We started turn five with me dominating in the centre and desperately clinging to existence on the left while Ivan's reinforcements tried to overrun me from the rear. That's pretty much how turn five played out. In the centre I made my position more emphatic by shattering his last troops in the church, Ivan made a pathetic attempt at delaying the inevitable by routing into the church steeple. In the other centre victory building the inevitable delaying attempts almost sent me raving mad. This little contretemps pretty much requires its own AAR so here we go.
Ivan had two 1-2-7 mortar crews in the victory building. He also had a broken squad and a concealed leader in an adjacent building. With control of the other buildings and the church I moved in for the kill. Things went well originally with a mmg team breaking one of the crews allowing me to slip a half squad of my own into the victory building. Sadly no amount of firepower could harm the other mortar crew and the concealed leader also seemed to bear a charmed life.
When the leader finally revealed himself in an unsuccessful attempt to rally his squad I brought in more troops to capture the broken units and kill this isolated stopout. Over in the victory building I raced a squad across the street and into the building. I now had a squad and a half in the building and surely victory would soon be mine. Nope, I still couldn't hurt the crew and, losing patience, I pushed a squad (accompanied by a hero thanks to an HOB roll) into close combat. I boxcarred the CC roll and the crew withdrew. Over in the other building I'd also pushed a squad into CC with his now wounded (thanks sniper) leader, he promptly ambushed me and withdrew as well. Two units with a combined firepower of 1 were tying down four and a half squads. Fortunately things were going better elsewhere.
Over on the left I desperately tried to rally something from the wreckage of my flanking force. The squeals of delight that accompanied the self rallying of a single half squad would have embarrassed Ivan if he were in the same room with me. As it was he just sighed and reassured himself that his children couldn't hear what I was saying. With my newly empowered halfsquad I got very brave. I charged it towards the rear victory building guarded by a crew with an hmg. I was obviously trying to tease Ivan into firing and thus free more important troops to move but Ivan sternly maintained fire discipline. Which turned out to be not great tactics as he botched his attempt to take out my flamethrower troops and in turn they scorched him out of his position leaving the hmg behind. My halfsquad was able to advance in without harm. Up on the hill I laid down a lot of firepower on Ivan's troops with only a couple of meagre pin results. Then I fired on a concealed stack in the woods and broke two elite squads. I fired again and reduced each squad to a halfsquad. I may have done a little jig. I certainly did some moderately offensive trash talking. Ivan sighed slightly more deeply than usual.
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| A half squad goes on the charge and my hill defenders get nervous |
I had ten squads of reinforcements to bring on and I pushed five squads up the centre, three up the left and two up the far right. These guys wouldn't actually get into the game but their menacing presence obviously unnerved Ivan. With the church now mine I started filtering forces along the trench line towards his final pockets of resistance and with troops to burn I didn't mind taking some risks.
Feeling the heat (literally) on the left Ivan pushed a halfsquad forward to my flamethrower unit, it got toasted and fled for cover but this was mere drawing fire for with the flamethrower having fired Ivan pushed a squad into the trees next to them. There was nothing I could do and I trembled for my flamethrower. Ivan had brought his three reinforcing squads on to the hill to bolster his attack. I had a leader with a pair of squads in a building barring his way but prep fire broke the leader and a squad. The other squad (and his nifty mmg) promptly evaporated two halfsquads which ran forward but a concealed unit managed to assault move next to them. Close combat (my nemesis) beckoned.
Up on the hill his concealed squad advanced into CC against one healthy squad and a broken squad and leader. Down in the woods near the victory buildings Ivan advanced his squad into CC against my flamethrower team. This was the moment of truth for Ivan, if he could sweep the hill of my troops his reinforcements could pour down towards the victory buildings. In the building his concealed squad did indeed kill my surviving squad but was locked up in melee with the broken guys. Down in the woods my flamethrower half squad survived CC and a melee ensued there as well.
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| Close combats rage as Poles and Germans have it out with bayonets |
I saw my chance. With two squads locked in CC and his reinforcements still back on the hill I raced my other troops forward towards his now slender defences. I plunged into CC myself with a defending squad (and promptly got CR'ed for my trouble). Over on the right I moved reinforcements up to the melee in the woods, I would reinforce that battle with a squad and a leader giving me a 3-2 advantage and a -1 modifier. What could go wrong? How about everything? I failed my attempt to kill him and in return Ivan rolled snake eyes killing a squad and a half of my troops plus the leader. The only tiny bit of relief was that he also destroyed the flamethrower thus it didn't fall into his hands. On the plus side the next turn I would break that squad with his own hmg.
