JunoBear 2015: A Tale of Woe in the Frozen North Part 1

When the days grow short and a chill wind blows from the north it is a sign.  A sign that ageing warriors will drag themselves from hearth and home, strap the accoutrements of war to aching, creaky bodies and muster for combat.  No fresh faced young warriors here with the silky down of their first beard newly grown on rosy cheeks.  Rather grizzled veterans of many a combat relying on guile and experience to compensate for the sap of youth long run dry.

There is a wheeze as battlecries are shouted, a wincing and cracking as muscles are flexed and weapons hefted.  It is fitting that the muster should take place at that Fortress of Decrepitude, Paddington RSL Club.  Here among the soon to be dead my comrades and I have gathered for the cardboard bloodbath known as JunoBear.  Why here?  Becasue its the only place outside a retirement home where we're the youngest people around.  Plus they serve beer at 10 in the morning.

To celebrate (or exploit) the release of Hakkaa Paalle (its Finnish for "Go bugger a reindeer!") a certain number of scenarios would welcome this newest addition to the ASL family.  This required much scrabbling in the rules to understand ground snow, winter camouflage and the consequences of a  herring only diet.

With the introduction done I shall now take you on the journey of my games at this years JunoBear.  It's a rollercoaster journey from the depths of defeat to, well, even more depths of even more defeat.  In fact the journey is not so much like riding a rollercoaster as it is like falling down a mineshaft.  On that hopeful note, let us begin.

Armoured Car Savikurki

The first scenario saw me commanding a rather ragtag group of early war Soviet troops being given a lesson in exactly how unwise it is to invade Finland in Winter.  My opponent Ivan Kent was attacking them with the entire Finnish armoured force.  Said force being present in the shape of a single armoured car.  I had seven squads (four conscript) to defend half a board from four Finnish Squads and the eponymous armoured car of the scenario title.  To aid my somewhat dubious force I had a light machine gun and a heavy machine for which I had great (unrealised) hopes.  Ivan had to exit at least four VPs worth of personnel off the edge of the board, I had to defend it to the last.

The left side of the board was thick forest with a road cutting through it.  I set up the bulk of my force here as it seemed a more appealing approach than the frequently open ground in the centre and right.  I set up a squad with the hmg set back in a building that covered the only two exit roads and to cover the right set up a squad and lmg on the first floor of a building covering Ivan's entry area with some conscripts lurking in the trees nearby to help out.

Of course Ivan didn't go through the woods.  Instead he sent a diversionary force to occupy the lmg force on the right while the bulk of his troops moved down the middle.  Things started off rather well for me.  I quite literally (and by literally I mean figuratively) shot his diversionary force to pieces.  I killed so many that Ivan couldn't really afford any more casualties if he wanted to exit the required number of troops.  Unfortunately that was the end of my success.  While my defenders were thus occupied the bulk of his force slipped down the middle and got behind my guys in the building.  I wasn't too worried,  I had the heavy machine gun waiting for him and now that I saw the placement of his troops I started easing some of my forces through the woods on the left to meet the new approach.

Damn conscripts move slowly in woods!  Sadly sluggish conscripts weren't my only problem.  Like an avenging demon his armoured car swept forward.  Heavy machine gun fire didn't bother these heroes.  Under a hail of lead they roared down the road, slewed to a halt and shot the hell out of my machine gun squad.  Crap!  Most of my troops are out of position in the woods or the now bypassed eastern building and my heavy machine gun goes down.

The next couple of moves saw little shooting as Ivan raced for the exits and I raced (somewhat more slowly, damn conscripts) to try and stop him.  Meanwhile the armoured car trundled forward to make life difficult for anybody who tried to get in the Finns way.  I couldn't stop him,  I did get some guys into position to take a few shots as he ran for the exit.  I even managed to regain the hmg but I couldn't concentrate enough firepower in enough time to worry 8 morale Finns with the exit in sight.

Ivan exited his guys off leaving a broken rabble of conscripts licking their burnt patches and swearing revenge.

