So what scenarios have you played Recently?

PS NJ

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U25 Breakout from Borisov
Ron Duenskie and I played this classic monster. I was excited to play this scenario as it's an original from Cross of Iron. The Russians have 54 squads and 12 tanks (5 heavy and 7 light) vs 24 german squads with only 5 tanks (plus a 37L HT and a 20L AC). The germans do have 5 HTs, which we expected to be crictial mobile VPs int he endgame. VC are for the Russians to have twice as many GO CVP on more of the 5 boards. The board layout gives the germans half a dozen 2nd level stone buildings from which their 10-3 and two -2 leaders (plus a radio observer for a 100MM OBA) can overwatch most of the playing area. The desert board isn't in play, but LOS/fire can be traced across it. The germans also get 1-3 stukas. Both sides enter with the germans going first, but having only partial movement. It's a long scenario at 10 turns. The Russians moving last is big, as they can game out exact VC points.

I put about a dozen squads (mostly 426's and 527's) on the left two boards, thinking they would hang out to game end. Most of the units and tanks moved through the right hand board (board 4) towards what I figured would be the big fight on board 3. I moved a pair of fast BT tanks on to 2nd level hills on the right side of board 3.
27720
German turn 2 Ron had a StugB run out of AP shooting at the BTs but then it smoked the one in LOS and then killed it in my turn with a low HE TK roll (it later killed a hulldown 2nd BT on a snakes Advancing fire shot). My 152 KV immobilized due to its red #'s. My 76 gun tanks did a good job in forcing Ron's HMG teams to re-position, only KIA'ing a couple squads running across the open. Ron got two Stukas in turn 4.

I setup my two HMGs in a central woods out of OBA/HMG LOS near my heavy tanks to cover them via AA fire. Unfortunately for me Ron's OBA scattered to an adjacent hex and obliterated the stack, plus shocked a T-28 tank. The stukas then came in and took out two light tanks using MG's.

I had fun and we played through six turns. The OBA and HMG stacks preventing the russian infantry from creating a solid defense. While my infantry losses were relatively light, the ongoing tank losses reached about 50%. The prospect of losing one or two heavy tanks to Stukas bombs (and the light tanks to MG fire) made me think of the german tanks circling and harassing the Russian infantry from the rear. Those thoughts convinced me to throw in the towel. It was a fun experience to play this. I thought maybe I could finesse a win through cautious russian play, but the overwatching firepower, OBA, and Stukas make it tough for the russians to last throughout the very long game. We discussed some ideas for rebalancing the VC, as without the level 2 buildings the russians might be able to roll right over the german troops. We couldn't come up any quick fix.
 

Vic Provost

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U25 Breakout from Borisov
Ron Duenskie and I played this classic monster. I was excited to play this scenario as it's an original from Cross of Iron. The Russians have 54 squads and 12 tanks (5 heavy and 7 light) vs 24 german squads with only 5 tanks (plus a 37L HT and a 20L AC). The germans do have 5 HTs, which we expected to be crictial mobile VPs int he endgame. VC are for the Russians to have twice as many GO CVP on more of the 5 boards. The board layout gives the germans half a dozen 2nd level stone buildings from which their 10-3 and two -2 leaders (plus a radio observer for a 100MM OBA) can overwatch most of the playing area. The desert board isn't in play, but LOS/fire can be traced across it. The germans also get 1-3 stukas. Both sides enter with the germans going first, but having only partial movement. It's a long scenario at 10 turns. The Russians moving last is big, as they can game out exact VC points.

I put about a dozen squads (mostly 426's and 527's) on the left two boards, thinking they would hang out to game end. Most of the units and tanks moved through the right hand board (board 4) towards what I figured would be the big fight on board 3. I moved a pair of fast BT tanks on to 2nd level hills on the right side of board 3.
View attachment 27720
German turn 2 Ron had a StugB run out of AP shooting at the BTs but then it smoked the one in LOS and then killed it in my turn with a low HE TK roll (it later killed a hulldown 2nd BT on a snakes Advancing fire shot). My 152 KV immobilized due to its red #'s. My 76 gun tanks did a good job in forcing Ron's HMG teams to re-position, only KIA'ing a couple squads running across the open. Ron got two Stukas in turn 4.

I setup my two HMGs in a central woods out of OBA/HMG LOS near my heavy tanks to cover them via AA fire. Unfortunately for me Ron's OBA scattered to an adjacent hex and obliterated the stack, plus shocked a T-28 tank. The stukas then came in and took out two light tanks using MG's.

