AAR for Franc Tireur 28 First Annoyance

Markdv5208

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First Annoyance FT 28

Played said same scenario against Jeff DeYoung, Monday March 31. It’s an interesting scenario. For those who haven’t seen the packet yet—which I recommend ordering or getting an opponent to do the same so you have some access to it—it features a city fight early in the Barbarossa campaign in downtown Brest-Litovsk. The Germans have to fight their way from the H row of board 1 to either a-clear all Russian MMCs from row U/west of same by turn 5 OR clear bldg 1X4 of Soviets by turn 7 w/o losing 16 or more CVPs (As a note—I really like VCs that put a CVP cap on the attacking side. I mean, what’s the point of getting the objective if you don’t have enough boots on the ground afterwards to keep it? But I digress….)
Of note—there are some serious terrain alterations to the board ie 9shellhole hexes on what would normally be bldg hexes, and the german in the pregame has to rubble 4 hexes in the Soviet setup area.

I wish that this was the only paragraph I had to write. I had a nearly perfect game turn 1, player turn 1. The one glitch to my PREP fire phase was the first shot I took. It was with the StugB, s9, elite making it s10. I fire and rolled a 10….sigh, last round and the target was ? so a miss to boot. I put the German 9-2 with 2 467s, the MMG, and HMG in a second level hex and put them in opportunity fire mode. I fire and rolled a 10….sigh, last round and the target was ? so a miss to boot. Did the same with a few other squads, and then sent some 247s forward to see what kind of things they could scare up. One HS was KIA –no big deal, what’s 1CVP, right?—and the other ate all sorts of shots and FINALLY got pinned, meanwhile revealing four 447s and a 426 who just couldn’t get their rifles to quite work right. He then does some DFFs, to no effect. Ok, so now I’ve got this kill stack with the 9-2, and conviently enough, all but one of the units that revealed themselves are in his arc. So, I fire, cause a 1MC, he laughs it off and rolls my SAN (a 3). I roll a 1-KILL. We roll direction/extent, and it hits a ? stack that happens to have the 10-0smc.
Scratch one member of the party faithful, and the 458 that was with him manning a MMG, gack him also on the LLMC. Fine, I’ve got ROF, I fire again. I cause a 2MC—he rolls a 3 (my SAN) I roll a 1. Direction/extent to another ? stack. This one has his 9-1, a 458, and HMG. Scratch the 9-1 and as a bonus the 458 breaks on the LLMC. He now has one SMC (a 7-0) and I still have ROF. So, now the HMG/MMG stack with the 9-2 directing it manage to break every target in LOS. With my still having ROF, I got greedy, and fired the HMG (my now, the MMG had lost ROF) and rolled a 12. Two glitches one turn, no big deal, right? Jeffs mood at this point was understandably sour, and I offered to end the game right there and start either over or another scenario. Sadly for me, Jeff didn’t take me up on this…

Well, I then break the HMG in my first repair attempt. My advance was thru the bldgs in 1J8 and the treeline in 1K1. Sadly my 838s couldn’t do the advance I wanted—they kept breaking. What was stemming the tide of my advance? A solitary 426, who ate I don’t know HOW many attacks, but this darn unit, along with a 447, ate MCs and MC1s like it was going out of style. One of the few MCs I did manage to pass on that side of the assault was his SAN (a 4) which in turn was a 1, which he used against a 838, just to make sure I didn’t do anything bad with him.

But Jeff was saving his real case of whoop ass for the troops advancing by the 1K1 treeline. The MMG formally manned by the 10-0 commie/commissaar, is remanned by a 447, who in turn starts decimating my troops. I made the mistake of having a 7-0 and three467s in LOS of this unit. When the fire phase in which he had LOS to them was over, I was left with the 7-0, and three247s, all DM and broken. In fact, for all his bad luck on turn 1, Jeff more than made up for it with some good dice between turns 2 and 5.

By turn 5 in fact, I had lost 15CVPs (16 gives it to him), and it was obvious I couldn’t get to either VC. So, I conceded.

Lessons learned—although it’s great to have the firepower, keep stacking if possible to 2 squads per hex.
DON”T give up if your first turn was really really sour. Jeff would easily have been in his rights to quit the game, but he gutted it out and beat me fair and square.

From what I’ve seen of this packet, not bad work.

Mark De Vries
 
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