Dean's Defiance WO28 - At Albany and follow-on game

Paul S NJ

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Hi folks,
Here's my AAR for WO 28 Dean's Defiance. I lost this in the first round at Albany to Derek Pulhamas and also played it a couple weeks later with Vic Rosso here in the great state of NJ. I'll post an AAR for my game with Vic next week.

I bid A1 and Derek bid A2, so I increased my SAN (was never used) and got an extra lmg. This is an interesting early Korean War scenario where two Chaffee’s and 18 546 led by a 10-3 defend deluxe city boards from 30 447/527 plus four T34/85. The US has ammo shortage and are lax. They have one good AT weapon in a 1950 bazooka with a 30+ TK and a good TH table. Partnered with the 10-3 it’s like a 5-hex 88L in 1940.

The NK’s have a brief 7 turns to exit 60 VP out of 93, plus crush the US troops; as buildings held by the US at game end are deducted from exit points. The attacker can designate troops to enter on the flanks on turns 2 and 3; and also gets infiltrator squads popping up.

The deluxe boards look big, but the battle area is only a regular half-board in width and 15 hexes deep, so it’s two turns to exit from mid-board (assuming no US troops left to interfere). That leaves 5 turns to crush the US.

Derek had a very nice setup. He wisely didn’t bother trying to defend the rear board from flankers/infiltrators and instead had a solid phalanx of 360 defense on the center board with three stacks that credibly could have been a 10-3/MMG or 10-3/Baz combo. Since the NK doesn’t want to lose more than one T34, some caution is required. I planned to enter just two 447 turn 2 and four turn 3 to maximize my starting force firepower while still harassing the US flanks.

Derek clobbered my entering troops but they mostly rallied back into the fight using the two ‘normal’ (non-chinese) commissars. My T34’s took up safe positions to use their guns against strongpoints in UST1.

My infiltrators were aggressive and jumped into CC. Here’s where I made a fatal mistake. I mis-understood the VC. It said, ‘prisoners don’t count double’, I mistook that to mean prisoners don’t count. The NK player should be trying to pick up at least 20 vp of US prisoners to help with the high exit VP total. With 20 vp in prisoners, the VC are achievable, without them there is no way to subdue the strong (in firepower terms) US troops in the 5 turns and still exit the required VP. I totally screwed this up.

In NK turns 2 and 3 Derek extracted a toll of my attackers of a few squads, but where I hurt myself was entering into 1:1 CC using 527’s or stealthy leaders (elite NK’s are stealthy) vs lax 546’s missing ambush, and then in normal CC having Derek roll a 3 or 4. This happened about 5 times. If I had been focused on taking prisoners, I’d have stayed out of CC and use fire to break and then capture the squads instead. Big mistake on my part. In RT2 and RT3 I used DC heroes, TH heroes, a berserker stack (led by a wounded commissar) and T34-freezes to take out the US right flank (a Chaffee and about 9 squads) in the factory but lost a T34 to the super ‘zook and lost about 10 squads to CC/fire. In USt3 (pictured) I only had 59 VP of NK’s left (not counting some prisoners which I thought didn’t count). After two Chaffee CH/squad KIA’s I threw in the towel. Of course I should have kept playing because with prisoners I still had a chance. Oh well, read the damn VC! Chuck Tewksbury mentioned to me that he is in the habit of rereading the VC before each of his turns, a good practice. 0-1
WO28 Dean UST3.JPG
Rules learning- I didn’t get what the Korean War bazooka dud rules meant. Now I understand that for a heat dud (a colored 6 vs. AF6+ roll ( or 4-6 for WW2 baz’s), where without the dud it would have killed the AFV, instead it becomes a potential shock.
 
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Paul S NJ

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Played Dean's Defiance Again with Vic. This time with taking prisoners in mind. Vic had a good setup with three MMG at 2nd level to slow the initial NK attack, plus the 10-3/MMG in the factory to anchor that flank. AS it turned out though Vic graciously rolled three 11's to break 3 of 4 MMG's NKT1. I planned for 2 447 entering turn 2 from the NK right flank and 4 more turn 3 from the same flank. I only got one 527 turn 1 and it showed up in the middle of the far board. My NK's came forward on a broad front, not risking any big shots except the 10-3's 6(-2) shot in which he broke his mmg.
Dean UST1.JPG
US1 Vic repositioned his Chaffee out of the factory but I managed to stun it on a 16+2 shot. On NKT2 I ran a T34 up to it after it had lost ROF shooting at DC/THH's but the IF shot hit and then Vic rolled a 3 to kill the T34, ouch! A t34 took revenge. I used all four DC's to break into the factory and parked one T34 hull-down 3 hexes from the Baz50. It had about 4 shots at the tank but either hit the wall or missed by a pip until finally breaking to backlist. Then that tank rolled low to hit the 2nd Chaffee as it repositioned behind smoke. In UST2 the 10-3 advanced vs a 527, didn't get ambush but stilled killed the offending infiltrator.
Dean UST2.JPG
In NK3 a '45 baz hit and killed a 2nd t34 and a pinned, green 536 rolled snakes to kill a 447, create an 8-1 and then in the next turn the squad went berserk!
My commissars always carry lots of ammo and went on to kill off at least three SE and a tank crew. This may be a scenario where the NK player might only take the 9-0 commissar and keep the 8-1 whole, both for the extra VP, the fire modifier, and the kinder rallying.

By the end of NKT3 I had lost two tanks and 4 squads but the US was down to 8.5 squads remaining.
Dean UST3.JPG
In UST3 Vic pulled off a nice ambush with a 9-1/546 to free two prisoner squads. However by the end of UST3 only 5.5 US SE were GO.

We called it after US T4 with only the 10-3 solo and one 9-1/546 GO. As mentioned above prisoners were the key, as only about 40 VP of NK infantry and the two tanks were left, but they had captured over 30 VP of prisoners.

I highly recommend this scenario as the deluxe feel and lots of chrome makes it pretty awesome. It's one with a high learning curve (as I showed in my screw up in the first game).

There are some interesting strategy variations the US player may want to try to keep his force intact as long as possible.

All in all, I think there's a lot of replay value.

Paul
 

Vrosso

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was a good game Paul, two challenges with my side, the first was a mmg team/leader set up in jK5, that unit needed to back a little more as your units would advance adjacent to the stairwell and i had to break them to get them away (but couldn't rout across the road) forcing me to keep units in that forward block. IMO, if that defensive line was behind the road, they would have stood up a little bit better. What really hurt was the malf's on the 3 mmg in the first movement phase, having a couple of broken units near the board edge would have spread the leadership out a little more. Also a 6-3 shot at a 447 toting a DC afforded no result in US1 turn (breaking it would have staved off a key DC hero).
 
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