“Zon With the Wind” always looked like an interesting scenario to me. Actually, it always made me think that it’d be at home among the Paratrooper set, except for being set well after Normandy. At any rate, it turned into one of our bigger projects, as we went through the entire Market-Garden set from Annual 91, though we didn’t formally make a ‘campaign’ of it. We stepped off in June 2009…:
Okay, I still need to finish off the tale of our last game. But I’m going to try to pick at that while keeping up with this one.
After some hemming and hawing, Patch decided upon the Germans in “Zon With the Wind” (from a list of suggestions from me). I’m thinking we may very well go through the whole A’91 Market-Garden set, though I don’t know if we’ll do the ‘CG’ bit, or even stick to the same sides each time.
I have to say, tonight is not anything I’m going to celebrate as wonderful tactical acumen from me. While thinking through the scenario, I remembered the fact that I could deploy, and had good smoke capability (which certainly was not true last game). But I forgot both of them until turn 2. It sure would have helped on turn 1.
So, I went in with no scouting HS, and no smoke. Thankfully, the dice weren’t too kind to Patch, and one squad walked through a couple shots unhurt. My leader stack was going to head to J2, a nice, safe point from which to overlook the battlefield. Patch put down a FL, which did nothing. Then he revealed R4, which I get the idea he wanted to still be concealed for turn 2. He got a K/1 on a long-range shot and managed to wound the leader and break the squad. All things considered, not too bad a price for the muff. And as a last bit of luck, a squad in H2 managed to get ‘?’ while out of LOS, but not in concealment terrain.
Situation, end of American Turn 1 MPh.
The German turn 2 got exciting. R4 fired on M2 to no effect. Patch then got aggressive with his east flank, sending one stack to the edge of the American turn 2 entry area, and another stack shifting position into its former location. One thing you’ve got to give Patch: he makes a wonderful German small-unit commander—he’s as aggressive on the counter-attack as the Wehrmacht could hope for.
He next tried to empty out building M4, but that was the entire reason why I had two adjacent squads of paratroopers across the way. With some hot dice, I broke both squads as they tried to move, and a ’12’ caused the 7-0 to ELR to a wounded 6+1. The dice are definitely trying to make up for my blunders. He also sent his west-flank force into Crest Status at H4, which complicated what I wanted to do.
Situation, end of German Turn 1 MPh.
I took some time to figure out how I wanted to arrange my turn 2 forces. I also recalled that he had 5 dummy ‘?’. I realized that the T1 stack was probably a bluff as was one of his two flanking forces.
My broken squad came back, setting me up for a fairly active turn. The first thing was to send a HS into T1, which, indeed, was empty. My first attempt to press into his broken troops was repulsed when Patch revealed L6 and broke my squad in Bypass of K5. Suspecting that Patch hadn’t put all his Dummies on the same side, I advanced the recovered squad to the rear-side of his Crest Status counter, and then advanced my concealed squad up a hex. When he refused to even strip concealment, I was as sure as I could get.
My attempt to push in the center didn’t go so well. I smoked Q1 from off-board (planning to Advance in if the roll went badly), but fire from R4 still broke my leader, though it didn’t affect the squad.
My last move was not so good. I moved from O0 (offboard) to P0 and promptly got fired on by the first 88, which broke the squad. I was trying to save the extra 0.5 from O1, even though it wouldn’t have mattered. Bleh. 😛
I advanced a squad, leader, and dm MMG into N2h1, where it should prove an annoyance to Patch. My concealed squad in the west found that indeed there was no one home. And my main forces were well into the hole I’d blasted in Patch’s defenses and re-DMing everything in sight.
Situation, end of American Turn 2 MPh.
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In the introduction of Stephen Turnbull’s The Lone Samurai and the Martial Arts, he points out, “the figure of the lone samurai, whose popularity is never in doubt throughout history, stands in direct contrast to what are perceived as the essentially group-led values of Japanese society.” Instead of being a book about modern martial arts, it is actually a history of the role of individual samurai (that is the warrior aristocracy) and martial arts from the time of the Gempei War to the current day.
