AAR: ASL 77 Le hérisson

Nick Drinkwater

German: Steve Miller [ELR 4; SAN 2]
French: Nick Drinkwater [ELR 3; SAN 4]

A desperate rearguard of French colonial troops is determined to give Hitler's finest one last bloody nose before the inevitable ignominious end comes to Mother France. A small company of poilus (nine 457 and three 237) has to deny the evil Boche from taking eleven of fourteen multi-hex buildings on Board 20 by game end or inflict at least 26 CVP on the invaders. Despite the carnage and chaos spreading through the rest of France, these guys are determined to make a go of it and they well armed with HMG, two MMGs and a LMG, have good-ish leadership (9-1, 8-0, 7-0). They are in (by SSR) an all stone building defense, with the option to make one Fortified Building location and create a single HIP squad with associated SW tools. Their biggest handicaps will be the Ammo Shortage they are suffering which will make the HMG and LMG very fragile, a lack of AT assets, and the need to spread out thinly to stop any German flanking maneuvers to sweep up easy victory buildings.

The Germans have a fairly straightforward task here and a goodly mix of thin-skinned but ballsy 150mm assault guns to keep the defenders on their toes, allied to a bitchin' 10-2 with associated HMG to blowtorch their way through any particularly tough defensive nuts. The assault guns are really fragile, being large targets, really bad open turreted armour, and lumbered with a pathetic low ammo B9 – the French will be particularly unlucky if one of these guys doesn't get recalled if the German opts to start flinging the big iron about. They are however given good smoke assets and ultimately could be used as sacrificial sleaze victims for any building assaults needed in the last couple of turns. Though this sounds attractive, the Germans should take a little care here as if the French destroy all three of these then they will already be 3/5ths of the way through the CVP cap: wary Germans however, should not need to worry about the CVP cap in this scenario. The guys who will really being doing the fighting will be the 12.5 landser squads – these are the blokes who will be required to beat the hard yards in this one.

I used my three half-squads to create an outward screen in the right, forward-most three buildings, while I spread the rest of the crew in an L-shaped angle across the left hand side and rear right positions. These three outer buildings were my collapsible screen and the job of the half squads was to hold and annoy the Germans as long as possible. My two most dependable weapons, the two MMG had the best leaders and were placed either side of the central defense splitting road, with support from the two roadblocks to act as shielding `walls' if I needed to conduct some retreats in safety – they could also act to block any creative deep penetrating thrusts by the Sig1 bis if necessary. In response, Steve set up across the half-board width equally, but had put the 10-2 blowtorch in a dominating 2nd level overwatch on his left center. For the first half of the scenario this guy was a right royal pain in the ass as he continued to project 16+1 shots right into the heart of the brittle French defenses. Nasty indeed.

Steve slowly ground forward before he walked into my first shot of the game – my very fragile HMG amazed us all and went on a rate spree and on its sixth shot managed to destroy the first Sig 1 that had waddled into view – 5 CVP for me with a gun with a B10! That was the high point for the next five turns – in return Steve rolled snakes with the blowtorch and my 7-0 and 457 were out of the game – the 7-0 became the ultimate persona non grata when he went to the 5+2 wounded status we all fear and dread! The survivors proceeded to disrupt, then surrendered, have their MG picked up, and the most dreadful result of all, compromised my defenses when they were taken prisoner – out popped by FBL, my hipster and a revealed squad. Nice move Steve as that hurt A LOT.

With all the setbacks, things were looking a bit grim, although I thought Steve was a little bit cautious in his attack. My half-squad screen ultimately failed in Turn 4 and the front right series of three buildings dropped comfortably into Steve's grasp. Despite the pain being received by the blowtorch, I had just managed to stop a first road-crossing assault with a series of lateral shots from my left front line – note that `stop' is a bit of an over exaggeration as from about five -1 and -2 shots I had ultimately only managed to pin three of Steve's squads, but it at least did delay them for a turn.

So Turn 4 was the critical one – Steve realizing the need to press on tried to reposition his 10-2 and death stack when I got the HUGE result of the game: my sniper in its only attack of the game nailed the 10-2 through the eyes (of course), and this also saw the end of the HMG for the rest of the game too. At this point Steve had only lost the single Sig 1 Bis and a measly half-squad so this was huge for me. However, he still had a lot of his infantry left and two of the three AGs, and he pressed on with grim determination. I continued to be my horrible rolling self when it came to Ambush and CC where overall I lost two ambushes, and came out the wrong side of five of the CC attempts made and with no wins of my own. Steve was also shrugging off numerous Residual Fire 1 and 2 -1 attacks with aplomb. All of a sudden, my front left defense had gone down in a welter of hand-grenades and rifle butts and it was looking grim again, but I was still just managing to keep Steve pinned back on my central right side.

In some careful Turn 6 maneuvering, I thought I had a safe place to run my 457, MMG and 8-1 back out of the LOS of Steve's last big 16FP stack – to my horror, I got snagged on a atom-thin LOS from another squad that actually nicked the shadow of a building and not the building itself (and Walter verified it – very tight) – of course I failed the 1MC for both of these from the lousy 4+1 shot from Steve's CX squad with a 10 and a 11 – disaster! To counter that and with a lot more thought, I saw a gap in Steve's lines and an opportunity to run a squad back to my old front line and reclaim a lost building. This was big as there was no in place to stop them and despite the nightmare of the thin LOS shot, I was a building back in credit. To really aid my last turn defense, I was able to rally a half-squad back for the only rally attempt I made in the entire game (and I managed to fate two of my own leaders and a half-squad!) – another big one as I was able to man one more of the backfield buildings to make Steve's job even harder.

The end game was looking to be very tense – I was looking at last turn CC fights in four buildings but in all of them I was likely to be outnumbered at least 2-1 against negative leadership, and as noted, my luck (ability?) in these situations is never good. Steve parked an AG on one of my guys, and tried the same trick on the diehards in the FBL. However, his luck failed him in other maneuvers where two squads got fatally pinned assault moving in the street – the odds in the final CCs were beginning to swing back a little.

He also hadn't realized the full implication of me still having a full squad MMC in my FBL – there was to be no advance in for a win here unless he could break me in Advancing Fire on a 16+3 attack and then force me to rout: unluckily he rolled and received PTC results which I passed. For the final CC round, Steve was in place to try and take three buildings from CC: I of course lost one completely (and this was the one in my favour where I had an immobilized Sig 1 Bis), but in the second, despite fluffing my 2-1 attack, I only received a CR result from the 1-2 in return (some luck!) and hence kept overall final building control of that one. The third one was a wash but even here I again failed with my attack, though I did survive the return.

So a French win in the last CC round of the last turn – the Germans came up shy by three buildings – the big game turners were the massive sniper attack, me sneaking the squad back to the front to reclaim a building and to put me back one building to credit, and Steve's misreading of the FBL entry requirements. We also had a situation in German move 7 where Steve missed declaring double time at the beginning of a squad's move, and hence was one hex short of claiming a building as he could only declare Late DT – during the rest of the game I would have let this go and let him re-take the move and claim the full double-time, but I felt I couldn't on this last turn game-making / breaking move as this was critical – ultimately, it didn't matter to the game result, but I hope this didn't sour it for you Steve and I really didn't mean to come across as a hard-ass on this one.

All in all, quite a good scenario and I can see why its borne so many playings on ROAR – its quite tight and will generally come down to the last turn in some desperate city fighting. Good use of the big guns is essential but with their fragile nature, restraint for use in the end-turn rush maybe a good plan.

AAR: ESG25 Road Out Of Rangoon

Zeb Doyle

British: Zeb Doyle
Japanese: Matt Schwoebel

It's always rather amusing how some ASLers have strong preferences for certain styles of scenarios or for a particular nationality. Matt Schwoebel, for example, is the biggest fan of Gurkhas I've ever had the pleasure of playing against. So, I figured that ESG25 Road Out Of Rangoon would be a great scenario for our next match. It's a 1942 Burmese jungle scenario with some cut-off British forces trying to push through a thin screen of Japanese and escape. There's guns for both sides, armor for both sides, and oh yes, one of the most powerful Gurkha force ever seen in ASL. You can imagine my surprise when Matt agreed to play the scenario and then took the Japanese.

Road Out Of Rangoon is a good-looking scenario that takes place on boards 34 and 37. Both maps are have a lot of jungle, but while board 34 is almost completely covered, board 37 is more open with a fair amount of palm trees as well. The Japanese get one road-block, a 75mm ART piece, and roughly six squad-equivalents on each map as well as three reinforcing Ha-Gos on turn three. The British get six 4-5-7s and a 9-2 entering on board 37 and a great Gurkha force on board 34 of five 6-4-8s, three 4-5-8s, a 10-2, a 9-2, an 8-0, and a hero. Additionally, four Stuarts and two trucks towing 94mm guns enter on either board. All in all, it's a very interesting match-up of forces, with some great leadership for the Commonwealth. The stealthy Japanese are really in their element with all the jungle though, and their 75mm guns pack a 12TK which can be very painful for the 4AF Stuarts.

The longer I looked at the situation, the more I understood why Matt took the Japanese. The Commonwealth wins either by clearing two roadblocks or by clearing one roadblock and exiting 25CVP off the far edge. The scenario is only 6.5 turns long, and although the Japanese have to set up fairly far back, the overall math still wasn't too encouraging. To clear a well-placed roadblock on board 34, even after running forward as far as possible on the first turn, Gurkha Force would have to average three hexes per turn for the rest of the game down a dense-jungle road in order to have a single clearance roll. That didn't seem likely even for 10-2 led 6-4-8s, so I starting thinking about the other possible VC.

Over on the more open board 37, the terrain dictates a more forward placement for the roadblock. Here, the first turn rush is also easy enough, and leaves the British only six to eight hexes away from the fortification with six turns remaining. Of course, the EVP requirement still looms large, and although the Stuarts are worth 20 points, you still have to come up with another five points which will have to cover 18 hexes in six turns even after the first turn rush. That seems depressingly similar to the three hexes a turn the Gurkha force would have to average, but on board 37 the numerous palm trees offer the potential for faster movement, and the trucks can also try to load up some infantry and make a dash during the end-game. It still looked tricky, but I figured it was my best option. Just to try and be extra cunning, I decided that I'd also bring the board 34 Gurkha force over to board 37 as soon as possible to bolster the attack there. That had the disadvantage of signaling which VC I'd selected, but I could also avoid throwing those awesome 6-4-8s away on a useless objective.