Barbarossa D-Day

It wasn't all about Finns of course.  No, I was given the opportunity to go down to defeat against a variety of opponents over the two days.  The second scenario saw me served up as a dish to David Longworth in Barbarossa D-Day which had me commanding the Germans attempting to introduce the concepts of Blitzkrieg to a sceptical Red Army.  If I had really commanded the Germans the Soviets would have occupied Berlin in 1941.

I had seven reasonably high quality squads mounted on motorcycles (very briefly as it turned out) attempting to seize a village from a slightly smaller number of Soviet defenders.  Supporting my efforts would be an armoured car.  In turn three reinforcements in the form of three Panzer IIIs of various letters would arrive.  David as the Soviets had half a dozen squads and a couple of light machine guns.  On turn three he too would receive armoured support in the shape of six T26 tanks.  My objective was to clear the village of Soviet troops (dead, fled or captured it didn't matter they just had to be gone).  Furthermore I had to achieve this and still have at least one AFV alive at the end of the day.

I set up what I thought was a clever plan.  To the southwest of the village was a straggle of woods so entered the bulk of my force to take advantage of this covered approach.  The armoured car plus a pair of squads I allotted to a largely diversionary frontal attack.  David had set up a couple of squads forward to delay my approach and these became the target of my frontal attack.  Starting as it meant to go on my armoured car roared up to the first of these defenders and promptly broke its main armament.  Foolishly I attempted to repair it and very soon my armoured car was trundling to the rear, its occupants no longer interested in proceedings.

This was actually  disaster because I needed to keep an AFV alive until the end of the game.  With the armoured car present I could be recklessly brave with my tanks, now not so much.  With the armoured car fleeing for the rear David cheerfully shot up my diversionary force and pulled back in good order to the village.  My main force did successfully creep through the woods and turn three found me nicely positioned near the village preparing to throw down massive amounts of firepower onto the defenders.  My tanks rolled on and I moved one up to add its firepower to my attack.  The other two lurked modestly in the background.  I pretended they were flank guards but actually they were just trying to keep out of harms way.

And this is how things stayed for the next three turns.  For three turns I pounded his forces in the village and for three turns he took it with barely a whimper.  His tanks turned up to support, a lucky shot killed one and another broke down but the remaining four bolstered his defences.  Not that they needed any bolstering, I simply couldn't hurt him while he gradually whittled away at my forces.  The end of the game found such forces as I had left still sitting in the woods I had reached on turn three.  There wasn't a bang but I may have let out a whimper.  Two games, two losses.

That was it for Day 1.  Check out my next blog entry to see if I did any better on Day 2.  Spoiler Alert: I didn't.



From Supermarket Hyena to Office Jackal

I slink around the outskirts of the feeding pack.  They ignore me, focusing on the meal in front of them.  There is contempt in this disregard, they know I am neither fast enough nor strong enough to challenge them for this kill.  My presence is not so much tolerated as disregarded.

Hunger bites at me as I roam, my gait a visible struggle between fear and desire.  From time to time a gap opens in the feeders and I get a brief, tantalising glimpse of my target.  It is diminishing rapidly as the pack eats its fill.  Fear grips me; perhaps there will be nothing left by the time the pack has finished.  It has happened before and I have limped away from the feeding ground as hungry as I came.

My fear makes me bold and I edge closer, eyeing the gaps that have begun to appear as first one then another leaves, their sagging bellies a testimony to their satiation.  I must be quick, the unity of the pack may be broken but even individually those that remain could inflict terrible wounds and leave me helpless, prey for those equally desperate.

I spot my prize, a choice morsel unaccountably overlooked.  My slink turns to a prowl, I am the hunter now.  Hunting someone else's kill is the most dangerous hunt of all but I am practiced.  It is how I eat.  Twice more I circle, ignoring fleeting opportunities, waiting for my moment.  A gap opens, widens, I strike!  I seize the morsel and immediately flee ignoring howls of outrage, knowing they are too well fed to pursue.

I do not pause until I have reached the sanctuary of my desk, there to drool over my prize in safety.  A slice of chocolate cake from Loveday's birthday celebrations.  Moist, thick icing; delicious.

Pick the Soft Concrete

When I have heard of something then you can be sure that whatever it is has truly arrived.  If I actually engage in it then you know it has also departed.  I have been vaguely aware of parkour for a few years now but it has recently been brought directly before my eyes.

