jwb3
Just this guy, you know?
Finally finished a game of this against Roy Bartoo; we started it in March! :laugh:
No, we're not really that slow -- he screwed up his setup the first time around, and after playing a couple turns we agreed to start over the following week. But then I got busy, and then he got busy, and it wasn't till a couple weeks ago that we finally got back to playing ASL again.
Roy was the ex-Partisan Russians, and this time around he set up most of his forces on the hilltop, with only three squads and the commissar to hold the village. Not knowing where all his HIP stuff would be this time, I set up a fairly broad-based attack up the middle, trying to keep my main force centralized until I knew which way to swing them.
During the first few turns Roy absolutely did a number on me with his artillery, which had a habit of scattering into the best possible spot... and then kept rolling 3s. By the end of that, I'd lost about a quarter of my turn 1 force KIA, including one of the French tanks that got immobilized by the OBA, failed its Immob TC, and then the OBA killed the crew as they tried to abandon! Even though Roy had defended the village very lightly, it was looking seriously questionable whether I had enough infantry left in the area to do anything about it.
But then the dice turned totally against Roy, starting with two of his three village defenders breaking in the same fire phase. My tiny force of 2.5 squads and the 9-1 was able to bypass the third squad and take the back two victory buildings before his reinforcements could reach them. Then I VBM froze the third squad in the forward victory building, who rolled a 12 in the CC phase, and things fell apart even more for Roy.
But meanwhile, the bulk of his defenses were on that hilltop -- and I really had no idea how I was going to crack the guns. I worked my reinforcements up the gully, and was able to get the half-squad all the way around the back side of the hill, where he eventually killed one of the guns in CC -- but mostly these guys just moved around out of LOS of Roy's forces, getting strafed by the plane and waiting for my turn 1 force to hit the other side of the defenses.
Eventually things just kind of came together. By turn 6 I was attacking the hill from three directions, even though each attack was basically one or two squads. Roy's dice continued to totally not cooperate -- at one point he fired a squad and HMG for a 20 +2 shot, only to roll 5,5 and come up with absolutely nothing! Then I rolled a French tank up the hill, forced his remaining AT gun to turn 180 degrees, miss, and decide whether to risk Intensive Fire, and ended its move sitting on top of the abandoned 82mm Mortar daring anyone to try to recover it. This allowed a squad to CX up next to the AT gun and melee it, and when Roy sent a squad to try to rescue it, a whole series of frantic shots at him finally caused him to break and run.
But back in the village, Roy got one last chance to turn the game. He had a stack of a 4-4-7 and a broken, DM 4-4-7 in 56L6, right next to a victory building; I had a squad in M6 holding the building, and a half-squad in the orchard at L7 who had put the DM on the brokies. All I needed them to do was to keep Roy's good order squad contained while my last squad and vehicles finished taking ownership of the R4 building from the commissar and his friends.
Roy picked the broken 4-4-7 for his MMC self-rally, and said, "I need a 3". He promptly rolled a 2! Now he not only had more squads in the area than I did, but he had a leader to go with them as well! And the P7 building was completely open for him to recapture...
His decision, whether right or wrong, was to Prep Fire the two squads at the half-squad I had in L7, do something creative with the leader, and then presumably go after my M6 squad in Melee. He broke the half-squad and, since the leader couldn't take back control of P7 all by himself, moved him to surround the brokies.
Then in the DFPh, I realized something; up on the hill I had a 4-6-8 stacked with my 9-2, and they were exactly 12 hexes from his stack of two squads, and they had no obstacles or hindrances to their LOS. It was just a 2 fp flat shot at extreme long range, but I took it -- and rolled a 3. Both of Roy's squads blew their MCs, and it was all over but the counter cleanup.
I think it's a fairly cool scenario, at least for the attacker, with an interesting situation and mix of forces. Roy went into it feeling that the defenders were in for trouble and that the scenario might give the attackers too much time to get the job done, and obviously our playing tended to reinforce his views. After the game he said the defender's job felt pretty static, and he'd only rate it a '5' on ROAR; but he also said that having gotten diced might well be coloring his view of the scenario.