Things started out well for me over the first two turns. Everyone ran forward as far as possible on turn one, just as planned, and then I shifted the Gurkhas onto board 37 while the British continued to push forward. Matt countered by trying to shift his board 34 troops over as well, but they'd been set up to defend, not to move, and so I was able to steal a march on them. Even better, all the Japanese HIP units were on board 34 and Matt popped them up as part of the shift. Fighting without fear of any Japanese traps was pretty nice. Finally, the ART piece on that side of the map was rendered useless as well, so I'd call the shift a success.

The mid-game consisted of my British force grinding down the original board 37 defenders. I had a 9-2/2xMMG/2x 4-5-7 stack that did great work dishing out 8+0 and 16+0 shots all game long, but Matt did a nice job keeping me from turning his flank and holding me back from the roadblock. Meanwhile, my Gurkhas were butting heads with the board 37 ART gun, which was in a very nice spot. Flanked by bamboo, with several hexes of palm tree hindrances in front, it had a pretty good LOS and was enough to keep my Stuarts at bay. I sent a 6-4-8 to hunt down a supporting Japanese squad nearby while the rest of my troops tried to whittle it down with prep and defensive fire while advancing ever closer.

This was easier said than done; the palm tree hindrances and dense jungle stacking and FG restrictions meant the best shot I could get at three hexes was a 16+2, not bad but not great against an 8ML step-reducing crew. As I tried to close the range by pushing through the palm trees, my fire got somewhat more effective, but now the return fire from the ART piece was just deadly, with acquisition and point-blank range offset by a meager hindrance. My dice ended up going crazy, with my 10-2 battle-hardening to a heroic 10-3, my 9-2 turning into a 10-2, and a 6-4-8 becoming fanatic and generating a hero. I also rolled a few boxcars on MCs for my squads, though, and ended up taking heavy losses before the gun finally went down on turn four, along with all the Japanese who had shifted over from board 34.

That opened things up a lot for my Stuarts, which had spent most of the game hiding from the gun's 12TK, but with only three turns left in the game and an intact roadblock in my way, things were still looking grim. I pushed forward as much as possible on turn five, taking advantage of the weakening Japanese defense, and managed to get a single 4-5-7 adjacent to the roadblock. Here, I caught a huge break by rolling the required 3 on the first clearance DR and actually managing to remove the key fortification in record time! In the Commonwealth rear area, preparations for a last turn dash commenced and the trucks were hastily loaded up with crews, leaders, and anything else with a high EVP value.

Matt was playing his usual great game, however, and had prudently dropped a 2-2-8 with an MMG back down the road for just such an eventuality. He also had his three HA-GO tanks parked in good blocking spots, and his stout defense earlier had put my infantry in positions where they were no threat to exit. Despite my stellar luck in clearing the roadblock, he was still in excellent position for the win. I ended up having to throw caution to the winds and use my Stuarts to aggressively seek out and challenge the Japanese armor. Meanwhile, my remaining infantry surged forward to push the few remaining Japanese squads away from the road. I ended up killing one of Matt's HA-GOs but also malfunctioned an MA and his 2-2-8/MMG goalie was just impossible to get to. This set up an anticlimactic turn seven in which my Stuarts engaged in some hapless and harmless BFF before driving off. The two trucks then sped down the road, but the MMG and Japanese tanks were too much for them and neither survived to exit. Matt ended up with a well-deserved win and I walked away having destroyed the roadblock and having exited 19 of the required 25VP.

Overall, it was a fun scenario that does a great job capturing the desperation the cut-off Commonwealth troops must have felt while trying to evacuate. As far as balance goes, I feel that it's rather more difficult for the Commonwealth. Most of the East Side Gamer scenarios seem designed to be played in a very set-piece patterned fashion, and Road Out Of Rangoon is no exception. I tried to break that pattern with the Gurkha board-shift and it's possible I tilted the scenario against me. I've also failed in this AAR to mention that both Commonwealth forces have two DCs, which of course can be used for clearing roadblocks and some may argue that also tips the balance away from the Japanese.

Because of these factors, the jury is still out for me concerning just how hard this is on the Commonwealth, but I was well aware of the DC clearance possibilities from the beginning, I really do think the Gurkha shift helped me a moderate amount, and I still feel that the attacker really has his work cut out for him in this one. The time-line is so demanding that just one or two bad rolls (especially clearing the roadblocks) can knock you right out of the game. In my playing, rolling that three on my clearance DR really kept me in it, and the ending still wasn't that close. Final verdict: fun scenario, I like the combined arms early PTO action, but I might give the Commonwealth the balance or even an extra turn.

Thanks to Matt for being a great opponent and thanks to you for reading.

Zeb

AAR: NQNG6 One Eye To The West

Scott Bell

Russian: Scott Bell
German: Dan Preston

Dan and I decided to report this scenario together as each turn unfolds in order to provide a direct assessment as the scenario unfolds. In brief, this scenario takes place in Vienna very late in the war (1945). The Russians are moving North at full speed, and the German SS are attempting to halt their advance. The Germans defend two bridges over which the Russians must cross (at least one of the bridges).

Turn 1:

Russian: I have moved all of my units aggressively towards the river and am poised for a crossing over the Eastern most bridge. The Western bridge is gaurded by a Tiger II tank, so I have decided to stay away from that bridge and focus my efforts on the Eastern bridge. Dan had a 20L gun gaurding the road upon which the bridge lies (over which I must cross). I circled a Sherman tank around the Eastern edge of the board and managed to break the crew that was manning that gun. I also managed to break a half-squad that was directly adjacent to the bridge on the opposite side of the river. I am poised to cross the bridge in force. With the 20L gun silenced (at least temporarily), I have increased my chances for a successful crossing, however the Tiger II has a long shot across the road that runs west to east on the board. I must cross that road to get to the eastern bridge, so the dash will be perilous.

German: The Germans are perilously threadbare. The Russians have 18 squads with excellent leadership, and the Germans have a total of seven. I am outnumbered in tanks 5 to 2. I can maybe hold one bridge but not 2. I planned a gambit move to lay smoke with the Tiger on the far left bridge, plant the DC, then route away and hope my 9-1 can rally the engineer squad with a 7 in a safe building to the rear. However, the Tiger threw a track on startup, and is now defending his own bridge with a LOS to the other one. The infantry moved away to help defend the other bridge. With my quad 20 unmanned, it is only a matter of time before the Russians force their way across. After they're over the river in force, they can afford to ignore my armored pillbox. My scant reinforcements CXed up the road to provide a backstop, and the remaining infantry are fading away from the crossing point to avoid getting creamed in the upcoming Russian prep fire.

Turn 2:

Russian: Dan did a good job of laying resid fire on the one hex that I needed to get across the Eastern bridge. It proved to be costly in that I overloaded that hex with broken squads causing substantial movement (overstacking) penalties. Therefore, his resid fire effectively cost me a turn, which is what he wanted to do. I am however in position on the next turn to cross the bridge to the other side of the river. Once I accomplish this, I can fan out and get out of the narrow passageway that has me bottled up. I still face the imobilized King Tiger on the west bridge that has a good firelane across the road that I must cross to get to the bridge. I am not across yet, but I am hoping for the best (next turn). Dan has fallen back with the rest of his force to the third (victory point) board, where it is apparent he intends to make a stand. His intent will be to keep me from getting onto that 3rd (north most) board, in order to deprive me of victory points. One interesting final note, was that I made the mistake of trying a subsequent shot at a broken SS half-squad that battle-hardened it and created a leader. It has now remanned the 20L gun. This was a big mistake on my part. I can only hope that I can rectify it here shortly without costing too much time. I need to move past that area quickly, and now it appears that I will be held up somewhat. I am hoping to cover some ground on my next move, which will be very important.

German: The (miraculously) remanned quad 20 will soak up some prep fire from Scott's units, which means that they won't be moving over towards board 45. The immobile King Tiger on the other bridge remains an impediment to the victory parade waiting to cross over to the west bank. He will either have to try and slip past it, or destroy it. Once his units begin moving across that bridge, he can ignore it entirely. My surviving units have fallen back to board 45, and re-established a defensive line to wait for Herr Barkmann's arrival. Having another tank will hopefully swing the odds back in my favor. It will take his units at least another turn to reach the next line, and I hope to be ready. The German 9-1 and engineers who laid the residual fire on the bridge approach were broken and routed back, and should rally this turn. With any kind of luck, they should be in a position to resist the oncoming Red wave, or at least fall back to safety.

Turn 3:

Russian: I made decent progress with regards to getting close to the "victory point" board. This is where Dan has drawn his line in the sand. He has to stop me here, before I get to the buildings. I have to get to the buildings while controlling my losses in the process. During this turn, I killed a fanatic german half-squad in close combat (with overwhelming numbers of 6-2-8's). I also killed a hero. However, these units were revived due to my own error, so I just cleaned up my own mess. It cost me a small amount of time in the process, though I was not set back too much. I have now passed the Tiger II, and while it does still guard Dan's western flank, it has now been bypassed. The fact that it is immobilized helps me, but the positioning of the tank is quite good. It will significantly inhibit any efforts on my part to sweep with a left hook, costing me valuable time in the process. Dan (as always) has done a good job of falling back on defense. The presence of panzerfausts ('45) with German SS makes it impossible to get behind him. Dan is delaying for time, and has fallen back into good fire positions. Finally, the tank duel appears to be slightly in my favor at this point, due to his Panther being his only mobile tank. The tank duel may go a long ways towards determining the winner.

German: Not much has moved this turn. My 9-1 and engineer squad finally ran to safety on board 45 after rallying. They now guard my right flank, and are some of my best remaining units. My infantry has fanned out and concealed itself in the most forward buildings of board 45. My main intent is to put fire on any Russian infantry units trying to move past me in the open, that is, make them lose more time moving up. I will then attempt to fade back and deny them fire opportunities at me, while I remain concealed. Skulking helps. Sooner or later I will have to fight. Herr Barkmann finally arrived with his Panther, and guards the left flank. Sooner or later the Reds will have to come after him. My aim now is to run the Russians out of time.

