Nick Drinkwater
Game 1:
German Player [ELR 3, SAN 3]: Mark Carter
British Player [ELR 3, SAN 4]: Nick Drinkwater
Mark and myself found ourselves playing this one as our introduction to MAGCON, a new event for ASL in Houston, held at a really nice hotel in Kingwood. We had an evening free to play this so we opted for a shorter scenario that Walter was running as a mini called BritFest (the second time we had run BritFest - last time it was Pyrrhic Victory). In this mini, a winning British and German player will be nominated by the accrual of Fun Points for doing things like killing tanks with Boys ATRs, or keeping calm under fire (not cowering etc) or even doing outrageous things like successfully executing overruns in Bren Carriers. Lots of fun and a good way to warm up for the weekend.
Anyhoo, "Bring up the Boys" was a good scenario for an evening's play, set on Boards 10 and 19. Its pretty straightforward - over six turns, five German tanks and six squads have to control a majority (7) of the eleven Board 10 stone buildings north of the East-West road and the curious walled enclosure in the B10 village. Stopping them from doing this are seven non-cowering British 1st liners, a Boys ATR, a LMG, two Bren Carriers and a 9-2. The challenge and interesting part of this scenario is that the Brits get to move last so the Germans may need to go into that last half game turn with possibly eight or nine buildings under control - as they are likely to be short of infantry by this point and the Brits may still access to the best mobility if one or both of their Bren Carriers are still alive, then any undefended portion of German-taken buildings could easily be re-captured by the Brits for a cheap and easy win.
The big trick in this scenario is just how much damage the Brits can inflict on to the Germans, who have to launch their attack across completely open ground on Board 19. In contrast the test for the Germans is to see just how creative they can get to mitigate against this. Most of the German armour has a 1,1 AF and so they need to sweat even the humble Boys ATR and LMG shots at close range, but the Brits only have two of these weapons at game start. The Brits can and should start at the tree line to try and inflict maximum cheap casualties but they need to balance this against being completely locked in on Turn 1 from aggressive VBM movement allied to large Advancing Fire Phase fire attacks. The Germans do need to keep an eye on casualties as they are outnumbered from the start and they will need those infantry to control village buildings in the end game. As a result, every aggressive move to enforce VBM needs to be examined carefully on a "risk vs reward" - there are no infantry to waste here, even lowly half-squads, so getting advantageous CC odds is important for the Germans.
The other thing the Brit needs to think about is how to use the Carriers - they could be used upfront to additional 2-2 shots against the open ground assaulting Germans, they could instantly de-bus in the village to give two more useful, tank-killing SW or they could just be held as a mobile late game reserve to go and reclaim all-important VC buildings in that last turn - all options are viable but all come at some risk. Interesting problem.
So in Game 1, Mark was faced with the challenge of the Germans. We were both a little rusty and Mark spread his attack out across the board to try and maximise the number of British squads he would see and also to disperse some of my return fire. My guys were largely up-front, with a couple of half-squads forming refused flank guards on the lateral edges of the village proper. The roadblock was in the obvious spot blocking the main round into the village through the woods, and my ATR and 9-2 and 8-0 & LMG were close by and centrally placed. Mark tried to use armoured assault and SDs extensively but generally rolled poorly where ne needed to roll well and vice versa. I was lucky to roll a three on one squad double timing in the open and that was crucially 1/6th of his infantry dead. Importantly he did not VBM freeze me anywhere in this turn, looking instead to reduce my thin khaki line by fire but that was largely unsuccessful, and most importantly my 9-2/ATR team retained concealment looking for something juicy to shoot at from behind in a future turn.
