boylermaker
Senior Member
@ppalma3010 and I played another one from the Dinant module, which we've been enjoying so far. This one takes place in a small section of the board, all on the French side of the river. A rather paltry group of French infantry has to defend a small cluster of buildings against a combined-arms force of Germans. Germans enjoy a 2:1 advantage in infantry, three unopposed tanks (albeit PzII's), brittle opponents (French ELR=2) and a lot of time (7.5 turns). The French advantages are an embarrassment of SW such that almost every French squad will have a chance at killing the German tanks, at least from the side, 2 HIP SE and an HIP gun, and the fact that most of the German forces are on the wrong side of an escarpment.
Get out the rulebook for this one, boys, because the Germans are probably going to be doing some climbing. Once the rulebook is out, you will then discover that nobody knows how to string LOS to climbing units, so be ready to discuss that with your opponent. In retrospect, I realize I should have just asked Carl and the gang what the interpretation was during playtesting, but it didn't occur to me until later. Fortunately, it didn't come up, perhaps because I didn't do all that much climbing as the Germans.
The two squads in the north, with a 9-1 leader, would push up to the roadblock and start clearing it so that the tanks could swing up to level four (salmon) eventually. Two more squads and a leader would head for the steep trail up the cliff face in FF35/36. The remaining infantry would climb the GG27-29 cliffs under the direction (and +1 morale bonus) of Rommel, while the tanks scoured the clifftops with covering fire. The 8-1 would direct machine gun fire to cover the climbers or roadblock clearers as necessary.
On turn 2, six more German squads come in along the north edge, these would sweep the level 3 woods for hidden guns before pushing on the victory buildings from the north.
In general, this was a good plan, but I can't recommend the specifics, since we didn't realize until my climbers were halfway up that the armor can't actually elevate their guns far enough to cover those clifftops. You would probably want to target FF29-32 for climbing instead.
Despite that SNAFU, things went OK for the Germans.
To the south, my two squads had forced their way up the steep path and were threatening the whole French right. In the center, my lads had climbed the first half unmolested, although a crowd of French ??s had just arrived to start shooting at them. We had just realized here that the tanks were useless, so they are about to swing north; work on clearing the roadblock continues apace; it would be cleared next turn.
Along the far north, a German stack had discovered the French AT gun the hard way, when its crew's small arms killed a halfsquad and broke two more squads. Still, it was discovered, and the crew had to skedaddle, and there were still plenty of good order units to head to the next treeline, which I was hoping was held by dummies.
The bad news was that none of them were dummies, and the German turn 3 would see an awful lot of units killed or broken trying to cross that open ground. This stalled the attack for a turn or two, but eventually the ex-roadblock-clearers and kill stack were able to capture the CC23 area and flank the French defenders in that area.
The good news was that the missing dummies were mostly along the hilltops. Good news because there was only a squad or two to shoot at my climbers: if climbers break, they die. No casualty-reduction, just instakilled. Even a squad and a half were enough to deal heavy casualties to the climbers, but 2-3 squads still made it to the top in one piece.
By the end of turn 5, the Germans were in pretty good shape. Their whole force was on top of the escarpment, and at this point their weight of numbers and the low French ELR was beginning to tell. My tanks never bogged, and would make it into the little village a few turns later, in time to blast a few Frenchies and play hell with what rout paths remained. With all of the buildings either single-hex or a factory, there were few places for the French to hide, and a good outlook became a sure thing when I rolled nothing above a 6 in the last two turns. Victory to the Germans.
This is a cool scenario, and I still find the map remarkably pretty! I give it a strong recommendation.
Get out the rulebook for this one, boys, because the Germans are probably going to be doing some climbing. Once the rulebook is out, you will then discover that nobody knows how to string LOS to climbing units, so be ready to discuss that with your opponent. In retrospect, I realize I should have just asked Carl and the gang what the interpretation was during playtesting, but it didn't occur to me until later. Fortunately, it didn't come up, perhaps because I didn't do all that much climbing as the Germans.
The two squads in the north, with a 9-1 leader, would push up to the roadblock and start clearing it so that the tanks could swing up to level four (salmon) eventually. Two more squads and a leader would head for the steep trail up the cliff face in FF35/36. The remaining infantry would climb the GG27-29 cliffs under the direction (and +1 morale bonus) of Rommel, while the tanks scoured the clifftops with covering fire. The 8-1 would direct machine gun fire to cover the climbers or roadblock clearers as necessary.
On turn 2, six more German squads come in along the north edge, these would sweep the level 3 woods for hidden guns before pushing on the victory buildings from the north.
In general, this was a good plan, but I can't recommend the specifics, since we didn't realize until my climbers were halfway up that the armor can't actually elevate their guns far enough to cover those clifftops. You would probably want to target FF29-32 for climbing instead.
Despite that SNAFU, things went OK for the Germans.
To the south, my two squads had forced their way up the steep path and were threatening the whole French right. In the center, my lads had climbed the first half unmolested, although a crowd of French ??s had just arrived to start shooting at them. We had just realized here that the tanks were useless, so they are about to swing north; work on clearing the roadblock continues apace; it would be cleared next turn.
Along the far north, a German stack had discovered the French AT gun the hard way, when its crew's small arms killed a halfsquad and broke two more squads. Still, it was discovered, and the crew had to skedaddle, and there were still plenty of good order units to head to the next treeline, which I was hoping was held by dummies.
The bad news was that none of them were dummies, and the German turn 3 would see an awful lot of units killed or broken trying to cross that open ground. This stalled the attack for a turn or two, but eventually the ex-roadblock-clearers and kill stack were able to capture the CC23 area and flank the French defenders in that area.
The good news was that the missing dummies were mostly along the hilltops. Good news because there was only a squad or two to shoot at my climbers: if climbers break, they die. No casualty-reduction, just instakilled. Even a squad and a half were enough to deal heavy casualties to the climbers, but 2-3 squads still made it to the top in one piece.
By the end of turn 5, the Germans were in pretty good shape. Their whole force was on top of the escarpment, and at this point their weight of numbers and the low French ELR was beginning to tell. My tanks never bogged, and would make it into the little village a few turns later, in time to blast a few Frenchies and play hell with what rout paths remained. With all of the buildings either single-hex or a factory, there were few places for the French to hide, and a good outlook became a sure thing when I rolled nothing above a 6 in the last two turns. Victory to the Germans.
This is a cool scenario, and I still find the map remarkably pretty! I give it a strong recommendation.