Silly After Action Report Part 2 - Hot Guns and Cold Infantry

My third turn started with a bang.  Specifically the bang of my 100mm getting another critical hit on an infantry squad.  Ivan survived this one rather better with only a K/4 result but it put another German squad out of the picture.  Keeping rate I eagerly fired at a neighbouring squad and of course broke the gun.  I suppose if half your rolls are dreadful and the other half spectacular it balances out as even.  I followed this up by shocking a PzIV with the 40mm and things looked a little better in the north.

Still I was desperately short of infantry and greeted the arrival of my reinforcements with relief.  Feeling unjustifiably confident about the situation in the north I loaded my six squads of infantry into trucks and raced them up to garrison the buildings in the centre.  In the north I brought on a tank and my dinky little 47mm SP gun plus a truck towing my 75mm.  Hopefully this accumulation of firepower might slow his onslaught.

Meanwhile far to the south he had a lonely halfsquad with an atr guarding the southern board edge.  I decided to take this challenge head on and brought on four tanks (plus an infantry squad) on the southern edge to hopefully overwhelm him with metal, that sort of worked.  I felt a little silly when two tanks each toting a pair of 6FP machine guns couldn't hurt him with pointblank 12FP shots but fortunately Ivan decided to flee rather than fight and I broke him while he attempted to withdraw.

Finally up in the north I decided to try and preserve my hmg team by pulling it out of its heavily acquired hex to the next building hex along.  Whereupon Ivan revealed a squad and mmg team guided by a 9-2 leader who promptly killed them all.  Not quite the result I was hoping for.



With my final reinforcement cards played Ivan moved to consolidate his gains in the north and centre.  Up in the north he rolled a PzIV behind a wall where it could sight onto my newly arrived armour and sent a squad to take out the crew of my newly broken 100mm.  Fortunately these guys proved to be pretty hot stuff even without their gun and they broke the squad with their personal weapons and clung to their broken ordnance for another turn.

Somewhat to the west my remaining infantry in the north was clinging to a multihex building while Ivan built up around it.  Now Ivan decided it was time for the building to fall.  A mortar dropped smoke on a squad in a foxhole while a pair of half squads cut off all retreat from a broken squad nearby, this would soon garner him another batch of prisoners.  With that taken care of he drew the attention of the squad defending the building and with its fire expended moved a squad forward.  He was confident my concealed unit was a dummy stack.  It might as well have been as an 8-1 shot gained no result and Ivan was able to advance into the building now seen to be defended by two squads.  Meanwhile just below it he raced a leader led squad/lmg team forward to the hedge overlooking the north south road.

In the centre he inched forward over the hill.  My hmg team wasn't really hurting anyone but they were at least inducing a level of caution.  He rolled a tank around the hill in the south and pushed it forwards towards the building behind.  Here I revealed a squad and an atr and managed to shock the damn thing much to my relief.  Unfortunately he also pushed a halfsquad next to these guys.  In the next turn a 4+2 shot would break my defenders.

My next turn started off auspiciously when my little SP gun managed to punch a hole through the turret of Ivan's big, mean PzIV that was threatening it with death.  Down in the centre my atr squad managed to shock his PzIII again (before succumbing to the 4+2 shot mentioned earlier).  With this as a starter I set my plan in motion.  I intended to completely reverse my fortunes in the north.  My two little tanks which had spent the entire game hiding in a wheatfield rolled up, overran a broken squad in the street and took up guard positions near my 40mm gun.  Ivan helped by breaking the MA on his one remaining PzIV.  Meanwhile to in the south one of my reinforcing tanks took a low odds shot at a PzII and blew the thing up.  I was getting quite excited but the best was yet to come.  In the centre my mighty gun truck went on a demented rate tear and broke the lmg squad and leader that had penetrated to the hedge.  Thanks to my guys in the western building these boys would die from failure to rout.

Up on the hill in the centre things got a little iffy.  Ivan through enough metal at my hmg team to build a tank and as a result the leader went berserk.  Sharing the love he sent the halfsquad manning the hmg berserk as well.  Fortunately this happened in the defensive fire phase so I've got another turn of use out of them but after that it has to be admitted I envision nothing but death for these guys.  I'm literally hanging on by my eyelids there and Ivan is getting another eight squads of troops (plus some more tanks) at a time convenient to himself which I somehow have to fend off.

After a truly glorious turn it was only to be expected that it would end in tears.  I mentioned I had a plan.  Yep, I would clean out the enemy in the northwest.  I had two squads to his one in the victory building there and all two lots of 8+2 prep fire had been able to do was pin them.  No problem, they would be easy prey for close combat.  Meanwhile my one remaining squad, choking on smoke in its foxhole advanced into CC with the halfsquad Ivan had sent round behind me.  So I was depending on close combat to clear out the enemy, somewhere in the distance I can hear God laughing at me.  My attack on his halfsquad was sort of successful.  I killed him and he CR'ed me in return.  Still a halfsquad gone and a German lmg for me to pick up.  In the victory building I had two full squads against a single pinned squad.  He would attack me at 1-4 and I would attack him at 2-1.  Despite being pinned he ambushed me.  Then he rolled snake eyes.  Two squads of mine wiped out for absolutely no loss to Ivan and a victory building conceded by default as there were no longer any living Poles in it.

Ivan may have mistaken my silence for a stroke because he suggested we end for the night after that.  Once I regained the power of speech I agreed.  In one close combat phase I lost two and a half of the three squads I had left in the north.  Ivan doesn't have to beat me, he can just move in unless my armour can somehow fend him and his mass of reinforcements off.  I won't say I can't win from here but a hell of a lot is going to have to go right.

Let's see if I can defend without infantry



The picture above is blurry because I was weeping on to it.