E Hill 621

by on September 20, 2012 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

“Hill 621” is a classic scenario from the original Squad Leader game, and is much enjoyed in both the original and ASL formats even now. Like all the original scenarios, it’s not very historical, but it has a great ‘feel’. Both Patch and I had played it before, but not in ages, and not against each other. We got going at the end of March 2009…:

Well, Patch and I started our newest game last night. We’d talked over various possibilities while the previous game was wrapping up, and we eventually decided to visit an old classic, even if it will take a bit longer than the last couple games.

We’ve both technically played it before, but it’s been a decade or so for Patch, and the last I played it, it was SL scenario 5.

Neither of us had a strong affinity for a side, so we rolled off and I got the Russians.

With 48 squads… it was hard to come up with much operational subtlety, so I mostly lined up at the edge of board 3, and am trying to keep everyone out each other’s way until attrition shakes out a few bodies.

The pre-game MC broke two German squads, which promptly rallied in the RPh. The Germans set up near the west edge of board 4, in three stacks. With his middle stack, he made a mistake bypassing some woods 15 hexes away from the leaderless MMG I had set up in 3N1h2. The resulting 1MC was passed by the -2 leader and the first squad. However, the latter activated the Sniper who promptly Pinned that squad. The remaining two squads seeing their comrades hit the dirt pinned and broke, effectively halting the entire stack before they could get to the board 2 hills.


Situation, German Turn 1.

The broken German squad promptly rallied in my RPh. My only Prep was the MMG again, which pinned the squad that had advanced up to AA4.

Thanks to his middle group being out of position, I had a lot of freedom to move. They tried to fire a couple times with tricky LOS, but they were blocked. Overall, I had four squads broken, one by the Sniper. Not bad at all….


Situation, Russian Turn 1 after MPh.
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Second Wind Coalition Turn 3

by on September 19, 2012 at 10:18 pm
Posted In: Second Wind

Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG.

With everything moved up to—and past—the borders, turn 3 tends to be a bit simpler for the Coalition. Also, I knew that the Duke’s SB was weaker than it ordinarily should be, as he was out of carrier escorts there. I contemplated a raid into the capital, hoping to devastate a few planets while the fleet was elsewhere, but it just too easy for major elements to get intercepted on the way, so I settled for a more normal ‘sweep the Kzinti off the map’ approach.

Builds:
Lyrans: BC, CA, 4xCW, 2xDW, DWS, 3xFF, PDU, CL->BC, 3xFF->DW, MB->BATS
Klingons: D7C, D7, D6M, 7xD5, LTT, D5S, F5L, 4xF5, FV, E4, E4A, E4R, Activate 2xD6, 3xF5, 3xE4, D6->D6S, D6->D6D, CapDD->K-DD

Converting smaller captured ships to your service is somewhat expensive, but I figure it’s less expensive than overbuilding the equivalent ship, so I’m still EPs ahead. Also, I’m planning on converting the DD to a DDE, though I’m still waiting for an answer as to whether the Klingons get to use it as a light or heavy escort. If the latter, it is a poor heavy escort, but serves as an extra for a second-line group as I get all the AD5s in place. If I can use it as a light escort, it’ll be the best one I can have for quite a while.

Combat:
1001: Kzinti: dest MON; Lyrans: crip CL, FF, capture planet
1202: Kzinti: dest MON; Lyrans: crip CW, capture planet; Klingons: crip E4
1502: Kzinti: dest BC, EFF; Klingons: crip D6M, F5, dest D7A
1504: Kzinti: dest 3xEFF, 2xPDU; Klingons: crip D6, 2xD5, 4xF5, dest F5L, F5, E4
1304: Kzinti: dest SB, CC; Klingons: D7C, D6M; Lyrans: crip 2xCA
0902: Kzinti: dest FKE, FFE, wound PT; Lyrans: crip CL, 3xCW, dest CC, DW

As you can see, I’m doing a lot of directing. In fact, my general plan is to try and wear the Kzinti fleet out. The early schedule is sparse, and there’s not a lot of spare ships available. In fact, he had no real light escorts for his carriers at the Duke’s SB battle at all (1304), which led to it being a single-round affair.

One of the additions of Combined Operations are troop ships and marine assaults on bases. Many people don’t care too much for them, and largely ignore them. I don’t have enough experience to have a real opinion of them. But the idea is that you can use them to attack ground bases (or regular bases) and do extra damage—if you can roll well. You can also lose your ground troops for no gain, though they get replaced for free like fighters. The main cost is that troop ships have a lower offensive ComPot, so you’re doing less direct damage.

Against regular bases, they can cause an extra SIDS of damage, which can make them very useful in a hotly contested SB battle. If you need to direct SIDS to get the SB, this can speed the process up, if the defender is voluntarily taking SIDS, he may find it getting unexpectedly crippled by the ground troops. The problem is the odds aren’t too good of making it work, and a SB inherently has a defending marine unit (‘G’) that must be killed before damage can be done.