From what I've heard parkour was developed from French military obstacle course training and seems to involve running, jumping and vaulting over things that a few minutes thought would enable you to walk around all of which must be quite difficult to do while simultaneously waving a white flag.

Parkour has really caught on with the sort of people who delight in making life difficult for themselves.  Exponents of parkour will run up the sides of buildings, hurl themselves through narrow openings and slide under fences all to arrive breathless at a destination you or I would get to by catching a bus always assuming we wanted to go there at all.  To be fair there is a certain amount of dramatic presence achieved by suddenly turning up on top of a fence near your destination, rolling athletically off the top, skidding in the patch of urine left by last night's drunks and having your head bounce rhythmically off the concrete.  And when that does happen at least you're near a busstop so you can take yourself to hospital.

According to wikipedia people who partake in parkour are called traceurs.  Apparently in a recent poll this name beat "runny, jumpy, rolly people" into second place.  It is by and large a sport for the young.  Not the young at heart, just the actual young.  A fair bit of parkour involves bouncing off concrete.  Since concrete doesn't have a heck of a lot of give in it it is preferable if the human body in question does.  And thus a reasonably young one is best.  By the time you get to my age the body tends to be rivalling concrete for inflexibility which would make attempting to bounce of it a once only affair.  Most traceurs also tend to be male.  This is for the rather obvious reason that throwing yourself at concrete is not something a sensible person does, therefore females are rather thin on the ground.

My introduction to parkour came courtesy of the son of friends of mine.  He (his name is Eaden) does parkour and now he was taking part in a competition.  A large room in what looks like a warehouse/factory/drug lab had been filled with random obstacles and the parkour competitors were wound up and pushed roughly towards the middle.  Points were awarded for technical skill, rhythmic flow, excitement factor and not splattering yourself over the concrete floor.

Each routine took twenty seconds and in that time the contestants had impress the crap out of the judges, preferably without getting themselves killed.  Eaden didn't win, sadly, but it was his first competition and at fifteen he still has several more years of competing before bone brittleness makes it suicidal.  Eaden's parents and I watched with that combination of awe and envy typical of middle aged people watching youngsters do things that they can no longer even contemplate much less achieve.  Eaden jumped, tumbled, rolled and, on impact with concrete, managed to bounce rather than splat.  All in all he was pretty damned impressive.

The Hadron Guys Want a Date With SUSY

It occurred to me recently that it's been a while since I checked in with the Large Hadron Collider to see if they've managed to destroy reality.  By an amazing coincidence just as I was thinking this news arrived on things Hadron.

You may have noticed that there has been a distinct lack of black holes being generated, universes demolished and all of the other things we’ve come to expect when people start hitting subatomic particles with the scientific equivalent of really large hammers.  The reason for this is that the Large Hadron Collider up in Switzerland (and France) has been lying dormant for a couple of years. I must admit I didn’t realise it was dormant, I thought it was finished.  The God Particle; found.   We can dismantle the collider and everyone can go home.  Of course I should have known better.  Apparently now that we know everything about the universe it turns out that one of the things we know is that we don't know as much as we thought.  Time to fire up the collider again and see what else we can pound into existence for a fraction of a second.

Actually it seems that the collider has been undergoing repairs after its triumphs of a couple of years ago but now physicists (or more likely minimum wage illegal immigrants hired by physicists) have finished crawling through the tunnels putting sticky tape over the wonky bits and chipping off charred bits of alpine sheep that wandered in for warmth in the Winter months and all is ready to go.  This time the physicists are looking for a girlfriend.  Her name is SUSY.  I’m not even going to pretend I know what SUSY is but apparently proving its existence would be desirable.  If nothing else it would allow us to fit dark matter (at present little more than an excuse for why the sums don’t add up) into our model of the universe.  Our current model of the universe (the Lego version is coming out at Christmas) is elegant and simple (if you're a particle physicist) but it has a couple of glaring holes.  One thing it doesn't explain is dark matter.  Or rather dark matter is the term that physicists came up with to explain the stuff the theory didn't explain.  It's rather like getting three quarters of the way through describing how something works to your child and realising you don't know the rest.  You have to fall back on magic.  Physicists of course can't say something is magic.  So they posited dark matter instead.  Dark matter would really explain a lot (apparently) the only trouble is no one can prove it actually exists.  Time to start pounding the protons.