In Turn 2, Mark continued to push on and was able to VBM a squad but lost the follow-up CC, and worse, in an effort to remove a ? threat for good, stacked two squads next to them in woods, hoping to survive their shots and then wither me in return. Sadly this was my 9-2 and Mark's guys yahtzeed themselves to death on the resultant random selection once I had rolled the 3 for the 1KIA. Huge loss to the Germans and 50% of their infantry now dead - the only way Mark was winning this was by voluntary abandonment of the tanks but that was going to reduce their effectiveness massively. In the meantime my two Bren crews had dismounted and were in key buildings at the back looking threatening with their LMGs. To add insult to injury, Mark now moved a tank into a flanking position to try and envelop me, but this went down eventually to a Shock/UK kill from the 9-2 directed ATR shot in the rear - go Boys ATR, go! When another German squad was minced in brutally effective British fire, we called it as he was now down to 4 tanks and 2.5 effective squads vs an untouched British stone-building defense. My dice were hot, Mark's were average and we were done in four turns.
Game 2:
German Player [ELR 3, SAN 3]: Nick Drinkwater
British Player [ELR 3, SAN 4]: Mark Carter
As Game 1 ended quickly, and we only had limited time, we flipped it around and quickly played out a return, both feeling that we had essentially learnt what the scenario was trying to get over in Game one. This time around, I went strongly for the direct limited frontage schwerpunckt with the Germans to try and swamp and overrun just a section of the British line, but Mark also partially planned for this with a better distribution of the Brits than I had carried out in the first game. Mark's only weak point was that he had left a single Bren carrier in a position where I was guaranteed a good first turn Prep Fire shot at him with one of my tanks with an initial 7 To Hit - I'll take those odds any day. I missed him with the first shot, and even though he was able to squirt smoke at the start of his movement phase, I was still able to stick a tank shell through him in Brit Turn 1 movement. Apart from that stroke of good fortune, I can only say that my more direct attack was only partially successful - all my grandiose armoured assault and VBM moves had their accompanying infantry shot to pieces by withering British fire and at the end of Turn 1, I was down a half squad dead, a half squad back on the start line broken, and worst of all, a squad and a half as prisoners!
However, I had managed to get a tank into the 9-2's location (subsequently immobilized by them in Reaction Fire), but I managed to get 2.5 squads adjacent to him for some tasty follow-up fire. Now that he was locked, my guys took their chances in British Turn 1 and under multiple shots, critically broke and wounded the 9-2, generated a British hero but also were able to break the accompanying squad too. In a follow-up, I was able to get a squad onto one of Mark's guards and the tables were swiftly turned as I was able to free my guys to get a useful (yes, its true) conscript half-squad back in return - in hindsight, Mark's cool and collected guys should have massacred or NQ'ed my team to stop this happening.
Despite these initial losses, I knew I was now slightly ahead and I started to break through into the village and really started to use my tanks to aggressively encircle and enforce FTR on two of Mark's MMC. However, he was still definitely in it as I didn't quite have enough infantry to enforce all the gains I had made and I had to leave units in key positions to stand guard over isolated British MMC that I wasn't strong enough to break. By the end of Turn 5, I had seven of the requisite buildings and I knew that this would become eight as I had a broken half-squad trapped on top of a 1-2-7 crew in a one hex rowhouse. In addition, another crucial sniper double broke another British h/s and that was critical as I was then able to snag one more building for my tally. Luckily, I also had a fortuitous three on a advancing Fire shot on Mark's concealed 8-0 (that was denying me building control) and he was now unable to survive or dodge a subsequent advance by a German half-squad. However, Mark had also made a crucial mini-counterattack and reduced me by one less victory building and I was again down to the crucial seven. In his last move, he just had an encircled 2-4-7 (ex-carrier crew) left to try and enforce one more building conquest on me against a 2-4-7 and 8-1 and a 2-3-6 and 8-0. Sadly for Mark the 4-2 shot he needed to take broke him on the subsequent 2MC before he could advance in and victory just stayed mine. Phew.
Mark played really well in this apart from his slight set-up mistake with his other Bren, but in hindsight, the niceness of the British on NQ and this may have been the difference between victory and defeat - if both Carrier's had still been around to enforce late game house tagging, then I would probably have been too stretched to stop it after my turn 1 losses. I was lucky that only one of my five German tanks suffered a Breakdown and that was at the very end - the rest carried on gallantly shooting and encircling and did sterling service once the threat of the 9-2 had been diminished.
Good games from a fun opponent - thanks Mark!
