Riley's Road - ongoing game

WuWei

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This is not a "proper" AAR, most of all, because it's not after the action. Those are just a few comments on and highlights of our ongoing Riley's Road Campaign Game (the return match).

This time: CG Date 1, 19AM: Pre-game and 1st turn

As some might remember, I lost the first time we played this campaign. I had the Canadian attacker last time, and was way too aggressive and didn't even reach the goal I set myself (survive until air support arrives). So this time I play as the German defender, and I'm going to do it again: Play aggressive! This is a blurry photo of the pre-game setup (we had to use American ?s for the Germans, too, because there weren't enough German ones):



And here is the same photo with some comments:



I put all my AT guns on the first ridgeline. They won't be HIP there, but I want to fire them anyways, so no need to hide them. My plan for them is simple: Fire until the barrels glow! Use intensive fire until they break! They will be overrun no matter what I do, so I want to squeeze the maximum number of kills out of them.

My next idea is the “killer trench”: Two adjacent trench hexes with a tremendous amounts of firepower in them: Two squads with LMGs, a 8-1 leader and an 88LL PaK 43 with crew in EACH of them.

The mines on the paved road might scare the Canadians enough so that they drive through the mud instead – slowing them down is always good, and there might be additional surprises in the general area.

The rest of the setup isn't spectacular:
Some crews with MMGs and HMGs on the ridgeline.
Some units around the dirt road in the D column.
A thin line of infantry has to defend my right flank (east, left on the pictures). I hope to get a few panzerfausts there. The anchor is a HS with a PSK in the stone building in SS7. A little bit weak, but it's the best idea I came up with.

So the game begins, not with the game, but with the pre-game! Of the three Canadian barrages, two arrive early. The one in the west (right on the pictures) is a fast one and completely rolls over my men before the game even begins, breaking one squad. The one in the middle is only one turn early, but this is enough so that it won't be in the way and provide no cover against my AT guns once the game begins. That's good. The one in the east (left on the pictures) is on time. Both don't cause any casualties.

Turn 1 highlights:

One of the first interesting things that happens is a wasp driving towards my nice trench. I hold fire until it is 4 hexes away and open up with all the squads I have there: 32 FP! I get the kill I was hoping for, my first success in this game!

I start shooting at the AFVs enter on the paved road and kill a few: Those burning wrecks slow down the following AFVs even more than my mines would. Unfortunately, I break one of my PaK 41s when I intensive fire, and roll a 6 when I try to repair it. From now on, I have to do with only three AT guns.

One of the Canadian tanks survives a hit from an 88LL! A dud!

My HS w/ PSK in SS7 waits until a Kangaroo is adjacent, but when it tries to fire in the DFPh, the PSK breaks! But in my PFPh, I still get a panzerfaust. I take the backblast and destroy the Kangaroo, but the HS burns as well.

The Canadians call down artillery on the second ridgeline, but the spotting round falls very short, but lands exactly on the first ridgeline, in the middle of my infantry there, and the spotter has even LOS to the base level of that hex.

Two kangaroos sneak forward on the west board edge and end up bogged right next to each other: Easy targets for my AT gun in my PFPh.

One of the fireflies wants to stop, but lacks the MP to do so. I convince my opponent to roll for ESB ("It will stop no matter what, so what's the downside?"), and it is immobilized. Unfortunately, I have to waste a shot to kill it nonetheless.

More pictures:

German turn 1 – Rph:


Canadian turn 2 – Rph:


The setup and playing one turn took the whole evening, so that's as far as we got. It's going ok so far, I think. Losing one of the AT guns was unfortunate, and I didn't get as many ROFs as I wanted. My opponent had a run on our first campaign, where one of the guns killed 5 or 6 of my AFVs in one phase and only stopped firing because it ran out of targets; but that's nothing you can count on, it's only something you can hope for.
 

WuWei

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We played the 2nd Canadian turn yesterday - with very mixed results for me. Another AT gun broke, this time I didn't even intensive fire. But I killed a few more tanks, one with a panzerfaust. That was great. My opponent got 3 (three!) heroes - every MC came up with snake eyes (or so it seems in hindsight). So: I'm doing great against the tanks, but the infantry will kill me.

A more detailed report with a picture will follow.
 

WuWei

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As mentioned, we continued to play this week. In the second Canadian turn, another 100 (slight exaggeration) Canadian units enter the map. This took quite some time, so we only managed to play the Canadian turn.

CG Date 1, 19AM: 2nd Canadian turn

This is the situation:


Canadian turn 2 highlights:

Worst things first: One of my sneaky tricks was to set up a HIP squad on the East (right) edge of the map, in the inconspicuous orchard in A12. My cunning plan was to reveal this squad in turn 5 or 6 to take away control of the building E12 or even the crossroad H10, since by then the Canadian main force would hopefully be elsewhere. But alas, a Kangaroo drives up the edge and enters A12 with it's last MP. I fail my PAATC, so I can't even roll for a panzerfaust to kill it.

