Major Issues
Elder Member
Saturday wuz the 23rd running of the Brackin Basement Bash. House Rulez are IIFT. When, oh when, will the rest of the world become enlightened???
Jim encourages people to set up matches ahead of time. Paul Sidhu wanted to play a “I Dinant Know The Gun Was Loaded” scenario with me. I picked DN4, ‘Chateau De Meez So Solly.’ I would be the French, because when you think of culture, fine cuisine, and pencil-thin mustaches, you think of me. Even though the only French phrase I know is “Voulez-vous couchez avec moi???” Which I have only gotten to use once. At a bar which, unbeknown to me, was filled with French sailors on shore leave.
Still, it was a magical evening.
Unfortunately, Paul had to bow out of attending the Bash. Was it due to fear of losing to Major Issues??????? We may never know.
Anyway, I ended up being matched up with Randy Rossi. We have known each other for years, but have never played a game, partly because he lives 4 hours away, and partly because of the restraining order.
We both wore masks all day. Partly for safety, but partly because Jim thought it best if I kept my face covered, as other participants found it ‘disturbing.’
French have to defend 4 buildings on the heights on the west side of the river. One of them is Madame D’Aubert’s House of Pleasure, so the troops should have plenty of incentive to defend attractive Belgian whores. And I had plenty of incentive to keep singing, in my best faux French accent, ‘Zank heaven for leetle girls.’
But.
The Germans can blast thru on the one road on the eastern side, or the path on the south edge, or climb the cliff, or sneak over to the north side, where 6 reinforcing German squads will be entering on turn 2. They also have three unopposed tanks, albeit IIFs.
And Rommel. We cannot, SHALL not forget Rommel.
Rommel is a Demi-God in Dinant. 10-2, he can’t use the drm for fire attacks, but can for MCs. He also adds +1 to the morale of anyone within 2 hexes. He helps with a buncha task rolls with any friendly within 2 hexes. You don’t even have to be in LOS. And he doesn’t go TI.
What this means is that you have someone like MacGyver, except a snappier dresser, who also makes everyone he is stacked with 10 morale.
10. It’s like being berserk, without having to senselessly charge across open ground to Certain Death.
To hold back The Great One and his minions, the French have 4 squads, 3 green squads, 2 crews, a 25mm AT, and a 37* INF gun. Foxholes, a roadblock, one wire, and some dummy stacks round out the defense.
Dummies. I’m supposed to hold Rommel, the Chuck Norris of ASL, at bay with dummies.
The French have 3 green squads, who, just like me, do not work well without constant supervision. I gave each one a leader/ Harsh Taskmaster, to keep them from cowering.
I defended the southern path with the wire, a dummy stack, and an awesome 7-0/ 437 combination. I defended the Cliff Notes with a buncha dummies, and a HIP 457 with a LMG. I defended the northern approach with a HIP 8-1 with a mighty mighty 437 and an ATR, plus two 237 HSs.
The key to stopping the tanks is holding the roadblock, as it is the only way the tanks can get up the hill, unless JR can sleaze out a rule about Tanks Being Portaged Up Cliffs, or Tanks Entering A Tunnel After Paying The Toll, or German Tank Teleportation, as seen on a History Channel special. I am not ruling out any of these.
I had a squad with an ATR, a squad with a HMG, a green squad with a LMG and a mighty mighty 7-0, a J Crew with a 37* INF, and a crew with a 25LL AT to defend the roadblock area. The AT gun wuz set up to blast tanks in the side after the Germans had cleared the roadblock and made it up onto the escarpment. See, I wuz already prepared for Mission Failure...
To round out my defense, I brought a bottle of Calvados and one of absinthe.
On to the battle. Two tanks set up to blast a stack of dummies guarding the cliff. One small stack made for the southern path. One squad with an 8-0 went for the cliffs. The third tank and the remaining infantry went towards the roadblock.
Prep shots by two tanks at my dummies did nothing.
Those Germans running towards the cliff got a rude surprise when the HIPster LMG squad opened up on them as they moved uphill into brush. And even I was surprised when I got rate with the LMG. And again. And again. Since the Germans had spent 4 MFs to move in, the attacks were 6-1, 4-1, 2-1, and 2-1. After the dust settled, the 8-0 was a broken 7-0, and the squad was a broken HS.
