 6+1 shot broke a squad and officer and reduced the stack to more manageable proportions. I got a shock though when he sneaked a halfsquad past me. I thought it was on a concealment stripping mission and ignored it to allow myself to fire on his kill stack. Instead the damn thing kept on going and charged into my rear area. Suddenly Ivan had a unit in the rear board victory location, the status quo would not be sufficient. Ah but then my automatic weapons started their execution. I pounded his kill stack some more and even broke his hmg team and officer. Another hmg started shooting up his forces on the left breaking the bulk of the forces he had there.
Despite some nasty Polish casualties getting across the road towards the other building hexes that might give me victory was still looking doubtful. Then Ivan fired on some guys in the woods and they went berserk. Problem solved, they charged across the road, laughing contemptuously at Polish fire and into a building containing a Polish half squad. Advancing fire killed the half squad and my berserkers settled down in their newly occupied building and looked around for their next victim. I took advantage of this charge to actually snatch another building and push some reinforcements towards my berserkers as well. My occupancy of the second building didn't last long but I'm now firmly lodged in the village and hoping to use my burgeoning automatic weapons to essentially blast my way to victory.
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| Weight of metal is starting to tell in the centre. |
Over on the left I can start to move as his forces have been gutted. The right is a concern as various bits of his kill stack have managed to reassemble themselves so I will have to guard against a counter attack from that direction and I have to stop any more half squads following the example of their comrade who is now living it large in the rear area safe from retribution. In the centre Ivan has brought up his reserves and rallied some units but his position is a little worse than it was. I hope to make it a lot worse.
Act 3
You know how in the previous act I said that Ivan's forces on the left had been gutted? Well they had and Ivan didn't help matters by breaking the mortar which was pretty much his only support weapon left to guard the flank. So what did I do? I moved boldly forward and in advancing fire shot at a cluster of broken halfsquads to keep them under DM. Naturally one of them rolled snake eyes and promptly went berserk. These heroes charged forward laughingly shrugging off hmg fire and a 20+1 attack to hurl themselves into close combat with a squad and a half of my own. The close combat didn't happen as the 2 flat advancing fire shot broke all of my forces and forced them to rout through interdiction to rather dubious safety. In one move my left flank was destroyed.
Fortunately things went better in the centre. With my own berserk guys licking their lips at adjacent troops Ivan brought up three squads to bolster his firepower. The berserkers broke one with advancing fire and an adjacent lmg team broke another. Meanwhile in the village things went from bad to worse for him. I now had so much firepower nestled behind wooden walls that I was literally able to shoot him to pieces. It wasn't even close. Towards the end Ivan had to take silly risks just to try and get some troops forward but even before then he just couldn't build and maintain a position. His squads proved incapable of standing up to even NMCs. This wasn't just Ivan's problem, my own troops were equally fragile but I had the centre woods as a safe and centrally located rally spot and the amount of firepower I was able to bring down limited Ivan's chances for inflicting truly game changing casualties on me.
My berserkers died of course, they were halved charging into the hex containing Ivan's surviving squad and the remainder were killed in CC but by this time I had troops to burn and Poles were getting increasingly thin on the ground. He finally managed to break my lmg team in the building on my right and I had a horrible turn when I broke an lmg and an hmg in the same firephase but even with these inconveniences the sheer weight of metal I could throw out decimated his troops. Three reinforcing squads with hmgs might just be a little too much. Possibly it might be more interesting if they were reduced to two.
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| The end; don't bother looking for any more Poles, there aren't any. |
Ivan conceded with one turn to go. Of his at start OB he had precisely four unbroken halfsquads left scattered across the board. I'm always glad to get a win but Ivan and I agreed there wasn't much replayability in this scenario. Basically the Germans and the Poles line up in their respective parts of the village and then just blast away at each other. The first player to get a good turn of firing (in this case me) will probably inflict sufficient damage to put the other into a position where its difficult to win. Our respective flanking moves didn't really come off. I got nowhere and Ivan managed to sneak just one halfsquad through. I guess the air support is intended to be a bit of a leveller for the Poles and its true that Ivan had dreadful luck with his sighting task checks failing all three for no result but even so a sighting TC against concealed units in cover needs a six, less than a 50% chance. Thanks to Ivan for the game and to his perennial good humour as automatic weapons and dice conspired to destroy every clever idea he came up with.
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