Turn 4:

Russian: I made good progress in this turn. My atttack followed two strategies. First, I sucessfully used my squads in the middle of the board to impede Dan's SS squads (1/2 of his infantry force) from moving to the North edge of the board where he would try to get in front of me. Second, I have managed to get my squads into superior forward fire positions to where it will be costly for Dan to stay and fight, due to my substantial numerical superiority.

German: Not much moved this turn. I tried to shift some infantry over to my left flank, in order to put down some fire on Scott's encroaching infantry horde. I was only partly successful, due to his tanks having a bead on the streets I wanted to use to shift over. I managed to shift my 9-1 with engineer and charge into that direction, but they had to take the long way around. Meanwhile, I have only a small amount of fire to bring onto the Russian infantry when they try to come through into the open. I am also denied the use of the street in the center by Scott's super stack with his 10-2 and 3 458 squads. The tanks are already aquired on the buildings to the other side, so some of my best infantry is effectively pinned in place. The Panther remains the bulwark of defense on my left flank.

Turn 5:

Russian: Now I am in position for victory points. I am at a place where I can advance into the positions that I need to to win. The last line of defense for Dan is a Panther tank. While it is in a good position, I am close enough to where I can bring infantry heat upon it (street fighting), and the Panther won't have a lot of help from SS squads which are not in position. Dan is now (in my opinion) at a place where he almost needs to go on the offensive in order to root me out. He does not have the necessary force to do this. Therefore, I have backed off the gas (figuratively), and am taking less risk. I am where I need to be, and will be able to drop some serious firepower on the SS if they stay in their current positions.

German: I am now falling back from my front line positions to reinforce the wall-building festung on my left flank. Most of the rest of my infantry are already in position there, hindered by Scott's malf-gun IS-2 which audaciously parked in my midst. My Panther moved into its final hull-down position to fight it out with this reckless Russian beast, hits but does not kill it. Meanwhile, German infantry takes up residence underneath the Panther, and my MMG squad must fall back from its front line position. It assault moves into the orchard road adjacent to the Russian tank, and in the CCPh moves in and kills it with an ATMM. That threat dispatched, I now build up my defense around the wall and building complex. One lone SS squad holds the southern approach, and I fear that its contribution will be lacking. I am short of infantry, but I need to be strong somewhere.

Turn 6:

Russian: Dan surprised me somewhat with the speed in which he was able to swing around in front of me. It was a good move and he fortified his final line of defense in a very strong manner. Unfortunately for him, it was one turn too late. My strategy had delayed him just enough to get myself into my ideal positions before he could get into his. He needed to attack me as I approached the victory hexes. I had already moved (for the most part) into hexes adjacent to victory hexes, meaning that I only needed to sit pat and advance in at the end of the game. What was significant about this, was that Dan, who needed to be the defensive player, suddenly needed to become the offensive player to root me out, and he lacked the squads to do that. I was patient and was prepared to let him try to force me out of my strong positions, which was nearly impossible due to my superiority in numbers. Dan had succeeded in reducing my area of advance to a choke point. However, he needed for me to engage him, so that he could inflict losses and reduce my available victory points. I realized this, and rather than engaging him, I took at least half of my force and swung out left (West) and got myself into a position to be able to advance into victory hexes all along the front, especially further West (away from his choke point). I would equate the end game for the Germans, to trying to plug too many holes in the dam. I spread out, putting myself into a position to advance all along the front. Dan did not have the necessary forces to spread out, ensuring a Russian victory. On a final note, we had an interesting final engagement. Dan's Panther got into a good hull down position. I sacrificed a Sherman to get Dan to fire. He took it out, but flamed it causing smoke. He had no choice but to shoot at the Sherman, because it was going to get into a position to get a good side shot on him otherwise. As a result of the sacrifice, and with the help of the smoke, I was able to move my JS-II into a frontal hull down position, a nd took out the Panther during the advance fire phase. At this point, Dan conceded.

German:

Final Analysis:

German: This game became far more difficult when that King Tiger threw a track on startup. The key to the German victory is to delay the Russians as long as possible. They absolutely need to hold the Reds at the two chokepoints on the board, namely the crossing points. The Russians are too strong and too numerous to try to fight it out on board 45 for more than a couple of turns. Blowing one bridge is very important. The Germans have enough juice to hold one crossing, but not two. The key to victory in the end game is to make the Russians set up to assault or move up, then fade away while keeping the German force intact. The Germans only have 7 squads and one crew, and the Russians have 18 squads. The Germans simply cannot go head to head. Concerning the tank battle, the Tiger reigns supreme because it can kill anything the Russians have. The Panther is also useful, but cannot stand up for very long against the IS-2 tanks. The Shermans alone are no match for either one, but have superior machine guns and gunnery. Also Smoke capability and special ammo make them a threat if they work as a team. Overall, I would give the Russians a slim edge on this one, if only on sheer numbers and firepower.

Russian: This game became advantage Russian early on, in that I was able to cross the bridge with minimal losses. This combined with the Tiger II becoming imobilized and a panzerfaust being a dud (which should have been a sure kill on one of my Shermans), got me off to a good start. I malfed a JS-II later, but this loss was minimal compared to that Tiger II becoming imobilized. Finally, the game was determined in my favor due to the fact that Dan had to defend a long front as I proceeded towards the victory conditions. This caused him to have to spread out to defend the front's entire length. Combining this with the use of my tanks and infantry to cut off his shifting his forces to the point of my final attack by delaying the shift by one turn, enabled me to get get to the victory line before him. Dan made a good tactical effort of it at the end, but my getting to the ideal fire positions before him, sealed his fate. I ended up winning rather handily in victory points, however, had his Tiger II not immobilized, we both agree this could have come down to the wire. The rest of my tanks were able to effectively gang up on the Panther at the games end. I would agree with Dan's assessment of a slim edge to the Russians on this one, but I would be very interested to see the impact of a mobile Tiger II during the end game. It was a lot of fun.

Review: Dispatches From The Bunker #26

Walter Eardley

The ASL Fairy left a prize in my mail box this afternoon. Dispatches #26 was waiting for me. This publication is rapidly becoming one of my most anticipated deliveries each year. This issue only confirmed my belief that they are one of the better TPP out there. My typical way of looking at a new ASL offering of this type is to go straight to the scenarios. When I pulled it out of the envelope, I happened to be looking at the back page. I spy an article titled “Welcome to the (Concrete) Jungle: City Fighting in Stalingrad”. Being a Stalingrad nut, I stopped and read. Nice little article talking about how nasty debris is. When I finished, I turned it over and took a look at the cover. Typical stuff on the front for this publication so I start turning pages. While working my way to the scenarios, I ran into a tasty article on The First Bid by Jim Torkelson. I stopped and read the entire article. There is some good stuff in this article without giving away too much. I was intrigued by The First Bid but now I want to play it. So before I ever even looked at the scenarios, I am two articles deep. Usually I do good to read the Historical information on the scenarios much less two articles before I even look at the scenarios.

All three scenarios have made my Wanna Play list. In order of my own personal interest:

1) Shock at Kamenewo – 7 T-34s (mixed M40 and M41s) and 3 KV-1s manned by a 9-2, 9-1 and 8-1 AL and supported by 18 squads with decent leaders and some motorcycles get to have some fun on boards 44, 11 and 4 with 5 PZIIIs and 2 PzIVs (with 10-2 AL) supported by a mix of 468s, 88L Flak guns and 105 artillery pieces. The Russians have to kill a bunch of Germans and cross a bridge. This looks like a Walter and Rob special (with have this bridge theme going). The Russians look pretty tough in this one. Better settle in for an all day match if you pick this one.

2) Commandos Hold Fast – A small force of 648 Brit Commandos is trying to hold of two waves of 9 467 Germans. The second wave is supported by two PzIVHs. At 6.5 turns, it looks a nice smaller scenario for a game day or an afternoon among fast players.

3) Murphy, Go Help the British – This one features 20 666 American squads with some supporting halftrack assault guns T30s attacking along the widths of boards 15 and 9 placed end to end. The Germans get a mix of 9 468 and 467 supported by an SPW 250/10. The objective for the Americans is to clear Level 4 hill hexes. With only 4.5 turns, they will need to move along. Again this looks like a good game day offering which some toys on each side.

If you do not receive Dispatches, I would highly recommend subscribing.

Walter

AAR: OM3 - Hill 107

German Fallschirmjaeger:
Nick Drinkwater [ELR4, SAN 2]

British & Commonwealth:
Victor Behar [ELR4, SAN 3]

A moment of history - Houston's highest rollers face off against each other for the first (and probably only) time! As many of you know, I can roll really bad in very grim sequences but by reputation, Victor is famous for being worse! Can't wait for this one to see how long these bad streaks continue.... As its a Saturday, we both want to try something a little bigger and the new ASL crack-product Kreta: Operation Mercur is just begging to be played. Of course, if you're going to do a HASL, you gotta try out the historical map rather than the geomorphic scenarios, right? There are seven scenarios set on the main map, two of them on the smaller side and the monster OM7, but there are 3-4 good sized ones somewhat in the middle which should be good for a day's play.

Victor was then being murdered as the German's in an ongoing CG of Cemetery Hill so he's not so keen on doing a paradrop, (evokes bad memories) but he's happy to try a Glider drop. The big "Get the Bridge & Get the Bofors" OM2 scenario looks like a perfect one for another day with three people, so we opt for the more manageable "Get the Hill" OM3 alternative instead. In this the Fallschirmjaeger have 7.5 turns to take a minimum of 18 hexes of level three terrain on Hill 107, and take the named summit hex itself. If they knock the clunking great 3" AA Guns emplaced openly on the hill, they need to take 2 hexes less of Level 3 real estate for each gun they capture or eliminate. In addition, for every squad actively ordered to move at the beginning of Turn 3 by the Brits from two dedicated "numbered" platoons, the Germans need to take three less Level three hexes from their required total.

All Allied units are unable to move and advance in the first two turns, and the two Allied dedicated platoons, start on "No Move" counters until their moment of decision comes along in Turn 3 (they are released from this restriction if any German unit or glider comes within 2 hexes). This is what makes ASL so cool - interesting decisions with no simple and obvious answers.