F1, my cliff-guarding dummy stacks go on the move to defend the village. Randy tried to look unconcerned, at least what little I could see since he had his mask on. But I could tell that he was trembling in fear on the inside.
Two HSs move down the hill into stone buildings on the north side to hold back the reinforcements.
Only bright spot of the turn was that the PzKw IIF broke its gun. Dinant SSR is that they HAVE to attempt repair, so mebbe it will go away and leave us poor Frenchmen in peace.
G2, Rommel and his posse advanced concealed behind the roadblock. French Prep Fire was going to be my chance to send Rommel packing!!!
Or not. My big shot was an 8+2, which didn’t even break concealment. Return fire broke and ELRed the 7-0, and broke and disrupted the green squad. The ATR squad at the top of the cliff went berserk. After consulting with JR, we decided that the berserkers did not have to jump off the cliff like lemmings, even though that was the shortest route to the Germans. For all the good they did, jumping off the cliff may have been a better option. You know, Death From Above...
The legal charge route that they were going to have to take next turn meant that they were going to boldly charge next to Rommel and his entourage. ASL Tip Of The Day – If you are planning a long and happy life, one that involves sitting at a table along the Seine, drinking champagne and eating snails, while trying to decide which mistress you will take to the ballet, then to bed that evening, then sprinting towards Rommel and half the German army armed with a baguette and a truffle shaver is probably the wrong way to achieve your Life Goals.
German turn, Prep Fire breaks my HMG squad. It turns out that I screwed up my disposition with the French HSs, as one had the board edge in front of him, and not a road hex where he could merrily shoot Krauts with a -2 drm. Anyway, Randy either came at them from the side, or advanced on. Final result was that the 237s broke an LMG squad, but were both swallowed up in CC. Still, no reinforcing German made it onto the non-cliff part of the hill, so they bought a little time.
French turn, my berserk squad jumps out of their foxhole, immediately gets reduced, but then charges into the hex with a German squad and survives. Rommel just yawned as he watched them run by. He had other things to do than shoot a couple guys with bayonets.
Rommel, casting aside all offers of help from his army of sycophants, strips to the waist and proceeds to singlehandedly dismantle the roadblock, with a hammer in one hand and a crowbar in the other. Rommel was doing his impression of John Henry.
Side note – Clearance rolls are hard to make. You need a DR of 2. But if you are Rommel, and have 30 of your closest friends with you, who all happened to be piano movers before the war, the drm is -9. I am going to say it again. Minus 9. The only way Rommel could fail is if he accidently hit his thumb with the hammer.
I’m not so sure I had an actual roadblock, or just a crossing gate and a sign that read ‘Arrete.’
The French Berserk HS ends up in Melee with a squad. In retrospect, maybe he should have gone after Rommel. Sure, he would have died instantly, in a blaze of doomed Gallic glory, but it would have kept Rommel from making a clearance roll that turn.
German turn, the PzKw IIF with no MA moves up the hill, fires its sD, and moves behind my 37* INF. Undeterred, the INF crew proceeds to blast at infantry moving up the hill. I had a good potential shot at the tank with my 25LL, but chose to stay HIP, since there was a 50% chance that this tank would go home. I wanted to save it for the other tanks. The others were still struggling to try to get to the hill. A chunk of the lovely cobblestone road that runs north-south is not in play, so the two tanks that were blasting at dummies had to do a lot of VBM to get back to the road.
A couple German squads start to climb the cliff, just because they can. I think that it is too easy to climb cliffs. You are successful on a 2-9, stay where you are on a 10 or 11, and only fall, Wile E. Coyote-style, on a 12.
Randy rolls a 12. A squad and LMG fall to their doom, even though they were just starting to climb, and were only three feet off the ground. But Fritz sprained his wrist, and Klaus chipped a tooth and wanted to go to the dentist because it really, really hurt, so they all left.
A squad that the mighty mighty 37* INF gun broke routed into the hex with the 25LL AT, dying, but revealing the gun in the process. Heavy Sigh. The INF gun crew gets Encircled. The French berserkers die. Jean-Paul Sartre starts to write about how suicide is always an option.
Next turn, Rommel finds a perfectly good French LMG, and gives it to one of his grateful supporters. The INF gun blasts the adjacent tank, and flames it. The 25LL crew gets shot at by everybody, gets encircled, broken, and dies. Another Heavy Sigh.
