I thought I’d chime in with my (Matt) experience. This was a fun scenario but nerve-wracking. This was Ed’s write-up from our North Texas ASL Game Day a couple months ago.
August's Game Day had Matt (Germans) facing off against me (Ed, French) in WO33 One-Eyed Jacques. It is a battle in encircled Bologne at the time of Dunkirk. The Germans can win by either capturing the Casino, a large multi-hex factory OR by having more squad equivalents (tanks count as one squad equivalent) in or adjacent to a multi-story building occupied by Green French troops. The Germans have a large number of 1940 panzers while the French have many possible AT weapons ranging from a French 75 to MGs. We had fun joking about the French OBA. It is 120mm but can only be used as HE harassing fire because it is simulating fire from an offshore destroyer. The funny part was the phone does not break on a 12, only loses contact because it is simulating using a semaphore to communicate with the ship. When rolling for contact I'd say, “Let’s see if one of my flags break.” ?
The game started out ominously for Matt as I was able to eliminate 2 squads and break a couple other units with sneaky lines of sight [up the left flank up the hill]. Matt then obligingly malfunctioned 2 tank MAs. One was his sole Mark IV which he had planned to use to smoke out my artillery observer. My Frenchies fell back in the face of a fairly quickly advancing German foe [up the center]. The only thing slowing Matt seemed to be his fear of the location of the French 75. He found it. Positioned with a great field of fire on a flank, it took out three tanks [never give up, never surrender!] Unfortunately for me they burned, making it nearly impossible to hit his 9-2 kill stack. And when I took a successful risk drawing a second card to drop artillery on the kill stack I rolled a 12 on the IFT.
As the end game developed it was looking good for the French. I had the back portions of the casino blocked off with melee and the few remaining units were moving to reinforce. Matt was contemplating running two tanks and two squads to win by going for VC 2 but decided against it. Bummer, I had an AT gun hidden on the path which could have stopped them [Matt would have lost the game if he had taken that gamble]. What turned the game was a melee. I had a German squad locked up in melee with a concealed French squad protecting a corner of the casino. Matt rolled a 3 eliminating this lynchpin in the defense. A couple other low IFT rolls stripped concealment and then broke another French MMC in a critical position leaving only two possible units and a leader left to hold the casino. Tanks rolled into the building along with too many Germans for me to contend with and Matt won the game.
In short, the Germans lost lots, both flanks destroyed. But an all-out concerted effort up the middle with remaining troops and a few late-game, good dice rolls, helped win the game.