I had fun and we played through six turns. The OBA and HMG stacks preventing the russian infantry from creating a solid defense. While my infantry losses were relatively light, the ongoing tank losses reached about 50%. The prospect of losing one or two heavy tanks to Stukas bombs (and the light tanks to MG fire) made me think of the german tanks circling and harassing the Russian infantry from the rear. Those thoughts convinced me to throw in the towel. It was a fun experience to play this. I thought maybe I could finesse a win through cautious russian play, but the overwatching firepower, OBA, and Stukas make it tough for the russians to last throughout the very long game. We discussed some ideas for rebalancing the VC, as without the level 2 buildings the russians might be able to roll right over the german troops. We couldn't come up any quick fix.
Paul and Ron are excellent players and good friends who help playtest for Dispatches for me, I always trust what they have to say about what we send them. Another great AAR for sure, that is a classic scenario.
 

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Finished out the year with J245 Factory Fodder as the defending Americans vs. Jeff Wasserman’s Germans. The Germans are quite formidable, but have a lot to do to capture ≥5 (of six) mutli-hex stone factories (and control, three ground-level hexes of building 10Z6). The Americans have an abundance of stone in which to occupy and reinforcements enter in turn four.

The Germans made good progress despite getting only one 81MTR smoke round down. The Americans missed with their 57L and were eliminated shortly thereafter (despite successfully manhandling down the road!). So, all vehicles made it to the village outskirts as did most of their troops. The Americans didn't stay around long in the outer factory locations -- those would be death traps. Guys broken in the forward factories would mean the likely FTR with all those German AFVs.

Despite reaching the village intact, the clock was ticking against the Germans. The American reinforcements of 2 xM10s and a couple squads/Baz/MMG/leader bolstered the defense in turn 4. The Americans set up a defensive wall to protect the two back factories. With the 10Z6 stone building still needing to be cleared and the back factories well defended it seemed to be an uphill effort to achieve victory. We got through bottom of German turn 5 movement before the Germans called off the attack. The timetable was simply too tight and there was too much left to do mostly due to their inability to get any breaks in the preceding turns on the usually fragile 6/7ML troops.

An interesting scenario. We debriefed afterwards and agreed the Germans have the strength to achieve victory. However, their timetable is extremely tight and will not allow for any unproductive player turns, i.e., not breaking Americans. Jeff said it best: very "Schwerpunkty". Jeff played has usual smart, disciplined game. Despite this, his dice were ice cold and couldn't buy an effect once he reached the village and the Germans got bogged down. Reasonably average dice for the Germans has this game going the full six turns.

Final Positions Turn 5 German Movement Phase
27727
 

Doug Leslie

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Played J224 Posts 9-11 from the latest Journal against Marc Hanna. I played the attacking Australians tasked with capturing six trenches from Italians defending a couple of Libyan hills. Unusually for a night scenario, the trenches and accompanying wire set up in full view which is kind of a necessity since it would otherwise be impossible to know where the victory targets are actually located. Most of the Italians have to set up within two hexes of specified hill summit hexes but they also have two LMG positions set up in sangars which have to be at least three hexes away from said summits. Rather than set these up in forward positions to act as pickets and get the star shells firing , Marc set them up adjacent to a key "Alamo" trench which housed two HIP 346 squads in a "cellar" (you read that correctly) beneath it. With a NVR of 2, this risked allowing the Australians to get close to the defenders' positions while maintaining cloaked status and it got worse when the wind change DR on the first Italian player turn reduced NVR to 1. The result was that most of the Italian trenches found themselves facing adjacent cloaking counters by the end of the second game turn. As a consequence, they were quickly overwhelmed with the exception of the Alamo as the Aussies ambushed and slaughtered the defenders in hand to hand CC.
The Alamo proved to be a much tougher nut to crack. With a tight time scale, the attackers had to rush the trench in the last two game turns. The key moment came in the penultimate turn when an Australian HS and hero took out an Italian 447 and 9-1 leader manning a MMG in the Alamo in an act of mutual hand to hand CC destruction. This weakened the defences sufficiently to allow enough Aussies to survive Italian fire in their final player turn and advance with overwhelming force in the last game turn to capture the final objective.
The drop in NVR really hurt the Italians here and punished the failure to set up the LMG positions further forward. On the other hand, the strengthened defence of the final victory trench made it very tough for the attackers to capture and the result could easily have gone the other way if the hand to hand assault mentioned earlier had not taken out the defenders. This is a fun scenario which would be a good introduction to night rules for those who are not familiar with them.
 
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Michael R

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My first game finished in 2024 is BF2 French Aggression from the BATTLE FOR FRANCE pack. The French must use their first OBA mission for smoke. The Germans should use their weak AT guns to stop the French halftracks from getting behind the Germans. I won with the French attacker.
 