German turn, my HIP 8-1 and squad on the north edge get a shot at an 8-0 and squad who think the area is clear. Bad things happen when you roll a 4 on a 5-3 shot. The squad dies, the leader breaks.
The INF gun does good work again, and with rate messes up several units. This gun got two CHs at moving units during the game (rolled 4s), but even with that, an 8 flat is not hugely scary.
I wasted a perfectly good snake eyes on a wind change roll, which resulted in a mild breeze that would cause drifting smoke from the burning wreck to drift over my INF gun. When it did so, the crew dragged it into the trees, going CX. When they got rushed through the smoke the following turn, they dropped it and ran, and miraculously self rallied.
End game, my pitiful remnants are back in the village. I had 4 squads, a crew, and a couple dummy stacks. Randy played a cautious end game, enveloping the flanks and trying to gain concealment. The smell of defeat was in the air, or possibly the smell of chanterelles with garlic, thyme, and white wine. The board was starting to look like the Alamo.
When I was down to the crew and a squad with a 7-0, the concealed squad and 7-0 jumped a CX 247 in the woods. In true defeatist fashion, I couldn’t get ambush with a -3 advantage. I also couldn’t kill the HS in CC. We ended up in Melee. I conceded. Randy still had two moves left, one tank had broken through the trees, and he was easily going to be able to overwhelm what I had left in his turn.
Neither one of us had particularly good rolls. Almost every unit I had break ELRed, including 3 of my 4 leaders. I broke two LMGs, and also the HMG, which I repaired in time to have it captured. Randy broke one tank MA, and broke 3 MGs, only one of which he repaired.
Randy had some good routs, routing units forward or sideways. He also used Rommel as a rallying machine a couple times. With the morale boost and the -2 drm, Rommel always, ALWAYS rallied everyone, even though they were DM. Demi-god.
While we had fun playing this, both of us thought that it was pro-German. The French have to defend a large area initially with few troops, and the Germans have so much firepower, time, tanks and Rommel in their favor.
Pic of the end of the game below. A stack of French prisoners and their guard is set off to the side at the top of the photo to reduce congestion.
Errata – In SSR2, E21 should presumably be EE21.
Jim encourages people to set up matches ahead of time. Paul Sidhu wanted to play a “I Dinant Know The Gun Was Loaded” scenario with me. I picked DN4, ‘Chateau De Meez So Solly.’ I would be the French, because when you think of culture, fine cuisine, and pencil-thin mustaches, you think of me. Even though the only French phrase I know is “Voulez-vous couchez avec moi???” Which I have only gotten to use once. At a bar which, unbeknown to me, was filled with French sailors on shore leave.
Still, it was a magical evening.
Unfortunately, Paul had to bow out of attending the Bash. Was it due to fear of losing to Major Issues??????? We may never know.
Anyway, I ended up being matched up with Randy Rossi. We have known each other for years, but have never played a game, partly because he lives 4 hours away, and partly because of the restraining order.
We both wore masks all day. Partly for safety, but partly because Jim thought it best if I kept my face covered, as other participants found it ‘disturbing.’
French have to defend 4 buildings on the heights on the west side of the river. One of them is Madame D’Aubert’s House of Pleasure, so the troops should have plenty of incentive to defend attractive Belgian whores. And I had plenty of incentive to keep singing, in my best faux French accent, ‘Zank heaven for leetle girls.’
But.
The Germans can blast thru on the one road on the eastern side, or the path on the south edge, or climb the cliff, or sneak over to the north side, where 6 reinforcing German squads will be entering on turn 2. They also have three unopposed tanks, albeit IIFs.
And Rommel. We cannot, SHALL not forget Rommel.
Rommel is a Demi-God in Dinant. 10-2, he can’t use the drm for fire attacks, but can for MCs. He also adds +1 to the morale of anyone within 2 hexes. He helps with a buncha task rolls with any friendly within 2 hexes. You don’t even have to be in LOS. And he doesn’t go TI.
What this means is that you have someone like MacGyver, except a snappier dresser, who also makes everyone he is stacked with 10 morale.
10. It’s like being berserk, without having to senselessly charge across open ground to Certain Death.
To hold back The Great One and his minions, the French have 4 squads, 3 green squads, 2 crews, a 25mm AT, and a 37* INF gun. Foxholes, a roadblock, one wire, and some dummy stacks round out the defense.