The Kreta module is full of fun stuff and some interesting Terrain issues. Most of this doesn't impact this game but there is an abundance of olive groves, vineyards, shell-holes, walls, hedges and small stone huts which make glider landings precarious. Victor is set hard to dominate both ends of the long Level 3 ridge and any gliders coming down in the slightly open area between these strong-points will be encircled and murdered in very short order, and will also be confronted by really tough approach routes for the gliders with big chances that the crashes will be unfavourable. The SW and NE flanks of the hill are more appealing and hill topography means that at least one of the AA Guns is likely to be nullified, as will a good chunk of the defending infantry.

I decide to put everything down on the SW Level 1 and Level 2 plateaus that offer good approach routes to the NW headland of the hill. I will be aided in this approach as the scenario designers have decided to give the attacking Germans a leg-up by making Moderate Dust in effect for Turn 1 and Light Dust for Turns 2-4. This is massive as it will really assist the Germans to get up-close and personal to the British foxholes and keep the damage limited...clearly scenarios aren't much fun for anyone if 1/3 or more of the attackers and their SW all get blasted out of the sky on Turn 1, so moderate dust it is. The other reason to try and take on the NW headland is that partially through set-up restrictions and partially through choice, Victor has split his force into two big groups with the line of the Level 3 hill relatively sparsely covered in between. The two dedicated 'numbered' platoons are separated by SSR, one on Level 2 immediately below the NW headland who will be needed to be reduced by the Paras, and one to the far SE corner - these guys may never even come into the game unless Victor chooses to activate them in Turn 3. His more mobile groups on the main part of the hill include five squads with LMG and a viscous 9-2 leader, and these guys could be damaging. By SSR, the AA Guns have to stay in AA mode until Turn 4, so the key on all this for the Germans is to move, move, move when all these defender restrictions are still in place: this will be where the game is lost or won, as if I'm not firmly entrenched on the far end of the headland when the Brits wake up, I'm going to be in real trouble trying to dig them out.

The Germans have 8 squads, 4 crews, 4 leaders (including a -2), an HMG, MMG, a batch of LMG, and interestingly, a 50mm and an 81mm Mortar and a 75mm RCL, all coming in by glider. If the German can get all that lot running and into position, then he packs a hell of a punch. Of course, it would be good to get all this lot dropped onto the victory objective directly so they can be running hard from Turn 2 onwards, but discretion is the better part of valour so I opt to reduce risk and land a short distance away and then walk in. This means my bigass SW are probably not going to be doing much until Turn 4 at the earliest as all this 5PP iron is difficult to lug around, but they could easily be the game-swinging punch I'm going to need after the casualties of the initial uphill assault.

The landing goes pretty well and I had no complaints at all as almost everything touched down untroubled. The hillside-flank landing meant that the bulk of Victor's Brits were out of position and I took only one AA shot from one of Victor's big guns...this caused an evasion and a crash and I lost a half squad from the get go, but I would have taken that at the start of the game. The rest of 'Team Hill' landed in one piece on the Level two plateau where Victor's long shots with dust modifiers pinned a lot of things but just couldn't really damage me too badly. We both had several 8+1(+dust) or 16+1(+dust) shots but for a couple of turns we couldn't scratch each other - pillow fight! I managed to get a squad adjacent to a hilltop foxhole but they broke on a FPF from Victor and then promptly surrendered, no-quartered to leave me down to 6.5 of my initial 8 squads.

In turn 3 we continued to trade blows but with a killer DC charge, with a mere NMC, I broke a squad and leader and then chased them off the hill a long, long way, Victor rolling a 10 on a self-rally when he needed a 9. Despite a nasty sniper whacking one of my squads in an exposed position, I managed to save them by breaking the advancing British 9-2 on a measly 2+0 Subsequent First Fire when Victor rolled a 10 - my guys quickly routed away to safety. By end of Turn 5, I had taken all the headland part of the hill, was gobbling up hexes in the main saddle area and all my principal support weapons were now firing (accompanied by much scrabbling through the rule book to check the rules on Recoiless Rifles) - one of the Big Guns was now destroyed and Victor kept rolling high on his better attacks (particularly a 6-2 shot against my 9-2 leader / HMG which I brushed off). When Victor's entrenched squad on the summit broke with nowhere to go but into the cage, Victor resigned. He was now going to start having to recover territory with only 2-3 squads left and the -2 leader against dug-in 8 morale troops with multiple heavy support weapons and strong leadership, and
that wasn't going to happen in a hurry.

This is not a bad scenario, in fact its quite fun, though a little dull for the defenders at the beginning. Any damage done to the gliders is going to help the Brits, and they probably need to concentrate together as much as possible in the set-up or they will be defeated in detail. This is very hard to do, especially under the various restrictions the Brits are under for the first two turns, but it does help to roll low on some of those big shots! The question of whether to activate the other platoon is a tough one: certainly the Germans will almost certainly activate one of your platoons as they roll on towards their objective but its a tough decision for you to give the Germans back 6 Victory hexes for a measly two squad addition to your attack force. Like Victor, I too would probably not have activated them either considering the tactical position of the game at that time.

So thank-you, farewell and good luck Victor in your move to SoCal...we wish you bon voyage, and hope the dice gods take a change for the better for you in the Sunshine State! But wait, that makes me officially the worst die-roller in Houston????

Oh crap.

Nick

2008 Texas ASL Team Tournament(16th Annual!)

We're just three months out! Begin making those plans to attend, the pre-registrations are already coming in. We're lining up some great sponsors, from Bunker Hill Games to Osprey Publishing.

Texas ASL is proud to present:

The 16th Annual ASL Team Tournament
Austin, TX June 19-22, 2008

Thursday 9am - Sunday 8pm

The ASL Team Tournament returns to the La Quinta Round Rock located in north Austin.

2004 North I-35
Round Rock, TX 78681
Phone: (512)255-6666
Fax: (512)388-3635
AAA 3 Diamond Rating

4-Day Registration $36
3-Day (Fri-Sun) Registration $31
Saturday Only Registration $21
Room Rates (tax not incl): $62

Make sure to mention the "Central Texas ASL Club" to get the reduced room rate.

Texas' Largest and Longest running ASL Tournament brings you four full days of ASL nirvana kicking off with a Thursday start.

Thursday will be an open gaming day and will not count towards the tournament standings. As always, Thursday games count towards the coveted Major Johnson award. Games related to the official tournament standings start Friday morning at 9AM.

For those looking for a little different head-on-head action, The ASL Team Tournament is pleased to announce two mini-tournaments this year:

• Opening Assault : A One Day Thursday Mini-Tournament
  
• TEXAS HEAT : A One Day Saturday Mini-Tournament

Remember to Pre-Register -- Besides you never know what goodies you might find in your pre-registration packet. In the past there has been sneak preview scenarios, local CTASL scenarios in color on card stock, personal leader counters, and usually a handful of other goodies from our sponsors.

All these details and more can be found at our Texas ASL website - Just follow the tournament links found here http://www.texas-asl.com.

Rick

New Product Review: Kreta: Operation Merkur

Nick Drinkwater
Thought I'd try my hand at a brief product review for the newly released Kreta: Operation Merkur.

As some of you are aware, there has been a major stirring of angst on the Gamesquad Forums about this product, principally about the perceived thinness of the map and also a lack of very final, final, final editing on some of the text. I'll address those below. The short summary is that is another very strong output from the HOB boys again, which, though not their best, is certainly right up there in terms of overall quality and fairly high in terms of bang per buck. Personally I think the High Ground pack was their best to date, shading Onslaught to Orsha and the first two SS packs by a nose, but overall this is definitely a very good product. At $65, its not necessarily the absolute best value for money of all the recent splurge of ASL products we're received in the last three months, but it is still pretty good value all the same, and I don't think anyone will be disappointed if they add this to their collection.

So what do you get? The pack comes in a simple loose-leaf folder with a representation of Paratroopers falling out of Junkers 52 over Crete and a knocked out Matilda - direct and to the point. The inside of the loose leaf folder has a black and white representation of the map together with the disposition of the Anzac troops, and a simple table for tracking scenario CVP and CG victory point. All straightforward stuff.

The Map:
This is a map of fragile beauty and is a beautiful work of art - massive congratulations to all those involved in this. The map is large (56" x 40") and will need a big table to layout if you don't wish to cut yours up. However apart from scenario OM7, all the other six Operation Merkur scenarios all look like they will play out on sections of the map that are actually away from the main central fold, so the map could be folded (or sliced) to reduce the playable area needed. The hexes are a little on the small size but they will probably be OK as there won't be many super stacks developing in this. The scenarios set on the map (see below) focus on Maleme airfield and Tavronitis Bridge, Hill 107 or the small villages (Maleme and Pyrgos) dotted around the map. The map is dominated by four principal topographic features...Hill 107, rendered in the shades of brown we are all used to from standard boards, the airfield (a dirt field rendered in a tan shade),
the dried up Tavronitis river bed which is portrayed as sand-coloured hammada, (much like the stuff we are used to on Boards 25-31) and the northeast corner which is a mix of grain, vineyards, olive groves and villages split by a gully - there is even a small strip of beach in the very north (but no ocean). "Normal" level one ground away from all the hills is in the normal green colour we are used to from geomorphic boards - this is mainly covered by vineyards and olive groves and a few small Cretan hamlets of stone buildings. It is wonderful and I can't wait to play on it...under Plexiglass!

Yes, it is 'thin', but with all the hype from the online doom and gloom community, I was expecting something like finest tissue paper, and it is definitely thicker than that. Handled with care and it should be fine, though I could see concerns about colour permanency along the creases with repeated use (but then this is true of some of the older maps from MMP as well). I think personally that this issue is a bit of a storm in a teacup...with all the money we have invested in ASL over the years, getting this map laminated will not be too big a bugbear to carry, and I think it is a crying shame that this has deflected praise from an overall very good product. I see that from the Forum conversations, some of the principals of HOB have either decided to chuck in ASL for good (Klaus Fischer) or are pulling their hair out in frustration about these issues (Steve D), and there is a big part of me who think that it would be a massive loss to the hobby if they
did fold...please say it ain't so! If you want more on this debate, you can easily find it on the Forum archive and check it out yourself.