Nick.
German Player [ELR 3, SAN 3]: Mark Carter
British Player [ELR 3, SAN 4]: Nick Drinkwater
Mark and myself found ourselves playing this one as our introduction to MAGCON, a new event for ASL in Houston, held at a really nice hotel in Kingwood. We had an evening free to play this so we opted for a shorter scenario that Walter was running as a mini called BritFest (the second time we had run BritFest - last time it was Pyrrhic Victory). In this mini, a winning British and German player will be nominated by the accrual of Fun Points for doing things like killing tanks with Boys ATRs, or keeping calm under fire (not cowering etc) or even doing outrageous things like successfully executing overruns in Bren Carriers. Lots of fun and a good way to warm up for the weekend.
Anyhoo, "Bring up the Boys" was a good scenario for an evening's play, set on Boards 10 and 19. Its pretty straightforward - over six turns, five German tanks and six squads have to control a majority (7) of the eleven Board 10 stone buildings north of the East-West road and the curious walled enclosure in the B10 village. Stopping them from doing this are seven non-cowering British 1st liners, a Boys ATR, a LMG, two Bren Carriers and a 9-2. The challenge and interesting part of this scenario is that the Brits get to move last so the Germans may need to go into that last half game turn with possibly eight or nine buildings under control - as they are likely to be short of infantry by this point and the Brits may still access to the best mobility if one or both of their Bren Carriers are still alive, then any undefended portion of German-taken buildings could easily be re-captured by the Brits for a cheap and easy win.
The big trick in this scenario is just how much damage the Brits can inflict on to the Germans, who have to launch their attack across completely open ground on Board 19. In contrast the test for the Germans is to see just how creative they can get to mitigate against this. Most of the German armour has a 1,1 AF and so they need to sweat even the humble Boys ATR and LMG shots at close range, but the Brits only have two of these weapons at game start. The Brits can and should start at the tree line to try and inflict maximum cheap casualties but they need to balance this against being completely locked in on Turn 1 from aggressive VBM movement allied to large Advancing Fire Phase fire attacks. The Germans do need to keep an eye on casualties as they are outnumbered from the start and they will need those infantry to control village buildings in the end game. As a result, every aggressive move to enforce VBM needs to be examined carefully on a "risk vs reward" - there are no infantry to waste here, even lowly half-squads, so getting advantageous CC odds is important for the Germans.
The other thing the Brit needs to think about is how to use the Carriers - they could be used upfront to additional 2-2 shots against the open ground assaulting Germans, they could instantly de-bus in the village to give two more useful, tank-killing SW or they could just be held as a mobile late game reserve to go and reclaim all-important VC buildings in that last turn - all options are viable but all come at some risk. Interesting problem.
So in Game 1, Mark was faced with the challenge of the Germans. We were both a little rusty and Mark spread his attack out across the board to try and maximise the number of British squads he would see and also to disperse some of my return fire. My guys were largely up-front, with a couple of half-squads forming refused flank guards on the lateral edges of the village proper. The roadblock was in the obvious spot blocking the main round into the village through the woods, and my ATR and 9-2 and 8-0 & LMG were close by and centrally placed. Mark tried to use armoured assault and SDs extensively but generally rolled poorly where ne needed to roll well and vice versa. I was lucky to roll a three on one squad double timing in the open and that was crucially 1/6th of his infantry dead. Importantly he did not VBM freeze me anywhere in this turn, looking instead to reduce my thin khaki line by fire but that was largely unsuccessful, and most importantly my 9-2/ATR team retained concealment looking for something juicy to shoot at from behind in a future turn.