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Finished out the year with J245 Factory Fodder as the defending Americans vs. Jeff Wasserman’s Germans. The Germans are quite formidable, but have a lot to do to capture ≥5 (of six) mutli-hex stone factories (and control, three ground-level hexes of building 10Z6). The Americans have an abundance of stone in which to occupy and reinforcements enter in turn four.

.... Jeff said it best: very "Schwerpunkty". Jeff played has usual smart, disciplined game. Despite this, his dice were ice cold and couldn't buy an effect once he reached the village and the Germans got bogged down. Reasonably average dice for the Germans has this game going the full six turns.

Final Positions Turn 5 German Movement Phase
View attachment 27727
Mr Houlie, an accurate comment from Mr Wasserman. When I designed this scenario, I channelled my "inner-Schwerpunkty-ness" ...
 

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J204 Raff’s Army

This one needs an SSR stating, “Italian trucks without passengers are immediately recalled D5.341.” For lack of that rule, once those trucks had offloaded their passengers near the wadi at midfield, I used them
"rodeo style" to create vehicle dust along key lines of sight. So, the Americans had to choose between firing guns at moving trucks (shielded by light dust F11.71), with the likely loss of ROF, or waiting for Italian infantry and tanks to approach behind newly generated vehicle dust hindrance.

Those combat trucks made a huge difference. One even drove to within 80 meters of a US halftrack’s 75mm gun to plant a key dust hindrance at just the right spot. The halftrack actually fired at the truck, and missed, but if he had hit that could have generated a wreck hindrance, possibly flaming! And, it did cost the halftrack its ROF, so he was vulnerable to later approach by Italian armor. In fact, now that I think about it, one of those combat trucks could have driven right through a halftrack hex to leave vehicle dust on the halftrack and/or compel it to do a 360 pivot away from the real threat (Italian tanks) to deal with that pesky (1VP) truck. Note, DVP do not apply in this scenario and on desert boards open ground movement for trucks is 1 MP per hex.

Ultimately, the sum of light dust, truck-generated vehicle dust, and SMOKE from Semovente prevented the Americans from killing anything! The 37LL ATG did hit an Italian tank, but merely shocked it and the Romans soon recovered to continue the advance behind their trucks.

Ergo, whenever you design or test a scenario with trucks, especially in the desert, please pay careful attention to how they might be abused.
 

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J204 Raff’s Army
For lack of that rule, once those trucks had offloaded their passengers near the wadi at midfield, I used them
"rodeo style" to create vehicle dust along key lines of sight.
My opponent did the exact same thing when we played this last year. What a fiasco that scenario was. Being HD in the wadi didn't stop my halftracks from quickly dying in only a few turns.
 

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It should have been in the base rules that as soon as a truck unloads its passengers or equipment it is under recall.

That would take that gamey trick away. I won't do it to my opponent because it would NEVER happen in reality...No truck driver would do such a thing, his whole goal is to unload and get back to base in one piece. Trucks are way too valuable, this should have been fixed long ago.
 

wrongway149

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It should have been in the base rules that as soon as a truck unloads its passengers or equipment it is under recall.

That would take that gamey trick away. I won't do it to my opponent because it would NEVER happen in reality...No truck driver would do such a thing, his whole goal is to unload and get back to base in one piece. Trucks are way too valuable, this should have been fixed long ago.
I use an SSR: Any truck that begins its Movement phase with no passengers is recalled.
 

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Just finished J170 Red Churchills with Dan. My Molotov h/s’s won it for me, going 3-3 against his tanks, burning 2. That did balance the boxcars on first AA gun shot and 11 first PSK shot. Very interesting scenario with lots of replayability for both sides. Now on to Hatten for my first ever CG. Very excited.
 

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Me & my Brother startet playing regulary fridays. First some random scenarion that looks quite fun.
We then started to play the "Hatten in Flames" scenarios after I got a copy.
In December we started to play Campaign I that we still enjoy!

My personal highligt was to attend the Grenadier Tournament in Gelsenkirchen this year after beeing off for around 7-8 years.
 

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Had a cracking good game of AP173 The Bend on the Hatten HASL map. Germans have to take 6 building locations and have the armor superiority to help do it with three platoons of 548s against an American force of 667s and 666s with a couple of tank destroyers. The game came down to the last closed combat, the German 9-1 and 548 + 338 had a 1-1 vs an 8-0, 667 and half squad. Declaring Hand-to-Hand, needed a "7" to elminate the Americans to try to control the last building but rolled an "8".
27842
 

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I was pleased to get my first FTF game at the monthly TCASL meet-up in several years, I played J231 Cooking Up a Storm as the defenders from the Land of Oz against Byron L.'s marauding Japanese. We hadn't played in many years, so was really looking forward to it. For the defender, this is a fighting withdrawal to protect the 5 required VC buildings on the Sparrow Force map. I focused on force preservation to make sure I had something left to defend with in the final turns. Thus, a slow withdrawal, taking only good shots, maintaining concealment. I made sure to defend all of the buildings with just enough to ensure the attacker would need to spread is forces and hopefully run out of time. Once the main Japanese push developed I pivoted most of my troops to defend The Mill on my left flank for the end game. With clock ticking, 4 VC buildings still in defender's hands, plus and a wall of units between the attacker and The Mill, the Japanese called off the attack.

