Hauptmann Karl-Heinz Heinzkarl knocked the snow off his boots, brushed the snow off his uniform and wiped the snow from the brim of his peaked cap at which point it was time to knock the snow off his boots again. He had been engaged in this process for an hour and a half already and his superiors had let him go on with it on the grounds it was less likely to be harmful than anything else he was likely to be doing. Now, however, things had changed.
"Cometh the hour, cometh the man," muttered Oberst von Lipschtik. He was pretty sure if the man that cometh was Heinzkarl then it was time to be somewhere else. "Heinzkarl," he shouted. Heinzkarl jumped to attention and ripped off a salute that wouldn't have been out of place on a parade ground in Brandenburg. Von Lipschtik wiped the snow from his face and returned the salute with a good deal less enthusiasm.
"Time to move Heinzkarl, are your men ready?"
"Ready as they'll ever be Herr Oberst."
Von Lipschtik suspected that this was true.
"What do you see over there?" asked the oberst pointing vaguely north.
"Snow,"
"Very good, and beyond that?"
"More snow."
"Look a little further hauptmann."
Heinzkarl screwed up his eyes,
"Are those buildings?"
"Very good Heinzkarl, that is in fact Tretten. Your troops are to capture it. If they need motivation you can point out one of the buildings is on fire which is about the only chance they have of getting warm in the near future."
"Oh I don't mind the snow sir and I quite like the cold."
"You are going to regret that statement in eighteen months. Well off you go. If we can chip the ice off the panzer I'll send it to help."
So here we are with Scenario J37 - Tretten in Flames. It hasn't exactly been a good ASL time in the past few weeks. Dave and I have played three games where the VASL dicebot defeated both of us. We played Ancient Feud where my Romanians won a victory directly caused by Dave's inability to roll below eight on anything. Subsequently the dicebot gave Dave his revenge when we played Hill of Death and I lost two of six tigers and half my infantry in the first turn. Finally we played Downsizing the Uprising where my heroic defence was hampered by the fact that my average morale check roll was nine. I didn't pass a morale check the entire game. Neither of us felt particularly good about any of those victories (and we felt even worse if we were defeated). Having given the dicebot the opportunity to take a Xanax and have a nice lie down we decided to head to Norway for a battle among the snow and the alpine hills.
It is April 1940 and the Allied campaign in Norway is a signal lesson in why it would take them another five years to defeat the Germans. For right now however Dave's British of the 1/5 Leicesters and 1/8 Sherwood Foresters are huddled inside various wooden buildings in Tretten awaiting my no doubt unstoppable attack.
To do the unstoppable attacking I have thirteen squads, a mixture of first and second line with a trio of elite gebirgsjager making the rest look rather shabby. I also have a first line halfsquad which I presume is to man the most irrelevant mortar ever to be seen in an ASL scenario. Support weapons consist of the aforementioned mortar a pair of light machine guns and one medium. Three not particularly good officers herd the bulk of my troops forward while the gebirgsjager have an inspiring 9-1 to motivate them. Perched on the top of the biggest hill they could find is a 150mm artillery piece whose principal job is to provide the German's opponent with a free two VP when it inevitably breaks and then gacks the repair roll (spoiler alert). Before the British set up the Germans select one building hex within three hexes of 15K10 to place a blaze marker. I made my worst tactical error of the game with my selection. On turn 3 a single PzIIA grinds through the snow to support the attack. Oh by the way the gebirgsjager have skis for what that's worth (nothing).
Defending bustling downtown urban Tretten Dave has nine squads divided between first and second line. They have a pair of light machine guns and an antitank rifle. Dave has three officers with a quality best described as "variable". A 9-1 encourages grim resistance amongst his troops while in the rear a 6+1 cowers weeping in fear. In between a 7-0 keeps his head down and hopes to make it to the evacuation site. To bolster the somewhat patchy leadership a battlecrazed hero accompanies Dave's troops ready, nay eager, to make the Germans pay for every inch of Norway. All British troops can set up concealed in concealment terrain and he has four extra concealment counters to make things (very) slightly harder for the Germans.