Terrain types:
Overall, a deft touch has been exercised here...just enough flavour to be juicy without being swamped in a sea of chrome. As remarked earlier, the Tavronitis river bed is treated as Hammada so you will need access to a simplified Chapter F ruleset for this, as you will also for many of the scenarios where light and moderate dust is in effect for the early turns. Due to the nature of the fighting, there are few scenarios with vehicles, so hammada immobilisation checks will be limited, though some seriously degraded British armour (matildas and mark VIs with lowered B numbers and red MP) are present, still suffering from a lack of spare parts after the "advance to the rear" from mainland Greece. In this map, the bridge is a two hex structure, and the hexes below the bridge are rally terrain to the Germans only. Irrigation ditches appear on the map, as do slopes, steeples and narrow streets (you'll need Pegasus Bridge rules at least, though some of this is
in ASLRBv2), and the Perimeter Fence at Maleme is treated as a barbed wire fence (KGP rules). During the brief stay in Crete, the RAF were busy and built aircraft revetments (walls) and gunpits (treated as small, 2-unit trenches) for their AA Guns and the runway will be difficult for all infantry to cross (runway rules). Vineyards have been printed directly onto the map, and their is also a Reedbed terrain type which acts as a lighter form of marsh. As this is Crete, olives play their part in this region and the Olive groves come in two flavours - normal (as per Chapter F rules) and olive groves lite, which are less difficult to move around and through.

The other thing that may come into play is the creation of Cretan flat roofs on single buildings in a single hex. This is interesting as this creates a separate location from the house itself and the opposition can move onto these exposed positions (+1 TEM) from an outside stairwell, even if the inside of the building is occupied by the enemy - though they face TPBF if they do so...ouch. At least one of the OM scenarios involves a fight for one of the villages so this may come into some use at some point.

Unit Variantism & Counters:
This has all been kept to a merciful absence. Your standard counters are all going to work fine in this pack. HOB have provided a small half-sheet of counters (all marked unobtrusively with HOB) which mainly consists of more gliders, Junkers 52 planes, some German leaders and unarmed German para counters together with some dm recoiless rifles etc...not quite HOB's best efforts (Fortress Cassino counters are fabulous) as the gloss on them is fairly heavy, but still very useable. There are also a few Brit leaders and some captured German guns. Overall though, in this whole module your Anzacs stay as standard Anzacs, your German paras stay as standard German paras and your Cretan irregulars are portrayed as partisans (but poorly armed and with few tricks apart from ability to declare H2H CC and No Straying bonus). If you do receive the Maori battalion in your OOB, you get some tough H2H -1 CC dudes who can kick some serious ass, but this is all very
straightforward and handled well. The Allies also get to salvage some crappy RAF weapons from the burnt out planes on the airfield which is a nice touch - these come as new counters. Note also that it is not only the Commonwealth who get punished with crap-ish weapons - the Germans get no elite bonus for their SW in this due to their entering by air assault, representing limited access to fresh ammo.

Airlanding:
For those who like Glider and Para assaults, this module is heaven for you. If you don't...well, there are still some options and several of the scenarios are set at post-airdrop phase, so they may be smoother for some of you. In the big monster scenario OM 7, "Too little, Too light", the Germans get to reinforce by Junkers 52 landing on the airfield...the rules for this are basically glider landing rules, but if the Junkers miss the airfield, they will be in trouble as the crash drms are nasty. These rules all look very straight forward to apply, being a variation of the already existing rule-set and should pose no problems. Note that in some of the scenarios and in the main additional rules, the Allies get the option to have more of their weapons in AA mode and for longer...this could hurt the attacking Germans somewhat, but it probably is mitigated by the dust modifiers that are usually in place for the first couple of turns in some of the scenarios.

Editing and Proofing:
A shame and a little frustrating, and for me this was more of a detraction from the whole product than the map thinness issue, but it is still not that bad. It would seem that the transfer of proofing files from Germany to the USA and back meant that the final product went out with some small but annoying typos due to configuration setup differences. As a result, parentheses (inverted commas) around certain words were transformed into weird zingbats symbols and occasional overprinting in the text blocks of the scenario cards in particular, which makes it a little harder to read. This seems to have applied throughout the layout process and so even Scenario Titles have this issue - so "Stentzler's Wary Reconnoitre" reads as "Stentzler~s Wary Reconnoiter", "Morning's Peril" reads as "Morning~s Peril" and the trusty British 3" AA Gun comes across as the 3$ AA Gun in the VC of OM-3, Hill 107.

Really frustrating for the guys at HOB and I can see why they are pulling hair out on these gremlins - it is this tiny miss in the final editing and the map thinness issue that has raised so much scorn and criticism online. Yes, it is very annoying, yes people will feel (rightly) aggrieved at something that could and should have been picked up, but I hope this does not cause the demise of HOB... I am sympathetic to some of the stronger criticism that has been raised on this issue as people are fronting up $65 for this product, but I hope patience and forbearance can rule the day. But note, HOB do need to get this right in the future. Teething troubles with paper stocks and intransigent printers is one thing (the map here, the back to front counters in RbF4)- a final edit of the printed product using US-based software is quite another and could have been caught.

Scenarios:
Similar to Onslaught to Orsha, the pack is divided into two parts - seven scenarios that are set exclusively on the new map, (identified by the OM terminology), and ten more that are played on geomorphic mapboards, labelled AoC (Assault on Crete) scenarios. This is very cool value for me and I think this contributes a lot of value to this pack. None of these scenarios are micro (smallest is 5.5 turns), a few are on the small size, several are on the medium tournament size (6-7 turns), and there are a couple of real biggies, including the pack monster OM-7 at 13 turns. As noted earlier, some, but not all, involve glider, airlanding and paratroop drops and due to the inherent uncertainty of these and the ability to shoot and kill the Germans before they even get started, some people understandably will shy away from these. Like the glider attack in Pegasus Bridge however, if the worse does happen and the Anzacs get lucky and shoot down a third of the
attacking force, then maybe just pull the counters and start again! Personally, I love all the esoterica of ASL so the more the merrier! Night scenarios are limited to one-quarter of OM-7 only and there is not much other oddness going on here, apart from limited SSRs adding flavour, not Chrome. Note also that if big combined arms assaults using King Tigers is what floats your boat, then this too is probably not for you either as only 5 of the scenarios feature vehicles (mainly bad British, tanks, carriers and one motorbike scenario...low level elite infantry fighting for their lives is what this pack is all about and I am really looking forward to trying these scenarios out.

OM-1: Morning's Peril.
Daylight glider assault with early dust.
This is a recreation of the old Annual 89 scenario "Bofors Bashing", but played on the historical map and set on the NW corner of the airfield. 13 glider's worth of paras need to capture all 3 AA Guns in 6.5 turns, with 4.5 squads of Kiwis in defense. A no-move on Turn 1 SSR means that the defense starts confused. Looks small and bloody!

OM-2: Glide Path to Hell.
Daylight glider assault with early dust.
Another reincarnation from the 89 Annual, this time its the old "Descent into Hell", where as well as destroying the AA Guns, the Paras need to capture Tavronitis Bridge, again in 6.5 turns. Set in both the river bed and the airfield, as well as achieving the VC of OM-1, they now also need to control the bridge and approaches. The paras receive another 9 gliders for the bridge assault while the Brits get boosted by 6 more squads. Again, lots of grenade and knife action.

OM-3: Hill 107
Daylight glider assault with early dust.
Eight para glider squads with tough leaders and good SW (including a dm RCL) need to take the level three heights of Hill 107, the number of hexes they need to take being reduced for each AA Gun they knock out. Nine squads of entrenched Kiwis and Royal Marines plus two big AA guns stand in their way. Seven and a half turns to do this, though the glider landings here look quite rough.

OM-4: The Umbrella Men.
Daylight parachute assault with early dust.
Eighteen para half-squads look like they are going to have a very tough landing on the olive groves, vineyards and stone hovels of Maleme and Pyrgos - to win in 8.5 turns, they need to control the majority of the buildings and eliminate the lone Bofors gun. The Kiwis are weak in this one (second line), but they have help from Cretan partisans and four (yep, count em, 4) MMGs and a captured Pak 37. If the paras don't get too knocked up in the air drop, they should have the quality to see this one through.

OM-5: Stentzler's Wary Reconnoitre.
Ground assault only.
Eight turns for a very strong force of paras (17 squads) to take a chunk of Hill 107 real estate from 17 Kiwi squads with light SW help. Movement restrictions on some of the Kiwi platoons give the Germans the early freedom of movement they will need to fulfil this one. Straight-up infantry fight with little complications.

OM-6: Waltzing the Matildas.
Combined arms ground assault only.
The clue's in the title I guess. Six and a alf turns for two Matildas with moderate infantry support to either go for a CVP win or take the bridge back from 8 para squads with mortar and AT Gun help. The tanks are critical here as the runways will be hard to cross. Their is a 22 CVP cap on the commonwealth (though the tanks don't count).

OM-7: Too Little, Too Light.
Combined arms ground assault, with OBA, air support and a brief night rules section.
The monster in the pack. Thirteen turns in total, the first four using night rules, where the advantage is with the Kiwis. They receive Maoris and some real bad tin can tanks (Mk VIs) in Turn 5, but the Germans can use the Bofors guns with no penalties. The Kiwis have to clear a batch of Level 3 hexes from Hill 107, and capture at least 3 Gun pits, and a batch of building hexes. The Kiwis start strongly with ~33 squads in the first two turns against 16.5 para squads, but the paras get to reinforce 9 more squads direct to the action through Ju 52 airlandings in the later turns. This has it all and looks like a must play...a swirling chaotic melee that is not for the feint-hearted!

AoC1: Rushing Hill A
Ground assault with air support against entrenched infantry with late arriving armour.
The first of the non-historical map scenarios, this has 15 very well supported paras trying to capture the heights of the Board 39 hill, with help from a RCL and the 105 mm MTR - tasty! This time its the Aussies in the fight and these guys are extremely tough and they get some 100 mm ART guns and good MG and Matilda support. Set on half boards 39, 38, 17 and 6. To make it even more interesting, some scattered survivors of earlier decimated airdrops are scattered amongst the Aussie positions on Hill 39. Seven turns. Another one of the more interesting scenarios in the group with some interesting setup questions.