My piece de resistance however was reserved for the building on the hill. Here I had a broken squad and leader in melee with a squad of his, unless I did something they were doomed. I did something, I moved a leader and squad around the base of the hill and advanced them into CC. Just for once the CC gods smiled at me and I killed his squad with no casualties of my own. The building was mine again and I once more dominated the hill. To the right of the hill Ivan attempted to push forward, moving a leader carrying a DC next to my units guarding the woods. I pinned him before he could place the DC. In my next turn I pinned him again and, growing bored with the pinning, advanced into CC and killed him
As a demonstration of how many troops I had to spare I walked two squads worth of troops down the road into the teeth of one of his heavy machine guns. They both died, outright and he kept rate thus invalidating the entire purpose behind that gruesome drawing fire technique in the first place.
Back in the centre, despite the ghastly losses inflicted by Ivan's hmg team I managed to push up enough troops to win the CC and the first of my reinforcements managed to break the hmg team as well. That was when Ivan conceded. There were still a couple of turns to go but he had no unbroken troops left around the rear victory buildings. The victory building in the centre was being defended by a single crew which surely couldn't have survived the rest of the game and his reinforcements were stymied by my position on the hill. Even if he did push past it he would have had to cross open ground swept by machine gun fire to get anywhere useful. So another victory to me.
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| When Ivan conceded. I think he should have pinned his hopes on the crew surviving on the left |
In our post game analysis Ivan admitted that he wasn't keen on this one. The sheer volume of German reinforcements seems to make it hard for the Poles to win. For my part I agreed, I was able to move aggressively from the first secure in the knowledge that there were sufficient troops coming on to replace any I lost. As an example in the second last turn I lost three and a half squads killed outright in the course of one turn without it affecting either the result or even what I was going to do. I deliberately walked two full squads into hmg fire for no other reason than to fix his CA and hopefully exhaust his ROF (unsuccessfully). Certainly there wasn't a moment when I didn't feel completely in control of the game. Ivan, of course, was his usual well behaved, gentlemanly self. I, of course, spent most of my time swearing when the dice didn't go my way. Speaking of dice I noted in the first part that Ivan and I playing face to face seemed to be congenitally rolling high. Obviously the dicebot on VASL heard me because both of us rolled ridiculously low during the second part of this game. I lost count of the number of sniper opportunities that Ivan's propensity for rolling fours gave me and for my part I managed to battle harden two separate squads on consecutive morale checks to give me a pair of elite units and a hero as the only consequence of a pair of 1MCs that Ivan had achieved. The next game apparently has the Germans attacking yet another village (Poland seems to have a lot of them). This time I will be the defending Poles.
Hauptmann von Kummerbund gazed around at the village, there were prisoners everywhere, being chivvied out of the church steeple, bunkers and various buildings.
"Dear god," he murmured, "there's almost too many to massacre." Reluctantly he looked around for his commanding officer hopeful thoughts of reporting von Kattelrussler's heroic death running through his head. Junior Officer marched up and saluted.
"Ah, Junior Officer, where is the oberleutnant?"
"Regret to report Herr Hauptmann, Oberleutnant von und zu Pfordamages was leading in the reinforcements when he tripped over his own name and took a Polish bullet to the head."
Von Kummerbund shook his head sadly,
"Let that be a lesson to you Junior Officer. If you ever get promoted go with a name like Schmidt."
A slight disturbance caught his attention and he was disappointed to notice that Oberst von Kattelrussler, was standing unharmed in the street staring at the ground. Apparently his Knights Cross had finally got dislodged because he was speaking to a gefreiter who gave a worried salute and hurried off. Reluctantly von Kummerbund crossed to his CO. To his surprise von Kattelrussler wasn't raving or doing a victory jig on a pile of Polish corpses. Indeed he looked sad, restrained and as von Kummerbund approached he noticed the glisten of a tear in the oberst's eye.
"Ah von Kummerbund," rasped von Kattelrussler, his throat obviously not fully recovered from its recent meeting with Germany's highest bravery award, "have you heard the news? A sad loss."
"Indeed," replied von Kummerbund surprised and a little impressed at his CO's display of emotion. "I thought he had real potential."
"True, true," agreed von Kattelrussler, "taken from us too soon. I've put him in for a posthumous bravery decoration. I think it's the least we can do and he earned it a dozen times over." He beckoned von Kummerbund closer, "Would you like to pay your last respects?"
Von Kummerbund stepped forward and stopped in sheer disbelief at the sight of a bullet riddled sock puppet lying in the street before him.
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