Dummies. I’m supposed to hold Rommel, the Chuck Norris of ASL, at bay with dummies.
The French have 3 green squads, who, just like me, do not work well without constant supervision. I gave each one a leader/ Harsh Taskmaster, to keep them from cowering.
I defended the southern path with the wire, a dummy stack, and an awesome 7-0/ 437 combination. I defended the Cliff Notes with a buncha dummies, and a HIP 457 with a LMG. I defended the northern approach with a HIP 8-1 with a mighty mighty 437 and an ATR, plus two 237 HSs.
The key to stopping the tanks is holding the roadblock, as it is the only way the tanks can get up the hill, unless JR can sleaze out a rule about Tanks Being Portaged Up Cliffs, or Tanks Entering A Tunnel After Paying The Toll, or German Tank Teleportation, as seen on a History Channel special. I am not ruling out any of these.
I had a squad with an ATR, a squad with a HMG, a green squad with a LMG and a mighty mighty 7-0, a J Crew with a 37* INF, and a crew with a 25LL AT to defend the roadblock area. The AT gun wuz set up to blast tanks in the side after the Germans had cleared the roadblock and made it up onto the escarpment. See, I wuz already prepared for Mission Failure...
To round out my defense, I brought a bottle of Calvados and one of absinthe.
On to the battle. Two tanks set up to blast a stack of dummies guarding the cliff. One small stack made for the southern path. One squad with an 8-0 went for the cliffs. The third tank and the remaining infantry went towards the roadblock.
Prep shots by two tanks at my dummies did nothing.
Those Germans running towards the cliff got a rude surprise when the HIPster LMG squad opened up on them as they moved uphill into brush. And even I was surprised when I got rate with the LMG. And again. And again. Since the Germans had spent 4 MFs to move in, the attacks were 6-1, 4-1, 2-1, and 2-1. After the dust settled, the 8-0 was a broken 7-0, and the squad was a broken HS.
F1, my cliff-guarding dummy stacks go on the move to defend the village. Randy tried to look unconcerned, at least what little I could see since he had his mask on. But I could tell that he was trembling in fear on the inside.
Two HSs move down the hill into stone buildings on the north side to hold back the reinforcements.
Only bright spot of the turn was that the PzKw IIF broke its gun. Dinant SSR is that they HAVE to attempt repair, so mebbe it will go away and leave us poor Frenchmen in peace.
G2, Rommel and his posse advanced concealed behind the roadblock. French Prep Fire was going to be my chance to send Rommel packing!!!
Or not. My big shot was an 8+2, which didn’t even break concealment. Return fire broke and ELRed the 7-0, and broke and disrupted the green squad. The ATR squad at the top of the cliff went berserk. After consulting with JR, we decided that the berserkers did not have to jump off the cliff like lemmings, even though that was the shortest route to the Germans. For all the good they did, jumping off the cliff may have been a better option. You know, Death From Above...
The legal charge route that they were going to have to take next turn meant that they were going to boldly charge next to Rommel and his entourage. ASL Tip Of The Day – If you are planning a long and happy life, one that involves sitting at a table along the Seine, drinking champagne and eating snails, while trying to decide which mistress you will take to the ballet, then to bed that evening, then sprinting towards Rommel and half the German army armed with a baguette and a truffle shaver is probably the wrong way to achieve your Life Goals.
German turn, Prep Fire breaks my HMG squad. It turns out that I screwed up my disposition with the French HSs, as one had the board edge in front of him, and not a road hex where he could merrily shoot Krauts with a -2 drm. Anyway, Randy either came at them from the side, or advanced on. Final result was that the 237s broke an LMG squad, but were both swallowed up in CC. Still, no reinforcing German made it onto the non-cliff part of the hill, so they bought a little time.
French turn, my berserk squad jumps out of their foxhole, immediately gets reduced, but then charges into the hex with a German squad and survives. Rommel just yawned as he watched them run by. He had other things to do than shoot a couple guys with bayonets.
Rommel, casting aside all offers of help from his army of sycophants, strips to the waist and proceeds to singlehandedly dismantle the roadblock, with a hammer in one hand and a crowbar in the other. Rommel was doing his impression of John Henry.