Naturally, I rolled two 12s in a row to actually do a SIDS to 1304 with a single D6G.

Overall, the turn went very well for me. SB 0902 is still there, but I took the entire ‘second line’ of planets (1001, 1202, 1504), and got SB 1304, all for minimal losses. Sadly, I didn’t parse the situation with the Marquis area correctly, and that’s still on the main grid. Cutting it off will certainly be a priority for next turn.

But now the Hydrans are about to join in, and I have some strategic decisions to make…. Right now, I’m splitting my attention (and new builds) between the two and where I go next will likely depend on how his turn 3 goes.

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FB5 Siesta Time—Sort Of

by on September 17, 2012 at 8:01 pm
Posted In: ASL

Well, this is a little embarrassing….

Saturday was another FtF day with Patch in our ongoing effort to play through the scenarios of Festung Budapest. Ahead of time, I had done a Vassal setup file, so Patch could see what we were dealing with. Of course, cropping the board down does leave a problem: the compass rose is not visible. But, the Vassal boards have an orientation, the text is all oriented in that direction… up is north, right?

Um, no. Up is east; north is off to the left. And neither of us noticed until partway through our second play.

So, whatever we played Saturday, it wasn’t quite the intended scenario. It was still fun and interesting though.

The general situation is that Soviets have started pushing back the Hungarian defenders, and are now trying to take the Siesta Sanatorium. Unlike most assaults in ASL, which seem to happen good weather (EC Mild, no wind at start…), this one is in the middle of a raging snowstorm. There is ground snow (like in FB4) and heavy falling snow, which causes a +1 Hindrance for every six hexes of range (fractions round down…). The Hungarians have almost as many troops as the Russians, but the Russian troops are better quality, and are supported by a couple of FTs. In an unusual twist, both sides have a DC. Another interesting twist is that the Russians can win by taking building E30 by the end of turn 3; otherwise, they win by taking it by the end of their turn 7 if the Hungarians have not managed to exit more than 6 EVP.

I set up my defense, and managed to be ready just before Patch arrived, who was early. With how we were doing things, the Soviets come in along the J hexrow; Patch basically had the heavy part of his force in the south (by our reckoning), with a strong north flank. I had set up with three ‘zones’ in mind, with the middle being nicely direct, but with a relative lack of cover. I had set up my dummies around there to discourage that route, and get him to go for one of the flanks, which would be a longer distance. Being hit on both flanks didn’t go so well, especially when the north side immediately collapsed on a couple of bad die rolls.

It was generally hard for either of us to get far, with plenty of stone buildings and a raging snowstorm making for few viable shots. Patch hurried in to try for the turn 3 victory, but couldn’t pull it off, though he did get into the victory building. I had come up with the (fairly obvious) idea of my one HIP unit being a squad with DC in the building, in my case in N30h1, ready to drop it on unsuspecting defenders.

The second half of the game was pretty fast. A lot of my troops died in place, or got trapped in various buildings with no hope for rescue. I actually ended up running the DC squad down to the ground level of N31, to try to root out the 9-1 with the DC, but pinned right before they could attempt it, and then they broke on the next turn. Which is a lot of how the rest of the game went for me. Lots of not quite being able to do what I wanted. We ended it around turn 5, when I lost all hope of getting sufficient EVP.

After lunch (yes, it was that short!), we switched sides, and tried it again. Patch’s defense was a lot like mine, but with some important defects ironed out. I tried a variation of his entry, with both FTs in the ‘south’. The beginning was a mix, with me getting a little too free with running in the open, even with the snowstorm, but one squad got into L34 and quickly breaking his end-of-the-line defender next door.

After that, things went downhill, especially as I had trouble rallying anyone. One unit did go berserk, and spent the rest of the game futilely trying to pound his way into the fortified building location. I got another ‘2’ on the same RPh, getting me a Fanatic 628 and Hero. Better yet, that squad had one of the FTs. However, 9ML was not enough to allow him to get back into range, and both he and the other FT-squad broke (again). Patch held out past turn 3 with no problems, and then exited all the EVP he needed on turn 4. I had just not been able to keep him busy.

Mid-way through this was when we finally realized the error of our set-up, and we discussed it for a while before continuing, as we just didn’t have time to re-start. In many ways, the version we did looks more interesting than the actual version from a terrain perspective. Though the longer run for the Hungarian exit does change things quite a bit. Most notably, the way the drifts align in ‘our version’ lend themselves to some very interesting situations, that just don’t seem to be there in the corrected version.

At any rate, we’re planning on poking at the ‘right’ version via email while continuing our current Vassal game. It’s a short enough scenario that it shouldn’t take too long. I’ll be reporting on that at some point.