John
No, we're not really that slow -- he screwed up his setup the first time around, and after playing a couple turns we agreed to start over the following week. But then I got busy, and then he got busy, and it wasn't till a couple weeks ago that we finally got back to playing ASL again.
Roy was the ex-Partisan Russians, and this time around he set up most of his forces on the hilltop, with only three squads and the commissar to hold the village. Not knowing where all his HIP stuff would be this time, I set up a fairly broad-based attack up the middle, trying to keep my main force centralized until I knew which way to swing them.
During the first few turns Roy absolutely did a number on me with his artillery, which had a habit of scattering into the best possible spot... and then kept rolling 3s. By the end of that, I'd lost about a quarter of my turn 1 force KIA, including one of the French tanks that got immobilized by the OBA, failed its Immob TC, and then the OBA killed the crew as they tried to abandon! Even though Roy had defended the village very lightly, it was looking seriously questionable whether I had enough infantry left in the area to do anything about it.
But then the dice turned totally against Roy, starting with two of his three village defenders breaking in the same fire phase. My tiny force of 2.5 squads and the 9-1 was able to bypass the third squad and take the back two victory buildings before his reinforcements could reach them. Then I VBM froze the third squad in the forward victory building, who rolled a 12 in the CC phase, and things fell apart even more for Roy.
But meanwhile, the bulk of his defenses were on that hilltop -- and I really had no idea how I was going to crack the guns. I worked my reinforcements up the gully, and was able to get the half-squad all the way around the back side of the hill, where he eventually killed one of the guns in CC -- but mostly these guys just moved around out of LOS of Roy's forces, getting strafed by the plane and waiting for my turn 1 force to hit the other side of the defenses.
Eventually things just kind of came together. By turn 6 I was attacking the hill from three directions, even though each attack was basically one or two squads. Roy's dice continued to totally not cooperate -- at one point he fired a squad and HMG for a 20 +2 shot, only to roll 5,5 and come up with absolutely nothing! Then I rolled a French tank up the hill, forced his remaining AT gun to turn 180 degrees, miss, and decide whether to risk Intensive Fire, and ended its move sitting on top of the abandoned 82mm Mortar daring anyone to try to recover it. This allowed a squad to CX up next to the AT gun and melee it, and when Roy sent a squad to try to rescue it, a whole series of frantic shots at him finally caused him to break and run.
But back in the village, Roy got one last chance to turn the game. He had a stack of a 4-4-7 and a broken, DM 4-4-7 in 56L6, right next to a victory building; I had a squad in M6 holding the building, and a half-squad in the orchard at L7 who had put the DM on the brokies. All I needed them to do was to keep Roy's good order squad contained while my last squad and vehicles finished taking ownership of the R4 building from the commissar and his friends.
Roy picked the broken 4-4-7 for his MMC self-rally, and said, "I need a 3". He promptly rolled a 2! Now he not only had more squads in the area than I did, but he had a leader to go with them as well! And the P7 building was completely open for him to recapture...
His decision, whether right or wrong, was to Prep Fire the two squads at the half-squad I had in L7, do something creative with the leader, and then presumably go after my M6 squad in Melee. He broke the half-squad and, since the leader couldn't take back control of P7 all by himself, moved him to surround the brokies.
Then in the DFPh, I realized something; up on the hill I had a 4-6-8 stacked with my 9-2, and they were exactly 12 hexes from his stack of two squads, and they had no obstacles or hindrances to their LOS. It was just a 2 fp flat shot at extreme long range, but I took it -- and rolled a 3. Both of Roy's squads blew their MCs, and it was all over but the counter cleanup.
I think it's a fairly cool scenario, at least for the attacker, with an interesting situation and mix of forces. Roy went into it feeling that the defenders were in for trouble and that the scenario might give the attackers too much time to get the job done, and obviously our playing tended to reinforce his views. After the game he said the defender's job felt pretty static, and he'd only rate it a '5' on ROAR; but he also said that having gotten diced might well be coloring his view of the scenario.
John