My 8,8 in M10 fails me. It doesn't hit, but gets rate, and on the second shot breaks. Now I'm down to two AT guns.

I totally botch the defense of the Milk Factory. Instead of using spraying fire from the beginning to lay down some nice residuals, I hold my fire for too long, and when I finally start firing, my opponent rolls snakeeyes after snakeeyes and I end up facing a killer firegroup with two heros in it. That's ~30 neg 2 FP I face next turn. And another hero emerged in the West.
And I totally forgot my MGs on the second ridgeline until the DFPh. Frustrating!

Good things: It has started to rain! No smoke AND higher movement costs, that's really nice for the Defender (me!). And it's only fair: In the first campaign, I had to cope with rain, too.

My anti-tank troops do their job: I continue to kill tanks with the two AT guns I have left. But one of them has faulty ammunition. In the last turn, I rolled a 12 for a TK; this time, I had an 11. Still enough to penetrate the front armor of a Sherman, but not enough to set it on fire. And one of my squads even engage a tank with a panzerfaust an kill it. If I manage to kill all tanks, I won't have to purchase AT guns later on!

I used harassing fire on the approaching tanks on the Western (left) flank, my idea was that with enough rolls, one of them has to come up with a 4 or less. This didn't work out last turn, but this turn - even though the fire is inaccurate and only affects one AFV, it's a 4, and a shock.

One of my squads manages to stun an approaching Wasp. It will recover, but for the moment, there's only one active flamethrower left.

--

I remember that this turn really stressed me out as the Attacker last time. As a Defender, I was quite relaxed - perhaps a little bit too relaxed. But that's part of the tactic of my opponent: Always refill my glass with delicious beer to distract me and lower my concentration, so that I make errors. I don't complain. :)
 

=FC=Gorgon

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Worst things first: One of my sneaky tricks was to set up a HIP squad on the East (right) edge of the map, in the inconspicuous orchard in A12. My cunning plan was to reveal this squad in turn 5 or 6 to take away control of the building E12 or even the crossroad H10, since by then the Canadian main force would hopefully be elsewhere. But alas, a Kangaroo drives up the edge and enters A12 with it's last MP. I fail my PAATC, so I can't even roll for a panzerfaust to kill it.
I don't think you need to roll a PAATC to look for and fire a Pf. That's just First fire. You would only need a PAATC if you wanted to do CC Reaction Fire.
 

WuWei

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I don't think you need to roll a PAATC to look for and fire a Pf. That's just First fire. You would only need a PAATC if you wanted to do CC Reaction Fire.
You are right. I only have to make a PAATC when a vehicle enters my location if I want to remain concealed. I could have dropped concealment voluntarily without a PAATC, and this would have probably been the smart decision.

If I had passed the PAATC, would the squad have remained HIP?
I can see my opponent asking: "What are you rolling?" - "Ah, nothing. It's... private."
 

=FC=Gorgon

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You are right. I only have to make a PAATC when a vehicle enters my location if I want to remain concealed. I could have dropped concealment voluntarily without a PAATC, and this would have probably been the smart decision.

If I had passed the PAATC, would the squad have remained HIP?
I can see my opponent asking: "What are you rolling?" - "Ah, nothing. It's... private."
I believe the answer is A12.41. Though this wasn't an OVR, the first sentence of that rule doesn't specifically say that the vehicle is doing an OVR. So I think that if a vehicle enters an HIP unit's location then it can either lose HIP and ? or make a PAATC (unless except from PAATC). If the formally HIP unit passed the PAATC, he would be concealed, but no longer HIP. If it failed the PPATC it would be unconcealed and pinned. But you could also just drop your HIP status and take a shot on the MP it used to enter the location. :)
 

WuWei

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Another evening of glorious ASL lies behind me. We played the German turn 2 and Canadian turn 3.

Summary:
I'm down to 0 (zero!) AT guns at the moment: One is eliminated, one malf'ed, one has a broken crew, and the last one has the crew engaged in melee with a band of berserkers.
On the plus side: The Canadians are down to 2 "real" tanks, a Firefly and a "normal" Sherman. Of course, there are still a lot of Kangaroos and Carriers left, and a Wasp, but I am working on that.
But what they lack in tanks, the Canadians make up in infantry: Every (slight exaggeration) MC and Rally roll comes up as 2 for the Canadians. There are now 4 (four!) Canadian heroes in play (although one is disputed and might have been created erroneously - we'll have to check), as opposed to zero German heroes.