The Germans win by capturing twenty or more building hexes on or north of row O. However they must do it without the British amassing 11 CVP. By SSR Alpine Hills are in effect and the hills themselves are under deep snow (although the rest of the board just has normal ground snow).
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| Set up |
Above is our set up with my foolishly positioned building blaze. My gebirgsjager are in the south east, the remainder are crammed into a rather constrained set up area in the southwest. My plan was use the artillery piece to fire a smoke shell into his forward building, deploy as many second line squads as I could and swarm forward towards his forward buildings while the bulk of my force moved somewhat circumspectly in their wake. My gebirgsjager would take the unoccupied building up on the hill (free VP) and then ready themselves to take out the defenders of the only other building on this side of the hill mass before adding a flanking threat to what appeared to be his main position.
Things went well initially. My 150mm did indeed drop a smoke round into his forward building by the river and all the halfsquads I could deploy surged forward. A pair plunged into the smoke filled building hex while others headed for his other foward defenders. I got a scare when his hero, equipped with a boys antitank rifle opened up on a charging halfsquad but fortunately I passed the 1MC that resulted. With my halfsquads in place I brought my squads forward only to discover that Dave had been exercising iron fire discipline. He had kept his concealment counter proudly in place while my halfsquads capered around but a full squad was a ripe target and his halfsquad gained a KIA result killing an entire squad. My halfsquads advanced in and gained a bloody revenge but there were already two CVP to Dave's name and we were only half a turn in. On the other hand I had two of the twenty building hexes I needed. Incidentally a 1MC and a KIA result are indicative of the IFT rolls Dave had gained so far. This would not change for the entire game. The other thing that resulted was the enthusiastic spreading of flames from the burning building. The one thing Dave and I consistently did was roll spectacularly high on the spreading flame DRs.
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| End of turn 1, a squad dead but two building hexes taken |
Dave decided against defending his smoked out building on my left, abandoning it and granting me a trio more VP. He also abandoned the remaining building on the far side of the hill mass allowing me to capture it with no casualties. Now the easy stuff was done and I would have to fight my way forward not particularly assisted by the fact that a building that should have provided juicy VP was now a roaring mass of flame. His hero with the atr broke a halfsquad and when I rolled snake eyes on a subsequent MC the worthless bastards disrupted. Dave would later rue not taking another shot at those guys to try and kill them but they actually survived the game albeit without taking any further part. My mortar team dragged their unwieldy charge forward to where they could bring down fire on the aforementioned hero and enjoyed a couple of spectacular but utterly impotent rate tears before breaking the thing which at least released those manning it to join their comrades on the front line.
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| End German turn 2 |
For his turn Dave settled more shuffling out of my line of sight where he could and breaking the occasional squad where he couldn't. Principal honours went to his hero who was carving up the attacking force with an antitank rifle of all things. I got quite obsessed with this hero as I desperately wanted the atr out of the way before my tank turned up. That didn't happen but with halfsquads leading the way I was squeezing him for room. I also started shuffling my forces around the raging inferno blocking my way towards the woods mass in the centre of the board. This I thought would be my jumping off point for further advances. Rather foolishly as it turned out. My gebirgsjager took advantage of their winter camouflage to creep forward to overlook his defenders. I was starting to feel a little hopeful despite the fact that further casualties had been incurred on the way and the CVP total was starting to creep up.
When my tank turned up I sent it up through the hills despite the deep snow. The only explanation I can give for this was I wanted to keep it out of the line of sight of his hero with the atr who had already given plenty of examples of his sharpshooting ability. What it did mean was that my tank was useless for the next turn or two.
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| I'm getting somewhere but I'm not entirely sure where |
With my force shuffling to the right around the blaze Dave naturally took advantage of this to move a unit forward and recapture a previously seized building. Fortunately I was up to the challenge sending my former mortar team forward to prevent any further incursion and killing off the offending halfsquad in CC although I lost a halfsquad of my own along the way. Dave's hero decided not to mix it with my battle hungry halfsquads and fled for a rear most building allowing me to ease my way forward. I was starting to squeeze him. The squeeze would be even tighter if it weren't for the fact that he managed to break a concealed squad sheltering in the woods with a 2+1 shot. For the rest Dave attempted to put a little distance between himself and my troops but he was running out of distance.
