Second Hand News - ROMA 2

JR Brackin

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I was able to sneak in a face-to-face game yesterday with John Haughey of “Second Hand News” – ROMA2 featuring board 86. I had the surrounded Germans and John had the Partisan/Italian force. The Germans are 5-4-8 SS with 2 Stugs, and the Italians are mostly 4-4-7 and 3-4-6 with an ELR of 3, so not a particularly weak force. The goals are for the Germans to have more EVP than the Italians (not the Partisan) have stone location Control, and the Italian/Partisan have CVP combined.

My plan, which I realized early on had some faults, was to delay the Italians who were chasing and attack the Partisans who were blocking my exits. The issue was that with only a couple of SS squads covering my rear while I was facing 12 Italian squads with three leaders. So, I created some issues for myself.

I set up my back line too close to the Italians set up which was on the hill that has lots of tree cover. The balance was set up to move forward right away – the two Stugs were set up looking like they were protecting the rear but moved forward on T1. The issue was that my rear forces on the bottom of T1 were quickly overwhelmed causing some casualties and encirclement. Early German dice rolls were not anything to write home about. However, once my 8-1 was wounded and broken causing them to die for failure to rout my 5-4-8 bucked up and won a critical CC versus some Italian squads and securing themselves a brand new shiny Italian LMG which apparently had more ammunition than the Italians thought (it worked well and never broke).

Winning CC was something that was working very well for me in this game, even against the Partisans who were Stealthy. It made up for some poor shooting. Slowly I made my way into the village with one Stug on the main road and the other protecting the fields. I was able to extradite my last squads from the hilltop, risking some interdiction (ML makes this a reasonable risk) and stayed in front of the Italians who were trying to get into the town. I was able to get into the stone building to defend it against the Italians from getting those points, but some casualties were mounting. On T4 I pinned the only Partisan forces who could possibly have tossed a Molotov at the Stugs and then I ran those Stugs off for 12 EVP. Still with 1 turn left it was a close game. By the bottom of the fifth turn the Partisan/Italians had 9 CVP and were close – they jumped into every CC they could, and a 3-3-7 Partisan unit went Berserk into the 9-1, 5-4-8 MMG stack which allowed a Concealed 1-2-7 stack to move up and Advance into the CC thus allowing for Ambush. I made it through the other CC’s that they created, but I had very high odds with some of them being leaders going at 1-6 odds. In the critical CC versus my 9-1 and 5-4-8 (total of 4 CVP) I was able to win the Ambush – the odds were interesting with the Partisan having a modifier of +1 Lax, +1 Berserk, -1 Stealth, -2 concealed for a net -1 and I was a -1 for my leader with me rolling a 1 and they rolled a 6 – we left the hex to preserve the victory.

This went down to the last CC roll to ensure victory – all in all an interesting situation and a tight scenario. I recommend this one highly.
 
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