AoC2: The Venetian Fort.
Ground assault in urban terrain.
Dual entry on to half boards 21 and 23, the six British squads and fifteen green Greek squads need to evict 11 para squads from a medieval castle with very thick, high battlements. The quirk in this one is the SSR representing height advantage and CC across the venerable castle walls. Seven turns and bloody looking, especially with a bunch of Greeks bent on revenge.

AoC3: The Olive Oil Factory
Ground assault in rural terrain.
One of the shorter scenarios in the pack at six turns. A mixed group of Aussies and Greeks need to evict a bunch of mixed quality and walking wounded paras, suffering from ammo shortage in a factory on Board 49 - half boards on 44 and 49 are in play. One of the simpler scenarios in the pack.

AoC4: Town and Country
Ground assault in rural terrain on Deluxe Boards.
The sole deluxe scenario in the pack set on Boards d, h and f. The Brits need to get 14 VP onto Board f by the game end (Turn 5.5) offset by the number of surviving para units. No H2H CC is allowed by SSR and this is really a very straightforward all-infantry assault, with two carriers to assist.

AoC5: At the Apex
Dash for victory ground assault - straight up infantry.
A desperate escape from encirclement back to a friendly perimeter held by the Black Watch is what the Australians need to achieve here and they need only 8VP back in safety to win over 5.5 turns. In their way is a motley group of 11 para squads, but the Australian's friends in the Black Watch have limited movement options at the beginning, so its not completely straightforward. Has the feel of a Schwerpunckt scenario in that the tactical challenge is going to be interesting to resolve here. Set on boards 46, 4, 44 and 12 and Cretan rooftops and light olive groves are in effect.

AoC6: 42nd Street
Infantry ground assault with a ton of hand-to-hand melees!
Wild swirling H2H CC melees inspired by the Maoris, amongst the olive groves surrounding the dusty road of "42nd street" is the name of the game here. Sixteen para squads face off against 27 Kiwi squads and the Kiwis need to inflict 20 CVP at game end (modified by the number of surviving para squads on boards 35 and 38) - you can just see these guys lining up to do the Rugby Haka war dance before they kick this one off! Carnage across boards 43, 35 and 38 in 5.5 turns - looks awesome!

AoC7: Their first and last.
Infantry ground assault.
Probably the smallest scenario in the pack, 8 welsh squads need to have suffered less than 14 CVP versus 10 para squads with SW support. A fairly straightforward scenario with few real surprises in this one. Seven turns long, set on boards 44 and my favourite, the drumlin board, 18!

AoC8: The Game's up Aussies.
Combined arms assault versus a tricky fighting withdrawal
This looks like a fun version of ASL 1 "Fighting withdrawal" with a twist, as the Australians conduct a last-stand defense with a small group of the rearguard, while some of the rest of the force try and hold on to key Board 38 buildings for as long as possible. At the same time they also have to try to get some of their force off the south edge for extra CVP. This one looks like a good tactical challenge with many choices on both sides on what to commit, where to commit it and when it gets a' movin'. The Aussies probably have the harder task here as they will need to be played with finesse to get their withdrawals just right. The Germans however get the fun toys - kettenfreds, motorcycles, light tanks and trucks. This could be my favourite in the pack due to the tough questions being asked and the fun toys involved. Oh yes...the Aussies get fun Italian guns to play with too! Eight turns on Boards 15, 50 and 38.

AoC9: Unsung Heroes
Infantry Ground Assault.
Straightforward infantry attack by sixteen para squads (including engineers) versus sixteen very lightly armed Greek 1st line squads. The Germans win by controlling all buildings on Board 17 and most on Board 43 and this is all very normal, apart from the fact that these are some desperate Greeks. VERY desperate Greeks as they can all declare Dare-Death status! Love it! Ten turns for the paras to cross Boards 44, 17 and most of 43.

AoC10: Glide Path to Invasion
Daylight Glider Assault.
Set on Board 30 with the escarpment overlay in play - groan, I hear you all say, but give this one a chance. The Gliders, with eight squads need to land on top of the escarpment and destroy three big nasty AA Guns, but the desperate gun crews receive infantry and carrier support in Turn 2. Interesting pin rules on the defenders govern the initial landing of the gliders - if a gun goes unpinned, it has a chance to shoot down one of the offending gliders - special SSR govern this process and this could leave a nasty hole in the attackers. This actually looks like a quite fun scenario and I like the Escarpment overlay and desert terrain. Set on Board 30, seven turns long, but clearly dominated by the escarpment. Carriers are fun too!

Campaign Game:
This is very different from your usual CG, being more similar to the linked theme Market Garden scenario set of the 91 Annual. No perimeters, RG teams, battle-hardening or anything like it. Instead, the CG consists of six OM scenarios played in order (OM2-7: OM1 is not played as that is already incorporated into OM2). Each scenario card has certain VP awarded to it and these are marked next to the title - the winner gets full VP, the loser gets half. In addition, an extra point can be won or lost depending upon the CVP inflicted in the scenario, according to the chart on the scenario pack inside cover. And that's it!!! All very simple, and perhaps not what everyone was expecting, but the designers explain this as being a result of the Allied lack of reinforcements. Basically, everyone was in place already when the air assault began and there was little opportunity to get reinforcements in during the time-frame of the battle.

For me, that works pretty well. I just rarely struggle to get time to play a full CG these days, but I can easily see me being able to play these six scenarios in order against someone over a few months. Again, this may not be for those who really want a RB style CG, but it is different and I applaud the designers for trying this.

Overall Summary:

B++ for me...if the final editing had been that little bit more tidy, would have definitely moved up into my A- or A category. Still, a really good, infantry-dominated slug-fest between the elites of the nations involved, set on a beautiful, outstanding map. What's not to like?

AAR: FrF14 Patton Breaks Loose

Zeb Doyle

Americans: Matt Schwoebel
Italians: Zeb Doyle

President's Day: a time to reflect on the past leaders of our country, but more importantly, extra free time to waste on ASL! I was one of the fortunate few to get the day off, and bee-lined it over to Matt Schwoebel's house. We bantered a bit over who exactly was our best leader, and although Matt finally managed to persuade me that Martin Van Buren probably was a heroic 10-3, I still think giving him commissar abilities goes too far. We then got down to business and settled in for a game of FrF14 Patton Breaks Loose. This is a typically excellent scenario from the Friendly Fire guys with simple SSRs but lots of tough choices for both sides and it ended up being a lot of fun to play.

The date is 1943, the place is Sicily, and a company of unenthusiastic Italian infantry, ART pieces, and tin-can tanks are hunkered down on board 46 just trying to stay out of the way until the war is over. Unfortunately for them, a bunch of noisy American tourists have just shown up to ruin the peaceful quiet of the countryside. The Americans get twelve squads using the heights of board 9 as a springboard for the attack, while an assorted mix of MG-armed jeeps, half-squads, MTRs, towed AT guns, and a HT enter on board 46 just to add to the fun. They have 5.5 turns to clear a road across board 46 of all unbroken Italian MMC on or adjacent to it. That's the simple part of the scenario.

The complicated part is that the Italians can't just hunker down in the village end of board 46. Although the infantry can freely set up anywhere, the two 75mm ART pieces are forced to set up on the rural half of the board, which also happens to be the end on which the American jeep force enters. One might be tempted to write off the two guns, but the jeep force is tantalizingly small, with only four crews and two half-squads. So, positioning a few Italian squads to support the ART pieces could turn them from speed-bumps to game-winning road blockers. Of course, the American player can always divert a few squads of his own from board 9 to counter this, and thus the aforementioned tough decisions and the fun begin!

In fact, it was a tough decision for Matt just to pick a side to play. Both forces are predominately 6ML, which led to much hemming and hawing on his part. Eventually the logic of "the American 3-4-6 HS is better than the Italian 3-4-6 full squad" was too compelling to resist, and Matt stuck me with the defense. It was a bit of a challenge to decide what to do, and I ended up deciding to risk only two squads on the rural half of board 46 with the guns. They got a 45mm MTR and an LMG to provide a modicum of long-range firepower, but the majority of my troops, including all three leaders, the HMG, and the MMG hunkered down in the village to await the American onslaught. Either force could in theory be in position to cut the road at game end, but my money was on the village force accomplishing the goal.

Based on the American attack, Matt seemed to be of the same opinion and he sent almost all of the board 9 infantry company aggressively towards the village. My HMG was able to cause some damage on an unlucky 6-6-6 via a boxcarred MC, but otherwise the Americans were able to move forward in good order. Meanwhile, on the rural half of board 46, the jeep force entered and discovered an ART piece commanding the road from a level two hill hex. Matt was aggressive here as well, giving me a 1-2 shot from a long range LMG shot on a 7-0 and two squads coming off of board 9 to reinforce the jeeps, but no damage was done. At this point, we effectively had two separate battles: the rural half of board 46 pitted my two guns and two squads against MG armed jeeps, AT guns, two 3-4-7s, a 75mm gun HT, and two 6-6-6s, while in the village roughly ten squads on each side did battle.

The early game was a bit of a pillow fight for both sides, with lots of ineffective attacks and high rolls. That was great for me in the rural battle, where multiple 12+2 shots by Matt did nothing against my gun and really slowed the jeep force down, but terrible on the other half of the map, as hordes of 6ML Americans passed NMCs and 1MCs en route to the village. I finally managed to bloody them a bit with a turn three 6+1 snake-eyes shot against a 9-1, HMG, MMG, 2x 6-6-6, but by that point their lead elements were already starting to engage my troops in CC. Here, Matt took the kid gloves off and engaged in some revenge for the death of his kill stack. The first three CCs featured CX American half-squads against my 3-4-6s, and in every case Matt got an ambush and immediate kill.