In all the excitement of discovering the Higgs boson it went overlooked (except by legions of despairing physicists) that the Hadron Collider didn't provide too much support for SUSY.  Various, once hopeful, theories have apparently been tossed overboard.  But SUSY or supersymmetry to give her her full name is just too seductive to abandon simply because she mightn’t exist.  In keeping with the dating website theme SUSY basically involves pairing up bosons and fermions (Never heard of fermions?  Where have you been?).  According to the theory each boson should be linked to a particular fermion and these things should be relatively easy to discover.  The number we've discovered so far is nil.  Which means that there must be a reason (other than that the theory is rubbish) for why we haven't found them.  Enter the Large Hadron Collider, scientists are now hoping it can correct its original refusal to produce results that conform to the theory.  A physicist (or for that matter a high school teacher) could point out at this moment that I have no idea what I'm talking about.  Give me a break, there's only so much physics one can learn from newspaper articles and wikipedia.

Everything that the discovery of the Higgs boson was supposed to achieve might actually be achieved if we can discover SUSY, or not.  Physics isn’t an exact science which wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s meant to be.  A more accurate statement would be; physics is an exact science, we just don’t know what we’re doing.  There comes a point when all the obvious stuff has been discovered (rocks, fire, reality television) and then you’ve just got to make stuff up based on your observations, assumptions and best guesswork.  After that you dig a couple of dozen kilometres worth of tunnels in the Alps and start dismantling the universe to see if you’re right.  If you are then Nobel prizes and (based on current experience) a bunch of new intractable questions await.  If you’re wrong, then you look a little silly but at least you can try again always assuming you haven’t accidentally blown up the planet.

So with hope in their hearts and protons in their tunnels the collider boys are pressing the go button in the hopes that their previous success with the Higgs boson wasn't just a flash in the pan.  All new sorts of subatomic particles are waiting to be discovered.  Although I must admit I have a slight problem with the word "discovered".  If you smash a particle into bits and then name the bits are you really discovering something new?  If I drop a plate on the floor I don't call the scientific community excitedly announcing the discovery of twenty seven new pieces of crockery.  I just get a broom.

There is probably more to it than this.  For the sake of a rational universe let's hope so.  In the meantime the guys in Switzerland have come up with a very traditional way to try and get results.  They're going to do exactly the same thing they did last time but with more power.  I wish them well.

Chives!

I have it from a reliable source (I saw it on an episode of QI) that kiwifruit cost more than their weight in aviation fuel to fly to Europe although it wasn't mentioned whether that was first class or economy.  The inference being, of course, that either people in Europe should repent of their insane, kiwifruit guzzling lifestyle or that the kiwifruit themselves should start investigating domestic holiday options.

To me the entire kiwifruit situation raises a far more serious question.  If irreplaceable hydrocarbons can be burnt so that Europeans can have something not particularly nice to put on their fruitsalad; if vast quantities of natural resources can be torn from the environment, slaughtering animals and plant life and befouling the air solely so kiwifruit can make an appearance somewhere kiwifruit were never meant to be then why the hell does my supermarket keep running out of chives?

Honestly, what is so difficult about chives?  Compared with kiwifruit chives wax mightily upon the earth.  Short of Antarctica there are few places they won't grow.  If we can develop a transcontinental airbridge apparently for the sole purpose of shunting a few kiwifruit around is it really too much trouble to throw a few bundles of chives on a truck and get them to my local supermarket.

It's an insult to the dead!  To build our civilisation we have blazed a path of destruction across the natural world.  We have bulldozed forests, slaughtered animals, poisoned rivers and the very air itself.  And for what?  The shades of those we killed will raise their voices in an anguished cry to the heavens, "All this and you can't even put chives in a supermarket!  Did we die in vain?  Say it isn't so!"