Some events:
The rain intensified, so now it's +1 LV hindrance even at point blank range.
I killed another tank with a panzerfaust, and lost the attacking squad in the back blast. So far, the only losses I suffered were due to back blast.
I advanced two squads adjacent to a stopped Wasp, giving my opponent the choice between prep firing and remaining in the unfavourable spot it was in, or moving and getting shot at with 24 FP before it could do any damage. My opponent chose to fire, my squad survived, and I killed the Wasp in DFPh.
The Kangaroo that was Shocked by my OBA last time turned to unconfirmed kill -> eliminated.
The Canadian line of infantry approaching my trench finally got a good roll and broke some of my units.
An unloading squad+leader turned berserk and charged one of my AT guns.
Another Kangaroo tried an overrun, but I killed it in CC.
And yet another Kangaroo survives a hit by my 88LL because of faulty ammunition (I rolled another 12 for the TK. This batch is really faulty, how did it get past quality control? Ok, it's Germany 1945, that explains that).


It's fair so far: My opponent rolls low for MCs and Rallys, I roll low for Panzerfausts and THs.

Some pictures:
Canadian Turn 3 - RPh:


German Turn 3 - RPh:

(Look at all those burning wrecks! Isn't it beautiful?)
 

WuWei

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We played two more times, and it's over. Not only the Campaign Date, but the Campaign. My opponent gave up after turn 5 of Campaign Date 1. I won. How did this happen?

I managed to hold the whole Western flank (right on the pictures). I repelled a Wasp earlier, this time, I prevented another Kangaroo from breaking through. If that one had managed to slip through, the Canadians could have taken a few unprotected buildings in the back.

The center did hold, too! The Canadians had some brutal firegroup attacks against my trench system in front of the milk factory, but of those, only one was really effective. I had some losses, but inflicted losses on the Canadians, too. Only a halfsquad here, a halfsquad there, but it summed up. I also managed to destroy a few AFVs in CC that tried to get in my back. When the Canadians finally managed to get into my trench system, I even managed to repel them. In the end, I was down to three squads and two leaders in the middle, but they were very effective. I rolled really bad for leaders at the beginning and only had two 7-0s and two 8-1s, so putting both 8-1s into the trench was a risky move, but it worked out.

The East (left on the picture), not so good. That was my weak flank from the beginning, defended by lots of dummies and only a few squads. I pulled back towards the Schwanenhof, but in the end, a squad, a 7-0 and a crew with a HMG were facing three Kangaroos and a Sherman, with a few more on the way. The Canadians would have managed to take the Schwanenhof before the end of the Campaign Date, most likely, but I would have managed to inflict some losses.

Honorary mention: Remember the Canadian squad with a leader that went berserk in turn 3 and charged one of my guns? I reinforced that melee with two squads and escalated to hand-to-hand in my third turn, but it lasted until turn 5, and only a German HS came out of it alive. That was the worst close combat in the game - from my view at least.

Finally, after turn 5, the Canadians were down to ~20 squad equivalents, most of them in the East, facing a total of ~11 German squad equivalents most of them in the Center and the West. With no realistic chance of a breakthrough there with the remaining troops, and with a really bad starting position for the following Campaign Date, my opponent gave up. Operation Veritable failed.

The end, Canadian Turn 6 - RPh:
 

Bob Miller

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Thank you for sharing and posting the pictures and commentary. The Killer Trench in the middle right near the Milk Factory. Good hard point. I really think the Germans have the advantage in this CG. More so in the end game I always thought. Do you think the Canadians entered too spread out to really achive a breakthrough in one sector? Perhaps after seeing the results that was the case.

I like the "math" that this CG presents for the VC. Germans only get a few counter attacks to reset the VC locations held by the Canucks. Of course that assumes the Canadians can get the breakthrough and capture the majority of the VC hexes by the end of CG 2 or 3.
 

WuWei

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I'm not sure if the "Killer Trench" really was a good idea. Routing from the forward hex is soon impossible because the pond blocks the direct way back and there will be enemy units somewhere on the flanks, so you can't rout in their direction. It's a real "brittle defense": Hard as long as it holds, but totally shattered by one or two good blows. Had the Canadians rolled 4s and 5s instead of 9s and 10s when making those early 30 flat or 30 plus 1 attacks, things would have gone a completely different way. Ironically, in the last turns, my opponent rolled really well (at least for the attacks). Only by then, even a few snake-eyes didn't make a difference when they are only for 6 plus 3 or 8 plus 3 attacks.

Another thing in my favor was the rain. Smoke on those trenches would have greatly reduced the effect. And the Canadians would have been able to move faster. The additional +1 once the rain intensified also helped me more than my opponent.

But in the end, my defense worked, so it can't have been too bad. :)

Since my opponent won this campaign in our first run on the German side, and now I also won with the Germans, the campaign really seems to favor this side. The Canadians really have to preserve their forces, because they won't get much reinforcement compared to the Germans. But they also have to play aggressively on the first Campaign Dates and conquer victory locations. That's hard.
 
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