In Turn 2, Mark continued to push on and was able to VBM a squad but lost the follow-up CC, and worse, in an effort to remove a ? threat for good, stacked two squads next to them in woods, hoping to survive their shots and then wither me in return. Sadly this was my 9-2 and Mark's guys yahtzeed themselves to death on the resultant random selection once I had rolled the 3 for the 1KIA. Huge loss to the Germans and 50% of their infantry now dead - the only way Mark was winning this was by voluntary abandonment of the tanks but that was going to reduce their effectiveness massively. In the meantime my two Bren crews had dismounted and were in key buildings at the back looking threatening with their LMGs. To add insult to injury, Mark now moved a tank into a flanking position to try and envelop me, but this went down eventually to a Shock/UK kill from the 9-2 directed ATR shot in the rear - go Boys ATR, go! When another German squad was minced in brutally effective British fire, we called it as he was now down to 4 tanks and 2.5 effective squads vs an untouched British stone-building defense. My dice were hot, Mark's were average and we were done in four turns.
Game 2:
German Player [ELR 3, SAN 3]: Nick Drinkwater
British Player [ELR 3, SAN 4]: Mark Carter
As Game 1 ended quickly, and we only had limited time, we flipped it around and quickly played out a return, both feeling that we had essentially learnt what the scenario was trying to get over in Game one. This time around, I went strongly for the direct limited frontage schwerpunckt with the Germans to try and swamp and overrun just a section of the British line, but Mark also partially planned for this with a better distribution of the Brits than I had carried out in the first game. Mark's only weak point was that he had left a single Bren carrier in a position where I was guaranteed a good first turn Prep Fire shot at him with one of my tanks with an initial 7 To Hit - I'll take those odds any day. I missed him with the first shot, and even though he was able to squirt smoke at the start of his movement phase, I was still able to stick a tank shell through him in Brit Turn 1 movement. Apart from that stroke of good fortune, I can only say that my more direct attack was only partially successful - all my grandiose armoured assault and VBM moves had their accompanying infantry shot to pieces by withering British fire and at the end of Turn 1, I was down a half squad dead, a half squad back on the start line broken, and worst of all, a squad and a half as prisoners!
However, I had managed to get a tank into the 9-2's location (subsequently immobilized by them in Reaction Fire), but I managed to get 2.5 squads adjacent to him for some tasty follow-up fire. Now that he was locked, my guys took their chances in British Turn 1 and under multiple shots, critically broke and wounded the 9-2, generated a British hero but also were able to break the accompanying squad too. In a follow-up, I was able to get a squad onto one of Mark's guards and the tables were swiftly turned as I was able to free my guys to get a useful (yes, its true) conscript half-squad back in return - in hindsight, Mark's cool and collected guys should have massacred or NQ'ed my team to stop this happening.
Despite these initial losses, I knew I was now slightly ahead and I started to break through into the village and really started to use my tanks to aggressively encircle and enforce FTR on two of Mark's MMC. However, he was still definitely in it as I didn't quite have enough infantry to enforce all the gains I had made and I had to leave units in key positions to stand guard over isolated British MMC that I wasn't strong enough to break. By the end of Turn 5, I had seven of the requisite buildings and I knew that this would become eight as I had a broken half-squad trapped on top of a 1-2-7 crew in a one hex rowhouse. In addition, another crucial sniper double broke another British h/s and that was critical as I was then able to snag one more building for my tally. Luckily, I also had a fortuitous three on a advancing Fire shot on Mark's concealed 8-0 (that was denying me building control) and he was now unable to survive or dodge a subsequent advance by a German half-squad. However, Mark had also made a crucial mini-counterattack and reduced me by one less victory building and I was again down to the crucial seven. In his last move, he just had an encircled 2-4-7 (ex-carrier crew) left to try and enforce one more building conquest on me against a 2-4-7 and 8-1 and a 2-3-6 and 8-0. Sadly for Mark the 4-2 shot he needed to take broke him on the subsequent 2MC before he could advance in and victory just stayed mine. Phew.
Mark played really well in this apart from his slight set-up mistake with his other Bren, but in hindsight, the niceness of the British on NQ and this may have been the difference between victory and defeat - if both Carrier's had still been around to enforce late game house tagging, then I would probably have been too stretched to stop it after my turn 1 losses. I was lucky that only one of my five German tanks suffered a Breakdown and that was at the very end - the rest carried on gallantly shooting and encircling and did sterling service once the threat of the 9-2 had been diminished.
Good games from a fun opponent - thanks Mark!
Nick.
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