Mark came over on October 12th for another day of FtF gaming. He’s an old SL-series fan, and when we first started gaming, I was teaching him ASL. Then we got involved in SFB, and then in all the other great (and occasional not-so-great) wargames out there, so while I’ve had a decent ASL career with Patch and others over the last 15ish years, Mark hasn’t gotten back to it until now.
This means it’s back to teaching him all over again, and I stuck to a scenario I’d picked out some time ago for a session that had a last-minute cancellation. If I’d been going from scratch today, I’d probably pick something else, as I can find simple scenarios a bit more easily now. At any rate, J103 Lenin’s Sons from ASL Journal #7 is a somewhat typical German attack on a Russian village in late ’41 setup. The Germans get thirteen squads (mostly 468 SS, with some 548 SS assault engineers), good leadership, a pair of DCs, and a FT (and that last really hasn’t changed from original SL). The Russians are defending board 42 with a mix of seven squads + 2 HS (including 2 628 assault engineers) and a crew, with a 10-0 commissar, HMG, MMG, MTR, and two DCs. The Germans need to take eight out of ten buildings in seven turns, while avoiding a 16 CVP cap.
As usual with these, I set up a defense before Mark came over, and left him to figure out his setup. It was interesting to note that I had defended this board going the other way in 162 Armored Car Savikurki earlier this year. The MMG set up at the end of the long, straight, road, with hopes that I could drag it back along the road and then the path as needed, and most of the rest of the defense was centered around the paths. Enough was set up along the woods line to keep him from wanting to brave the open ground easily. The MTR was behind the hedge in M3, the HMG in reserve in K5 and my one HIP squad in U3 where it might have a chance to surprise someone. Mark set up mostly to to grind through the woods, but ~3 squads were set up along the south edge to base out of the V2 enclosure.
Initial setup, cropped down to the active board. Perimeter markers show setup limits, grain is out of season, and all buildings are wooden. Victory buildings are anything from K right.
He advanced in the woods large stacks for much of the day. Mark was well aware of the ‘don’t stack’ maxim, but wanted the leadership and movement. And it largely worked out for him. My attacks caused lots of pins, but very few breaks, forcing me to fall back in disorder as I was facing too much firepower, and poor CC odds.
On the first turn, his southern force ran into trouble from the MTR and air bursts in U1, forcing a retreat back to V1. Sadly, they immediately started rallying on my turn 1, keeping my HIP unit from moving in to start chasing them around. I pulled my squad out of U8, only to take a KIA for the first blood of the day.
My little ‘surprise’ was sprung on turn 2 as the rallied force moved up again, and I broke a squad, but got caught in CC. A couple other squads had gotten pinned, but one went berserk (Mark got several HOB results during the day, most of which caused him to go fanatic). I don’t quite remember how some of that happened, but may have been from me throwing a DC at his guys.
As mentioned, Mark did fairly well against the close-range firepower I was throwing at him, and around my turn 3 I didn’t secure the northern flank, and Mark went flooding around the end of my line through the pocket of open ground up there. I thought that might have been that right there, but I managed to start putting myself in the way again, even as he started advancing in the south as well.
Around the German 5th turn.
As part of the emergency, I shifted the HMG to J7, and that helped a lot, but of course it wouldn’t hold by itself. I moved it back, and established a line in buildings K5-J5-H5. A second problem is that he’d broken my MTR HS, leaving him free to move towards the southern buildings. About this time, it was getting late enough that Mark had to start thinking of leaving, but we managed to get through another full turn in a hurry, and figure out where it was going.
I had sent a squad away from my defenses to chase down and kill a broken German squad in CC (he was concealed the whole time, so there was nothing for him to run away from). On my last turn, he went after building J7, which was held by a hero with the FT. The FT got a ’10’ to run out of fuel and cause a passed PTC. I went in, and we both missed CC for a melee going into the final German turn.
We had to abandon ship before the final German turn, but Mark figured I had the win. And that was the entirely likely result, but like so often in ASL, I figure it may have actually come down to the last CC roll. He could reliably grab all the buildings I wasn’t sitting in, but the last four were a problem. He had eliminated my 8-1 for FTR on my turn, and now just needed to get someone to survive fire from the HMG to try and eliminate the crew in CC. He had a 7-0+squad that should have been able to take on K5 for an extra chance at a building, but now he was needed in J7, since me not winning a 4-1 CC was too unlikely. Actual play would have been tense with the desire to interfere with his moves, but needing to save for good point blank shots against his assaults. I figure he’d have gotten to CC with the crew, but a 2-1 CC isn’t great odds for an immediate result. Much the same would be true in J7, but I was the one in need of the immediate result to retake the building.
At any rate, we both had fun, even if it wasn’t the best play from either of us (I was fairly distracted with the number of subjects that came up). And hopefully the next game will be reasonably soon… in between all the other games.