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J102 The Yelnya Bridge

by on September 13, 2012 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

I can’t remember how Patch and I decided upon our next scenario, probably we looked through the latest Journal (Journal 7) for something interesting. We actually ended up posting separate threads around the same time, so the beginning is a bit more redundant that normal, getting going in March 2009…:

Once again, Patch and I are doing something quite different than last time. From an early AH West Front scenario of epic turn count, we’re doing 4.5-turn recent MMP East Front action.

Sadly, I’ve decided this principle should extend to my own play. I’m making goofs all over, starting with my setup.

The Germans can either capture 3 buildings or exit 16 VP off the north edge in the 4.5 turns. There’s really only two areas suitable for exiting, and one takes them near the victory buildings. So, I ended up overly-focused there; especially as the secondary route would force the vehicles to cross a stream without a bridge.

I should have remembered that both of us lost our fear of Bog Checks during Pegasus Bridge. At least I had some idea of what I’d do if he did go that way. Because Patch looked at all the brown uniforms in the village and decided he wanted nothing whatsoever to do with it.

On the other hand, I really wanted to defend the village. I don’t like the chances of this mostly-conscript force going up against SS troops.

I like the spot I found for the ART. Good field of view, some cover. It’s been attracting some fire, but nothing’s rattled the crew yet. Sadly, I took a chance on an IF shot (had a decent chance to hit), and malfed the Gun on an ’11’.


Situation, RtPh, German Turn 1.

My turn 1 was, of course, occupied by my redeploy to the east. Once Patch saw the Trench in G6, he felt sure that it had the ATG. Not a bad guess, I’d nearly put it there. So, I wanted to bug out, and I didn’t want him to see what was really there. Sadly, I completely missed a LOS, and Patch got to see the squad and Commissar anyway. Not only that, but I got so focused on that action, I completely forgot to move out the revealed conscript squad in R5.

Thankfully, all Patch managed to do to them is send them Berserk (it would have been a surrender, but these are SS). They also got a second ‘2’ on the next MC, but ‘zerkies don’t check HoB.

The other good news was the MA on his PzII malfunctioning. The bad news was him breaking my MTR team. I’m not sure I’m ever getting that MTR back. Oh and he revealed a dummy in P3.


Situation, end of DFPh, Russian Turn 1.

Advice for anyone else playing this as the Russians: Don’t use my setup.
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91 Ad Hoc at Beaurains

by on September 6, 2012 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

When I first saw the scenario “Ad Hoc at Beaurains”, I was fascinated by it. Four full boards, sixteen turns. It should be massive, but the number of actual units is actually small, and no units begin on the board at all. I talked Patch into trying it out long after I first saw it in January 2009…:

As a complete switch from the city fighting of VotG, Patch and I decided on this unusual scenario from Annual ’92 that was updated in FKaC. The idea of a four-board scenario that starts with nothing on board (except the German Sniper) has always fascinated me. Sixteen turns is a little frightening, but I figure with the absurdly low counter-density, much of the game should pass pretty quickly, even purely by email.

Given a choice, I went with the British, and their all-armor force. I figure, win or lose, I’ll learn something.

I was right, I’m learning a lot. Like, don’t start an armor scenario during a week where you’re too busy to really look at the tanks you’re using. 😛

Anyway, with one email, and one-extra long Monday-night session, we’ve gotten to the beginning of turn 4.

A quick note to those unfamiliar with the scenario: It’s May 1940, and the British are counter-attacking Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division. Only the tanks manage to get through, and Rommel is throwing anything he can find in their way. Mostly, this is 37mm ATGs and some light tanks. Since the British have 6 Matilda IIs and 6 Matilda Is, these are entirely inadequate to insure a kill. The Germans do get a pair of 88s sometime between turn 6 and 11. The Brits have to exit 30 VPs to win, with every 2 CVP caused effectively counting as one EVP.

So, exit about four tanks of 12, not much to stop them, 16 turns, sounds simple, no? We’ll see—in a straight line, there’s 40 hexes to go, and the Matilda IIs have 9 MPs. The Matilda Is have 6, and can’t even use the road bonus.

A final note to remember when looking at the screen shots, is that there are no gullies or bridges on board 5. We can’t find a way to turn gullies off in Vassal though.

Turn 1 was calm enough as both forces started entering. I decided to enter in two groups towards the north end of board 5.


Situation, end of Turn 1; also shows German movement on Turn 2. Remember, gullies do not exist.

Then I got to choose whether I wanted the Matilda Is to come in behind the first group, or if I wanted to have them on their own, and see if they could either sneak through, or distract the Germans from the main force. In the end I decided to see if I could get the IIs to clear the way for them.

One thing I hadn’t realized until Patch pointed it out, is that Matilda Is are radioless, so they’re going to have fun with Platoon Movement. It was also around here that I started figuring out the costs for some things and realized that hills are a real challenge at +4 MP when you only have 9 to begin with, never mind 6.


Situation, end of Turn 2.

As it is late here, I will update with the much more exciting Turn 3 later. (Hopefully tomorrow night.)
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