That really hurt as I'd expected those CCs to act as speed bumps for at least a turn and that put Matt in very good position in the village. My HMG ended up trapped in a steeple and had to fire a do or die 12+1 at an adjacent 6-6-6, but ended up doing nothing. That really turned things into a mini-disaster; I lost a squad for FTR, had to self-break my 9-1, and was very lucky to get him back in the next RPh by rolling a 4 on a self-rally. He ended up manning the HMG by himself, which slowed Matt's onslaught a bit, but things were looking ugly. Meanwhile, over on the rural half of the board, the pillow fight continued. I had numerous shots at jeeps, needing 5s and 6s to hit, but only ended up Xing out one of my ART pieces. My other ART piece was unmanned because I'd skulked the crew, twice rolled a six trying to recover it, and then got pinned adjacent while trying to skulk again...the only good thing was that Matt's return fire was equally ineffective and by turn four I'd only lost one of my two squads in the area.

That brought us to turn five, and as my feeble resistance in the village crumbled, it became apparent that the rural battle would likely decide the game. With the clock running down, Matt decided to step up the pressure there in a big way. Since my ART crew was standing near their gun but not actually manning it, he drove his 75mm gun HT up next to to my last 3-4-6. Here, my dice heated up and I flamed the vehicle with a lucky LMG TK shot, although the resulting smoke gave his two squads some nice cover as they came over to join the party. His AFPh didn't do much, and we went into my turn five with my 2-2-7 and 3-4-6 staring down Matt's two 6-6-6s and a 2-2-7 of his own.

This was my final MPh, and after much pondering on to get everyone adjacent to the road, I decided to try and recover the ART piece one last time. The gun crew moved on to the gun, weathering a 6+3 in the process, and on the third try finally found it. In the AFPh, I got some more hot dice, and the crew cranked out a snake eyes CH to splatter one of Matt's precious squads before once again dropping the gun and advancing back adjacent to the road. Meanwhile, my last 3-4-6 advanced into a stone building that was adjacent to both the road, and the remaining 6-6-6. It was now the American turn six, and my lucky snake eyes had put Matt in a tough position as he had only two remaining units to deal with my two units, both of which were now adjacent to the road. He fired a 12+3 at my squad in the stone building with his adjacent 6-6-6, but as with every other 12FP shot in the entire game, he rolled high for no effect. In my DFPh, my squad returned the favor with an 8+0, and the resulting 1MC broke Matt's unit and ended any hope he had of victory.

It was a really fun game with lots of action for both sides. I obviously was the beneficiary of several good rolls, namely the snake eyes on Matt's kill stack and especially the CH at the end, and that played a large part in the final outcome. That final CH was especially fortuitous when one considers the sheer number of 12+2 shots that the crew survived over the course of the game. However, I do think Matt could have utilized his resources slightly better, especially the jeeps and antitank guns. Those units spent most of the game driving across to the rural part of board 46 avoiding my ART pieces, and never really ended up doing anything. That probably wasn't such a huge loss with the 37LL AT guns, but the MMG and the .50 cal on the Jeeps could have come in in very handy. As it was, by the time they were unloaded and assembled, it was already turn five or six and they just didn't have the time to accomplish anything. I mention this only because Matt played such an great game elsewhere and the finish was so close that the machine guns could well have been the difference.

At any rate, it was another fun evening of ASL and another excellent scenario from Friendly Fire. The design philosophy of medium-size scenarios and simple SSRs and VC that somehow combine to make intricate and tactically puzzling situations is truly fantastic. Finally, many thanks to Matt for his hospitality, although I still have to express some doubt about his ardent protestations that Calvin Coolidge was the proud owner of a mechanical bull. Thanks as well to you for reading!

Zeb

Tournament AAR Scenario 1: MP11 Vulcan's Forge

Nick Drinkwater

German: Rick Reinesch [ELR 4, SAN 3]
Russian: Nick Drinkwater [ELR 4, SAN 3]

Intro:
So its Owlcon Precon at my house, and in the fine tradition of the event, we settle down to synchronous playings of the nominated scenario for Ferocity Fest, "Vulcan's Forge" from one of the Melee Packs. This was an excellent scenario to choose Ferocity Fest for the potential for carnage and bitter close combat and its chess-like setup conditions and nicely, was playable in 5-6 hours. My opponent in this was Rick Reinesch from Austin who runs and organises the excellent June Austin Tournament - massive fun to play and Rick plays at a nice quick clip which meant we were going to be comfortably placed to get through the game in a good length of time. Looking forward to playing Rick again, hopefully in the summer.

Setting:
The scenario is set on the southern most part of the RB play area and is really two games in one. To win (and we used the German balance in all cases), the Russians must control seven more stone locations (including cellars) than they began with. The big gulley splits the board into two parts, with the Russian right flank being dominated by one of the RB factories, while the Russian left is dominated by a series of 2-3 hex multi-level buildings in a kind of worker's housing estate, so one of these alone is worth 6 Stone Locations.

Scenario Considerations:
Setup is interesting - the two sides swap placing a counter each time and all counters are revealed to your opponent, after three designated H2H melees are created in the front line of the German setup area. There are about another 15 counters to place including about 8-10 more squads, support weapons, leaders, and for the Germans some concealment. The question each player has to face here is how much strength to give each side and how then to react to any thrusts they can detect being made by their opponent. This is quite a challenge, but a couple of things should be borne in mind - if the German gives up the factory after a token resistance, then they are handing over 8 stone location - this means they need to get back only a couple of locations in "Workerville", as it will be hard for the Russians to transfer any units from the factory to the housing estates in time to make a difference. Note also that the Russians will be fanatic in the factories and for Turn one only, they will be facing the Germans at their weakest when they are missing their nastiest support weapons and have only access to 2nd line troops. If the Russians can spot an opportunity to bum-rush and eject the Germans in Turn 1, they should - the phased reinforcement schedule means than within a turn, the Germans can get Sturms and Engineers up and in to the factory quickly and this means the factory could become much harder for the Russian to occupy, especially if the Germans get the Breach-Flame "Blowtorch" combos going.

Reinforcements to the Rescue:
The other thing both sides need to think about is how long it will take reinforcements to get into the action - you will need bodies before toys, so get the footsloggers on first in the schedule, especially for the Russians as they have further to go to have an impact. Also note that Platoon Movement means it just takes time to get anywhere on the RB board. The sequential arrival of the reinforcements for four turns is a nice touch as both sides get some nice flexibility and can feed help in just where needed to assist with any desperate situations. Finally, it is possible to get creative with your placement of the AT Guns - the Pak 40 in the factory is difficult for the Russians and could just tip the balance in any Turn 1 Russian rush. Notice however, the Russians also have options to have fun with their gun - it is a nasty beast against both the German armour and their infantry.

The problem of the Factory:
Zeb has already commented on a perceived slight advantage to the Russians and I agree with him, even with the German balance in play - if the initial H2H's go well for them, they are even better placed and they have a great opportunity if they go for broke in the factories in Turn 1 - as long as they have a squad or two at the far factory wall they can really dominate the approach paths of the German engineers in the Debris and Shellhole field and the Germans will really struggle to get the factory back. Unfortunately my RB experience was a bit limited and I missed seeing the tactical advantage of a fast hard push with fanatic 8 morale troops, so I settled down for a safety first policy. This meant that Rick and I ended up in a "chicken" stalemate as he was able to get his engineers up quickly with their potent weapons. Any kind of move by either of us into no-mans land of the centre factory would have meant exposing your unit to withering 20, 24 and 30 FP shots at +1 (or worse with FTs) so a bizarre paralysis took over until Turn 6 with everyone too scared to move.

Workerville:
On the housing estate side, I had a dream start as Rick was a little bit light with troops over there and I eventually won the two at-start melees. In Turn 2, I had managed to break everyone I could see and pushed hard to gobble up more buildings and try to enforce a FTR on the one key squad, LMG and leader that were in the middle of my push. I thought I had these guys bang to rights and was getting ready to take them off the board, but Rick was more awake than me and routed them upstairs - I forgot about multi-storey buildings! Of course, these guys rally with a "4" next turn and thus its my turn to go reeling back in the face of just-in-time tough engineer reinforcements and I was forced straight out of two of the three buildings I had just claimed. Aaargh - SO close!

After that, we jockeyed for position in the houses - I pulled off a beauty to reveal my AT Gun, which on its fourth attempt, found a shell to kill Rick's big assault gun (Intensive Fire to boot), but then failed to hit a single German for the rest of the game even though it was two hexes away from buildings stuffed with them. My armour also failed to do a lot with multiple one-hex adjacent misses. Ugly. Rick also had his share of crap dice as his AT Gun failed to nail my KV1 and did little else.

The End:
At the start of German Turn 7, I held 10 new stone locations, but was resigned to losing one in the factory as Rick was able to get his engineers moving there. I should have been a couple more locations to the good, but I had critically pinned with one squad in my Game Turn 7 so I was unable to advance, and likewise a berserk result for me meant yet another non-advance to miss out on another hex. An engineer blowtorch in the factory netted him another two hexes (I thought he was only placed to get one more and didn't realise his stack contained two units), so I was now down to the minimum-required seven new stone locations. Rick then pulled off some star moves in his turn - his gun crew almost got through but I got a very last chance break on them as they were in the final stages of dashing through.

He then pushed as hard as possible to get other units through my thin lines, but an intensive fire shot with a snakes from my T70 removed the last of his 'thrusters', and so it all came down to a close assault on the one new building I still retained. With desperate fire, I manged to pin and nail a batch of attackers in the street and I was looking good in there as I still had two concealed engineers shrouded in a German smoke who had shrugged off everything to date. Rick then pulled out a Bomb-squad and crucially my two guys both lost concealment on a PTC from the subdued boom. Finally, he then dived in with some engineers of his own for the game deciding CC - if I killed them or avoided complete death myself, then the game was mine as I was going to hold onto that critical last location....

So, off we go...

First off, no ambush!

Then, I roll a .... 10....! Rick rolls a....4!!

Post-Game thoughts:
German win, just, on the last die roll of the game. Can't ask more than that and it was a monster emotional rollercoaster of a match and we had a blast. Look forward to playing Rick again. We both knew that neither of us were in the running for Ferocity Fest (half the game had been more timidity-fest), but that was the least of our concerns - it was just a great game fought to an unbelievably intense conclusion. Well played Rick!