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| End of British turn 3 |
In my next turn I finally got rid of his hero which had been the bane of my existence. My gebirgsjager shuffled forward menacing buildings down in the valley. To prevent my eruption out of the forest Dave had been forced to finally reveal his lmg teams which broke a number of units and put a dent in my expansion plans but the worst result I suffered was breaking my gun while attempting to fire more smoke. I should never have tried to repair it, any advantage it could give at this point was marginal, as it was I simply gifted Dave a couple of VP which brought me perilously close to the 11 CVP cap. With the atr gone my little tank trundled forward to provide some more firepower to my somewhat attenuated assault force.
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| I have made real gains. Unfortunately I have also taken real losses |
Dave's turn was a time to take stock, rally broken troops, anguishedly count up the CVP losses and watch as he pulled troops back to rearward buildings where possible. I still had distinct hopes. Those hopes took a bit of a battering as another squad vapourised under a 2-2 shot as it dashed across a road hoping to get to another building. Fortunately another squad was luckier and I grabbed a couple more building hexes. My tank rolled forward to give his lmgs a fighting chance of ending the game with one shot. Technically it was there to provide additional firepower but in actual fact it did nothing apart from attract machine gun fire. Fortunately Dave's dice finally failed him and the thing survived to the end of the game. Up on the hill Dave decided desperate times required desperate measures and he dropped concealment from a squad to fire at one of my concealed gebirgsjager. The normal morale check which resulted wasn't enough to break the 9-1, he merely pinned. The troops with a measly eight morale of course fled sobbing for the rear. I decided not to break the 9-1 since while it was there Dave couldn't simply move back towards the buildings I had captured on the hill.
In Dave's fifth and final turn (I had one more) his lmgs bounced bullets off my PzII which sprayed the buildings the fire had come from with cannon and machine gun fire to no greater effect. On the right I was finally in a position to do him some serious harm and serious harm was indeed inflicted with a pair of British squads raising their hands to a suddenly overburdened halfsquad. Up on the hill Dave moved his squad to support his suddenly tenuous position in the village which was a relief as my 9-1 was looking distinctly threatened. Actually my 9-1 was distinctly threatened as Dave still had a concealed unit that the squad left behind. I suspected it was his 6+1 leader. Said concealed unit advanced into CC with the 9-1. It was indeed the 6+1 and suddenly we had a 1-1 CC raging that could decide the game. Fortunately I survived. That would have been an embarrassing way to lose.
My final turn rolled around and I took stock. I needed three building hexes. One was a gimme but to take the other two would require some desperate running through the open under the guns of his remaining troops. I did a quick check, how many CVP did Dave need for the win? Answer: 1. I sat there for several minutes too scared to actually make the moves. If I wanted to win I had to do it and simply hope the dice would be kind. The dice were not kind. My troops were mown down in the open and the CVP cap exceeded. So victory to Dave at the last with me two building hexes short of what I needed. This was a genuinely gripping game that went on to the last turn. It was certainly the most enjoyable game we had played in a while.
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| End game. The squad in the street died a horrible death to put me over the casualty cap |
As I review the map from the final turn I can actually see a way that would at least have given me a much better chance of winning. Pity that revelation came a week too late. Many thanks to Dave for the game which was at least close.
Oberst von Lipshtik warmed his hands by the fire from the burning building and waited until a snow covered Hauptmann Heinzkarl shambled up and saluted.
"How many building hexes did you get?"
"Eighteen," muttered Heinzkarl looking at the snow which, fortunately, was everywhere. This was actually more than the oberst expected but he wasn't going to let his subordinate off the hook.
"The artillery have complained that you broke one of their guns."
"It's not my fault that the crew stuffed a shell into the breech back to front."
"Agreed but you must admit it doesn't look good. They hadn't finished making the payments on that thing. At least the tank survived, the last thing we need is bad relations with the panzerwaffe. Still, I think I see a lot of snow in your future."
Heinzkarl brightened, "I like snow."
"Not for long, I assure you."
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