Chives are important to me.  By sprinkling a handful on my peas I can claim to eat two vegetable serves with my evening meal (three if you count crisps).  Yet time and again I turn up at my local supermarket to find the chives rack unaccountably empty.  I sometimes wonder if someone is hoarding them against a future shortage or possibly manipulating the market so they can make a fortune in chive futures trading.

Even if we can't grow chives in this country (and we totally can) it shouldn't be beyond our abilities to throw a few bags onto the empty planes returning to New Zealand for more kiwifruit.  If all else failed we could fly them out by private jet.  At the very least this would stop people fretting about how much jet fuel we waste on kiwifruit.

Happy Hallmark Day

It's Mother's Day this Sunday apparently.  I don't know this because of heavy handed hint dropping from my maternal progenitor and I'm not even going to pretend that I might have remembered it myself.  Fortunately I was rescued from the swamp of ignorance by the tireless efforts of pretty much every single commercial enterprise on the planet all of them attempting to persuade me to purchase their products as a gift for my mother.  So far I've got her a close in weapons system and a do it yourself trepanning kit.  I'm sure she'll be pleased.

Mother's Day is quite a recent tradition as traditions go.  Normally something has to hang around for several centuries before we dignify it with the title "tradition" thus giving us an excuse to keep doing it.  At this point we pretty much have to continue with it because the only other alternative is to publicly admit that our ancestors were gopher brained halfwits.  But Mother's Day is modern, barely a century old.  It started, of course, in America which can be forgiven for having new traditions as it hasn't been around long enough to get any old ones.  President Woodrow Wilson officially inaugurated it in 1914.  Considering the decisions being made by the leaders of the rest of the world in 1914 Mother's Day seems thoroughly sensible, or at least harmless, by comparison.

President Wilson may have signed the paper but the driving force for Mother's Day was one Anna Jarvis from West Virginia who wanted to honour her own mother and by extension all others.  She lobbied, advocated and just plain pestered until first her own state and then the rest of the country took it on board.

Others who took it on board were greetings card companies, chocolate manufacturers and sellers of flowers everywhere much to the horror of its creator as she saw her simple expression of love and gratitude transformed into the most crassly commercialised celebration of the year after Christmas.  Poor Anna Jarvis spent the rest of her life campaigning against the commercialisation and exploitation of Mother's Day.  A measure of her success can be found in the fact that Hallmark makes about a gajillion dollars a year out of Mother's Day and Anna Jarvis died childless and alone in a sanatorium.  Its never pretty watching idealism collide with reality.

Back to the present day and my mother has found the ideal way to celebrate Mother's Day by contriving to put several thousand miles between her and her offspring.  She will be enroute to a cruise on the Danube River at around about the time I would normally be making a guilt laden phonecall to explain why I had forgotten it was Mother's Day again.  I wish her loads of riverine fun and heartfelt thanks for letting me off the hook.  Just one of the countless things I have to be grateful to my Mother for.  Her presents can be opened when she gets back.  Although I have to admit I'm getting a little uncertain about my purchases.  The weapons system will no doubt come in handy the next time I drop by unannounced but let's face it, she needs a trepanning kit like she needs a hole in the head.

And surely you must have seen that joke coming from the first paragraph.

Another Silly After Action Report

In 1942 Mussolini called Hitler excitedly to tell him that he was sending Italy's crack alpine troops to Russia.  Hitler responded in the way you do when your "special" child gives you a present.  He smiled politely, patted Mussolini on the head and sent the alpine corps to the flattest part of Russia he could find.

Unfortunately for the Alpini this happened to be the steppe land in the vicinity of Stalingrad.  To visualise this territory in the Winter of 1942 it is necessary to imagine a vast featureless expanse.  Then imagine several more vast featureless expanses and stitch them together, cover the lot with snow and add a couple of million vengeful, heavily armed Russians.  See that small black dot somewhere in the middle?  That's the Alpini.

The Italians had watched with polite curiosity while the Red Army had destroyed the Romanian and Hungarian armies on their flanks and then had just enough time to take a deep breath before the tide flooded over them as well.  For those who inexplicably survived the initial onslaught there was the choice between surrendering to the Russians or trudging on foot through the Russian steppe in the middle of a Russian Winter surrounded by battle hungry soldiers who were, yes, Russian in the hopes of making it back to wherever their German allies had managed to patch a front line back together.