The critical moment in this one was the escape from death and subsequent Must, Must, Must Rally of the German 447, LMG and 8-1 in the Housing estate: in half a turn, a really promising situation for me had been turned around completely and I had lost a squad for FTR and the Germans were one street ahead of where I wanted them to be. That hurt and I was never able to regain the initiative on that side at all. Rick also played the factory better than I did - he stepped out with his engineers a little bit sooner than I felt comfortable in doing and it probably resulted in one extra location for him and that made all the difference.

Though I lost, I still think that even with the balance, this is still every so slightly Pro-Russian overall. The initial Germans could probably do with a little bit more of a boost - perhaps a couple of 548s instead of all 447s, but much replay value all the same. Thanks guys for setting this one up and putting the time into it to make Ferocity Fest competitive.

0-1 for Owlcon on the last die-roll of the game! Awesome.

Tournament AAR Scenario 2: SP147 The Zebra Mission

Nick Drinkwater

German: Eric Gerstenberg [ELR 2, SAN 4]
American: Nick Drinkwater [ELR 4, SAN 3]

Introduction:
After the initial marathon game session in Vulcan's Forge, I was actually quite happy to take a couple of hours off on the first evening, put my feet up, and watch some games. However, Rob needed to bail out at the 11th hour and so I replaced him as the Americans in a very fast game of "The Zebra Mission" from Schwerpunkt 13 against Eric Gerstenberg. This is one of those classic end war scenarios where a fast US armoured combined arms force has to take the village from your average bunch of late war Germans. In this case, this means nine US elite and 1st line squads ejecting two 548, four 447s and three 436s from an enclosed road net of buildings on SK Board Z. To offer the Americans a bit of latitude, half of board 49 has been glued to one side of the main action area to allow some armoured envelopment options.

Pre-Game Thoughts:
The twist in this one is that the Germans receive a Nashorn and a Wirbelwind as fire support for their beleaguered defenders, who must know they are going to receive a pasting of the whitish, phosphourousy kind from the US bazookas and Shermans. Bizarrely, the Pershing is probably the least effective weapon on the board - yes, it can instantly kill anything it hits, but then so will both Shermans and they come stocked to the gills with smoke and other fun stuff, so they are actually the more valuable assets in this one. The one other key unit the US get is a 9-2 - he will be useful to unlock any end-game defense in the big 5 hex stone building at the back of the road-net. Like all SP scenarios, the US needs to move fast but the 9-2 will help keep the pace up a lot.

Flanking Fun:
Eric set up a very concentrated defense essentially with everything already tucked back within the victory defining road net apart from two suspiciously isolated three-deep "?" stacks in woods just east of the village. With no HIP capability for the Germans, I can now proceed unimpeded through all the forward outskirts of the village with impunity by eight of the nine foot squads, but I also send a squad as a rider and the M3 MMG HT on a deep flanking manoeuvre to the back of Board 49 to envelop the defenders. These guys quickly disembark, and after shooting an outlying dummy stack, the crew goes through the laborious procedure of abandoning and scrounging the .50 cal.

Meanwhile, with the freedom of movement I can now exploit from Eric's die-in-place defense, I quickly shove some squads into the face of the now Phosphorous-shrouded defence. I almost get lucky and come close to bagging the Nashorn with a 8-1 led bazooka shot but miss on a 10, and the lucky crew realise its their lucky day and go off any buy lucky lottery tickets at the back of the village and keep out of the way and hide - open topped vehicles are no place to be when 6 FP US troops are running rampant.

Keeping the Momentum going:
In the village, pressure begins to tell and the prisoners start to mount up - 436s are just no challenge in CC vs 666s. I continue to push on and keep the pressure on despite some fairly bad dice rolls for a spell on my part and some hot rolling by Eric. His vehicles pass several MC and PTCs without blinking and then in the moment of the game, one of Eric's 447s marked with a First Fire, decides to fire a Shrek at my 9-2. He pulls out the only single roll he can which can both hurt me and not hurt him with the back blast (a 7 with a coloured 5). He then rolls a K/3 on the effect which of course kills my 9-2 on the wound check and CRs, ELRs and breaks the squad with him on two failed MC! To add salt to that wound, his next attack is to spin his Nashorn 3 hexes and fires an intensive fire AP shot at an adjacent 666 which I had patiently sweated into position to toast the Nashorn, and they of course break on the lowly 2FP attack.

Despite these setbacks, I am ultimately well placed to wrap this one up. After burning the Wirbelwind with the Pershing (a case if ever there was of using a hammer to crush a nut) I do the dance of death on the Nashorn with the three tanks. This blocks off all the rout paths for Eric's infantry from the back of the road-net, and despite one squad escaping hand grenades, knives and rifle butts when I roll a useful 12 in CC for Eric, the end cannot be denied and the last couple of squads go down heavily outnumbered in a flurry of CC.

Post-game thoughts:
I think Eric hurt himself with his setup as he instantly ceded all initiative to me and left me free to manoeuvre wherever and whenever I chose, especially once I had worked out quickly with my first shot of the game that his two outlying stacks were just dummies, and that everything was rooted to the village net. As a result of being on the back foot, Eric failed to get any real effective shots off with either the Wirbelwind or the Nashorn and they ran out of boltholes to sneak back into. This one definitely needs some form of speed-bump to impede the Americans as they are just too smokey, speedy and shooty to be be held back for long. Fun to catch up with Eric at last and like all my opponents this weekend, someone that I would play again in an instant. 1-1 for the weekend.

Tournament AAR Scenario 3: RPT1 Ferenc Josef Barracks

Nick Drinkwater

Hungarian: Ken Havlinek [ELR 3, SAN 4]
Romanian: Nick Drinkwater [ELR 3, SAN 3]

Pre-Game Thought:
I was going to live up to Ken's prediction and have a big bitch and moan about this scenario, but scared of coming across as a poor loser, I will instead carry out a pensive, insightful but short review instead.


Very hard to win as the Romanians.


I would have initially have said "Impossible to win as the Romanians" but I realised afterwards that we missed out on playing the increased rear Morale for both sides, which would have helped the attackers a little more, and there is of course, always the chance that the Hungarian 3ROF machine gun would fail, the Romanian Flamethrower would not "X" out and would in fact remove KIA 5 squads (one per game turn) and that the Romanian sniper may nail the chief Hungarian honcho through the head. Still, just a simple analysis of time and distance needed to be covered by the Romanians show that they would probably need to be completely un-threatened in their approach, would have to execute a close to flawless in their attack on the buidling, pass all their MCs and find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to get a result here.

VC and setup Analysis:
The Romanians come on from the SE half-board edge on one-half of Board 51 - they have to cross diagonally across the board through rowhouses and wide long city streets to get to the three-level victory building in the central NW area. Note that even if unopposed in their onboard entry and approach, that will take the Romanians a minimum of two turns just to CX and normal move and to be in a position to assault the house from the neighbouring rowhouses. Assuming the Huns are naive enough to let them walk openly up the street like that, they then have three turns to evict all good order Hungarian MMC from a six-hex building where the Huns can both stay concealed and conduct a "fill-the-two-stairwells-with-bodies" defense. Note also that in their approach to such an attack, the Romanian units may be facing some 20FP (-1) attacks from the Huns from a squad, HMG and leader combo. And lets also add that 95% of the Romanians are 3 FP troops and they will be attacking against 7 morale troops in a stone building defense? Note also that the increased rear morale (which we missed) also helps the Hungarians on their defense and rallies too. Ummm, am I missing something here?

The trouble with Stairwells:
Ken (and Brian I think too) had already worked out that by deploying like crazy everything that he could, a smart Hungarian player could then pack the VC building with so many bodies that he actually virtually wouldn't have to fight at all - ally this trick to a ~2-3 squad speed-bump platoon in the Romanian entry area and there seems to be no way that the Romanian can do it. Instead of this, Ken, being a gentlemen, opted to play a more normal gentleman's defense, where he kept his heavy weapons at the back in the VC building ready to do some end-game death-dealing, but put a ring of concealed units (some dummies and 3-4 real squads) upfront to interdict the Romanian entry area and the first paved road they have to cross as soon as they walk on. I did all I could to try and shield myself from damage with a half-squad blitz but 4, 2 and 1 Residual Fire on paved roads is lethal whatever you do and I had to accept a bit of a safety-first policy.

The end:
After that first round of nasty fire and several broken units, Ken conducted a skillful retreat backwards - even where I did detect a chink in his defense and was able to push my leader and MG combo hard, I ran up against another layer of concealed defenders lining the road in front of the Victory Building. This again meant more caution, not helped by the presence of the Hungarian HMG dominating all who came close to the final building. Ken cleverly conducted the required stairwell body defense and I was left stuck at the beginning of my last turn Prep Fire with a single squad in one bottom location of the VC building, wistfully hoping for a KIA from my FT to clear a stairwell and free access to the rest of the building and then win about three CCs whilst CX vs concealed troops. As you can imagine, that didn't happen.

Post-game thought:
The appeal of this scenario is its length. At 4.5 turns with 8-12 squads per side, it looks very manageable in 2-3 hours, which was indeed the case for us as we played this one as filler when none of the ASLSK people showed up. As listed though, the general consensus around the room was that this was flawed at best, broken at worst and thats a surprise as this is out of the Schwerpunkt stable and they are normally very reliable. The strairwell-body defense is an absolute bugger to beat with limited time and, as related, even if my Romanians had been completely unmolested in their approach to the building, even three turns of assaulting concealed troops in a multi-hex, multi-level building would have been pretty tough to get through...there really was no way I was going to do it in less than two. At time of writing, ROAR has this has 18-6 for the Hungarians - I'd love to hear from those six Romanian winners and how they pulled this one off!! Did we miss something completely here? And if anyone's wondering, we didn't have access to ROAR when we selected it.

The recommended balance for this was to add a HMG to the Romanians, but a clunking great 5PP weapon is the last thing they need in this scenario with the big time issues they face. What they really need is either an extra FT, an extra turn or even for the VC building to be reduced to a single-storey building with inherent stairwells in every hex. That way they would have a much better chance.

Anyway, well done Ken for both being and playing the gentlemen and trying to give me a real chance...you played the fallback defense really well and snuffed out any remote hope of a Romanian win and quite rightly so! So now I'm back to 1-2 for the tourney and just playing for the fun of it!