Mark and I have fallen into a bunch of fairly regular Vassal sessions over the past few months. Our primary slot has been our learning sessions with Operation Dauntless, and we had a few weeks of three-day weekends, so I proposed we start something a bit faster moving than our fumbling learning sessions, and well-known to the both of us, and we ended up going for A Victory Lost, doing one turn per session, and it (after a later schedule shuffling) became our Sunday morning slot.
Now, neither of us has ever been experts, and it’s probably been a decade since I last played, so expect a lot of sub-optimal play from us (moving HQs was a particular problem on a few occasions, espeically later, since the module, for all its great features, doesn’t mark the HQ as active along with everything else, so it can be easy to forget).
Mark wanted the Germans, so I started with a decision to mostly press in the center, keeping the 1GdA, 3GdA, 5ShA, and 5TkA chits (along with Popov who shows up at the end of turn 4), and of course picking 1GdA for the special combat segment, which eliminated the Ravenna division and retreated Julia and Tridentia, but got no effect on Cosseria and Cuneense.
Turn 1 chit sequence: 5TkA – 3GdA – 1GdA – R3A – Hollidt – 4PzA – STAVKA
My first chit draw also saw my first losses, as I tried a 1.5:1 and two 2:1s to get across the initial river lines (thought it was three 2:1s until I saw a town, which reduced it to 1.5:1), for a pair of A1 results, but I pushed the 7Lw back to break that line in the middle. I got a mechanized division across a gap for a second try to eliminate a pair or Romanian divisions, and then blew open the Italian sector (pretty standard stuff), to start heading west, with the 1st heading south towards Millerovo after bouncing the It8A HQ away from the remaining Italians. However, a 3:1 was NE, to keep a road clogged.
The Romanians ordered a fall back, with units heading to Millerovo, while the 62nd shifted to hold the flank of the southern line. Hollidt also fell back, with a thin line of infantry while the 11Pz headed northwest toward Millerovo. 4th Panzer Army sent two divisions circling behind the lines towards Hollidt and everything else putting up a light screen… safely away from the Russians. Stavka found that three divisions had been too eager, and were out of command range, so my tanks (most notably) didn’t roll any further forward. There wasn’t a lot of combats, and notably, the Hungarians refused to budge to a 2:1 in the north, even as the Italians next door ran for the hills.
Mark put all three new divisions and Kempf in and around Valuyki, and F-Pico went to Millerovo, while I put the 2Tk a bit behind the 69A, ready to use strategic movement down into the fairly open center.