In January 1943 some of the exponents of Option B staggered into the village of Chertkovo where a mixed German/Italian garrison was not exactly pleased to suddenly become the centre of Soviet attention.  This is ASL scenario AP19, Winter of Their Discontent.  Here I shall command the Axis forces as they attempt to hold off an onrushing Soviet horde determined to serve them with an eviction notice.  Ivan Kent will command the aforementioned evictors.  The winner would be the one with the greatest number of victory points at the end.  Victory points were awarded one per building hex (giving a total of approximately eighty to be won) in addition to the usual points for killing enemies.  Additionally the Axis (me) could purchase reinforcing units at the price of conceding victory points in exchange.  It was mandatory to purchase at least fifteen points worth.  Conversely the Soviets (Ivan) could concede some victory points for the opportunity to permit some of their forces to enter on the north (right) flank thus opening up the possibility of cutting off and surrounding the defenders.  The end result of all this buggering around was that it was very difficult to figure out who was winning at any given stage without more mathematics than I'm usually capable of applying.

My at start force wasn't terribly impressive, a mixed bag of twelve Italian squads ranging from elite (adequate) to conscript (wretched), two German manned 50L anti tank guns, an Italian 75mm antiaircraft gun (but now to be used against tanks) plus a heavy machine gun a few officers and a couple of Soviet antitank rifles they picked up at a garage sale somewhere along their retreat.  Ivan had a force of fifteen squads (four elite and eleven first line), a pair of medium machine guns, a couple more antitank rifles and some pretty good officers.  He also had five tanks, three T-34s and a pair of smaller but not to be sneezed at T-70s.

My plan was as follows;  Ivan's force was impressive but he got no reinforcements.  What he started with was all he had.  I spent up big on reinforcements (sacrificing lots of victory points to do so) to gain six extra German squads, three Italian squads and two PzIVF2 tanks.  This reckless expenditure handed Ivan a distinct advantage but it meant that if my at start force could somehow hang on then my reinforcements would provide sufficient strength to push back his now (hopefully) depleted force.  Of course that meant that my initial forces would have to weather the storm and somehow protect the reinforcement area. 

The playing area was effectively divided into two zones.  In the left and centre a line of stone buildings behind a road formed an natural barrier and I placed the bulk of my infantry, the hmg and both 50L guns in these buildings.  Ahead of this line a handful of conscripts formed speedbumps so that Ivan would hopefully have to take a little time to get through them.  The right was the danger area in my opinion.  Here there were only a spattering of largely wooden buildings, a little forest and scrub and behind that clear firing zones to my reinforcement area.  To protect this I placed squads in a couple of likely buildings, hid an elite half squad (with an atr) in the woods and hid the 75mm (the only gun I possessed which had a good chance of taking out the T-34s) in some adjacent scrubland.  Another squad with an officer and lmg were placed close enough to reinforce should that become necessary.  It became necessary immediately.  Below is a rather blurry picture of my intial deployment, apologies for the quality, I suck.

OK, Ivan sets up on the right of the picture (which I can't rotate for some reason) stone buildings are at the top, vulnerable right flank is at the bottom

Ivan took me by surprise. I was expecting him to spend some victory points to get a flanking force on my right but the scale of it horrified me.  He deployed all three T-34s plus three elite squads, an officer and a demolition charge and sent the lot of it towards the two units in the bottom left of the picture you see above.  Action exploded immediately, I was fortunate enough to break one of his squads despite it hiding underneath a tank, I revealed my halfsquad to try an immobilise one of his tanks with the atr and when that failed felt I had no choice but to reveal my 75mm gun (which was pointing the wrong way).  Still I said a quick prayer and racked it around to shoot up a tank at pointblank range.  I managed to immobilise the lead tank just short of where it would be able to crucify my reinforcements.  Ivan threw his elite squads at my halfsquad and the guncrew and here my halfsquad showed his mettle.  A high firepower shot from adjacent troops produced a morale check which I passed with snakeeyes.  Heat of battle results are problematic for Italians at best but this time my guys battlehardened (becoming fanatic) and generated a hero as well.  With the shooting done Ivan jumped into close combat with both the halfsquad (and hero) and the guncrew.  Encouraged by the hero (who would pay the ultimate price) the half squad wiped out its opponents in close combat and my gun crew casualty reduced its attacking squad without any harm to itself.  Suddenly Ivan was down two and a half squads and had an immobilised tank.