Side note – Clearance rolls are hard to make. You need a DR of 2. But if you are Rommel, and have 30 of your closest friends with you, who all happened to be piano movers before the war, the drm is -9. I am going to say it again. Minus 9. The only way Rommel could fail is if he accidently hit his thumb with the hammer.
I’m not so sure I had an actual roadblock, or just a crossing gate and a sign that read ‘Arrete.’
The French Berserk HS ends up in Melee with a squad. In retrospect, maybe he should have gone after Rommel. Sure, he would have died instantly, in a blaze of doomed Gallic glory, but it would have kept Rommel from making a clearance roll that turn.
German turn, the PzKw IIF with no MA moves up the hill, fires its sD, and moves behind my 37* INF. Undeterred, the INF crew proceeds to blast at infantry moving up the hill. I had a good potential shot at the tank with my 25LL, but chose to stay HIP, since there was a 50% chance that this tank would go home. I wanted to save it for the other tanks. The others were still struggling to try to get to the hill. A chunk of the lovely cobblestone road that runs north-south is not in play, so the two tanks that were blasting at dummies had to do a lot of VBM to get back to the road.
A couple German squads start to climb the cliff, just because they can. I think that it is too easy to climb cliffs. You are successful on a 2-9, stay where you are on a 10 or 11, and only fall, Wile E. Coyote-style, on a 12.
Randy rolls a 12. A squad and LMG fall to their doom, even though they were just starting to climb, and were only three feet off the ground. But Fritz sprained his wrist, and Klaus chipped a tooth and wanted to go to the dentist because it really, really hurt, so they all left.
A squad that the mighty mighty 37* INF gun broke routed into the hex with the 25LL AT, dying, but revealing the gun in the process. Heavy Sigh. The INF gun crew gets Encircled. The French berserkers die. Jean-Paul Sartre starts to write about how suicide is always an option.
Next turn, Rommel finds a perfectly good French LMG, and gives it to one of his grateful supporters. The INF gun blasts the adjacent tank, and flames it. The 25LL crew gets shot at by everybody, gets encircled, broken, and dies. Another Heavy Sigh.
German turn, my HIP 8-1 and squad on the north edge get a shot at an 8-0 and squad who think the area is clear. Bad things happen when you roll a 4 on a 5-3 shot. The squad dies, the leader breaks.
The INF gun does good work again, and with rate messes up several units. This gun got two CHs at moving units during the game (rolled 4s), but even with that, an 8 flat is not hugely scary.
I wasted a perfectly good snake eyes on a wind change roll, which resulted in a mild breeze that would cause drifting smoke from the burning wreck to drift over my INF gun. When it did so, the crew dragged it into the trees, going CX. When they got rushed through the smoke the following turn, they dropped it and ran, and miraculously self rallied.
End game, my pitiful remnants are back in the village. I had 4 squads, a crew, and a couple dummy stacks. Randy played a cautious end game, enveloping the flanks and trying to gain concealment. The smell of defeat was in the air, or possibly the smell of chanterelles with garlic, thyme, and white wine. The board was starting to look like the Alamo.
When I was down to the crew and a squad with a 7-0, the concealed squad and 7-0 jumped a CX 247 in the woods. In true defeatist fashion, I couldn’t get ambush with a -3 advantage. I also couldn’t kill the HS in CC. We ended up in Melee. I conceded. Randy still had two moves left, one tank had broken through the trees, and he was easily going to be able to overwhelm what I had left in his turn.
Neither one of us had particularly good rolls. Almost every unit I had break ELRed, including 3 of my 4 leaders. I broke two LMGs, and also the HMG, which I repaired in time to have it captured. Randy broke one tank MA, and broke 3 MGs, only one of which he repaired.
Randy had some good routs, routing units forward or sideways. He also used Rommel as a rallying machine a couple times. With the morale boost and the -2 drm, Rommel always, ALWAYS rallied everyone, even though they were DM. Demi-god.
While we had fun playing this, both of us thought that it was pro-German. The French have to defend a large area initially with few troops, and the Germans have so much firepower, time, tanks and Rommel in their favor.
Pic of the end of the game below. A stack of French prisoners and their guard is set off to the side at the top of the photo to reduce congestion.
Errata – In SSR2, E21 should presumably be EE21.