The Japanese are wicked capable with seven turns can get the job done, but have a lot to do. The defenders are a decent lot, but are stretched thin. The terrain is loaded with hindrances which helped them. Also, I avoided temptation to engage in some better than average (2-1) CC opportunities against some Japanese half squads. While the odds would favor me, it would not be worth the risk should a CC not go my way.

It was great to play one of these Sparrow Force scenarios and actually push counters around. I liked the scenario a lot. I think it is quite balanced (currently 4-5). Plus, playing on a historical map is always fun. Thanks to Byron for a great game!

27843
 
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william.stoppel

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Yesterday played Guy in HazMo39 How it Will End at our SoCal ASL game day. Billed as a tourney sized scenario this has 25 Russian elite and 1st line sqds with a 9-2, 50 cal and an out of flamethrowers vs 13 mixed elite SS squads with a FT. A few twists. It’s played less than a half of a BFP city board (10 hexes by 22 hexes) and before setup you place 2 AR counters on each manhole cover and roll for rubble with the possibility of more rubble but no falling rubble. The Russians have to control every ground level stone bldg or rubble location in the German setup area so no breaking and routing upstairs for the win shenanigans. Of course hand to hand and no quarter are in effect. Guy made good progress in the first two turns until his 9-2 went berserk and took two squads with him (dropping 50 cal and HMG in the street). They died a glorious death in the street but after that the Russians couldn’t regain their momentum. I repeatedly FPF’d my SS and self broke them to rout back to use their 9 morale to rally. Good scenario with lots of replayability but we (and everyone else at the gameday) had the same question. Why is this not a DASL scenario? With this many troops and such a tiny playing area this one cries out for DASL boards. We continually knocked over attacks with the sheer counter density. DASL + black SS always = a winner scenario.
 

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@dreenstra and I played Roads To Perdition from Twilight of the Reich yesterday. A fun scenario featuring late war SS troops against a mix of Czech Army and Partisans. The scenario also features an interesting rule which spawns Partisan units based on the Sniper counter's Location. Oh, it also features some hot Hetzer on Hetzer action (paging @Psycho). The game started with my 6-5-8's melting down to nothing despite my plan for them to carry the day for me. The first squad found Dave's 150mm Infantry gun for which Dave promptly rolled a 3 TH followed by a 3TK. I think pieces of that squad are still falling to earth. After that performance, his fellow 6-5-8s seemed shaken because they didn't pass a morale check for a couple of turns, ultimately all being eliminated for failure to rout.

Meanwhile, my mediocre 4-4-7 troops on my left seemed to be wearing their special Spaceman Spiff undies because they couldn't be touched. Dave reveals his 75mm, spins and misses an 8 -1 TH and a follow up 8 TH IF shot. Those supermen then jumped on the crew to take the gun. That group of 6 squads was reinforced by 3 more 4-4-7's, 2 SpW 251's and a 3rd Hetzer to push the action. This group slowly ground forward and was making hay. The game was still in doubt in Dave's half of the 6 as my grasp was tenuous. In his Prep Fire Phase, Dave had a group of important shots go awry due to some untimely dice. He still was in it, until I rolled a cluster of low rolls on some important shots breaking a significant portion of his force. With me moving next, I was clearly going to be able to establish firm control on the objective. This also left Dave with no time recover and push me off the objective. Dave resigned at end of his turn 6. All in all, it was a very interesting game which had both sides attacking. It was very close until the end with either side being able to win.

Some interesting things from the game:
  • I had a Hetzer recover from SHOCK twice in this game. I guess that's me done for the year.
  • I think I was 7 wins and zero losses in close combat. Several of them were very meaningful. I am not counting one CC where Dave was able to get my leader into a CC as steep odds. If we included that, I was 7-1-1.
  • The draw was my 9 -1 going into CC with Dave's T-34. The AFV was in motion and bypass. A rolled a 1 on the ATMM check. I had a -1 for Street Fighting and a -3 for the mine. There was a +2 for motion. The final attack was a CCV 2 with a -2 DRM. I rolled a 5 missing the AFV by one pip. Dave's attack back was ineffective so that was a draw.
All in all, a very memorable game against a true gentleman. -- jim
 
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