But the bloodshed didn't end there.  Desperately get my 75mm back in action I moved up my sole reserve in this area, a squad, leader and lmg and plunged into the melee.  Naturally after my heroics with the guncrew alone this massive force couldn't hurt a hair on Ivan's head.  Ivan rendered the entire business moot when the immobilised tank swung its gun around and slaughtered everybody in the hex including his own men.  Under fire from another tank and Ivan's surviving infantry my elite halfsquad finally succumbed but Ivan's attack was looking decidedly dusty and it looked even worse when one of his mobile tanks broke its main armament.  Perhaps for this reason he largely abandoned the right flank and used the two mobile T-34s to assist his infantry in clearing up my outlying defenders before aiming at the buildings on my left.  Below is a slightly better picture of the struggle on the right.

Broken guns, immobilised tanks and melees.  The concealed stack near the melee would soon plunge in to its death.

While the opening two turns were a welter of blood and metal on the right the action on the left was somewhat understated.  Ivan had about eight squads here plus a pair of medium machine guns and his two T-70 tanks but he also knew he was facing an as yet unbroken defensive line hidden in stone buildings.  He hastened slowly, picking off a couple of outlying defenders and gradually working his way forward to the road from where he could fire on my troops.  His attempt to support them with a T-70 came to an end when it drove into the line of sight of one of my 50L guns which blew it up in a spectacular ball of flame and smoke.  Despite this and the occasional broken squad he managed to get the bulk of his force into jump off positions for a major assault unharmed.  Over on the right his tank assisted infantry had cleared out most of the rest of my speedbumps (although one conscript squad proved remarkably resilient) and now they (and the tanks) were threatening the right of my building line.

A word about our dice rolling before we go any further.  Spread across the game both Ivan's and my dice were average.  Which is to say we rolled either four, three, snakeeyes or eleven or twelve for pretty much every roll.  There were so many snipers going off it sounded like volley fire and the only way we managed to avoid triggering the snipers was when we broke our own weapons.  There was one turn when the bulk of the action consisted of our forces  throwing bits of malfunctioning support weapon at each other.

Despite this Ivan had started to get a stranglehold on my building defensive line.  He was pushing from the right (malfunctioning tank armament permitting) and was bulking up on the left, which is when I managed to break my heavy machine gun twice in the course of two turns.  Ivan responded by breaking the main armament of both his mobile T-34s (he did repair one of them).  His other T-70 turned up to help and was promptly destroyed by my other 50L although it had to reveal itself adjacent to a T-34 to do so.  Life expectancy, poor.

Now however my reinforcements were coming on in strength and rolling towards the battlefield.  Seeing the need for a quick ending Ivan took his heart in his hands and dashed a group of squads across the road into the teeth of a squad and lmg stack I had positioned for this occurrence.  Naturally I simultaneously cowered and broke the lmg and suddenly Ivan was around both my flanks.  The grinding down of my defences could truly begin but alas (for Ivan, I was quite chuffed) it had come just too late.  My reinforcements were now on the edge of the battlefield and with them were the PzIVs.  His left flankers beat up my defenders and grabbed a couple more buildings but were then shot to bits by a combination of tank and infantry fire.  Over on the right where he had been positioned to take some more ground I sneaked my other tank up behind a T-34 and destroyed it from the rear.  With, heavy casualties to his infantry, his only mobile tank bereft of main armament and a sea of Italian and German arms and legs to wade through Ivan conceded.  He could have fought on and stretched the game out for a turn or two but barring ridiculous luck (of which we had both had too much to expect any more) I would be able to roll over the top of him and regain my lost buildings.

Much thanks to Ivan for the game which was genuinely exciting with so many twists in fortune it seemed like a soap opera with bullets (I must pitch that to HBO) and a rare victory for me.