By the time we finished off the Primosole Bridge campaign, Valor of the Guards had come out, and we wanted to try our hands at that. But before going into something else complicated, we decided to play a regular scenario in May of 2008…:
With the end of the yearlong campaign in Sicily, Patch and I started a new scenario tonight. At one point the plan had been to go right into VotG, but we agreed that it would be nice to get away from HASL maps for a game and cleanse the palate a bit. We also realized that we had never used American 666’s against each other. There’s been a couple with elites, but not any with 1st line troops.
So we started “Escape to Wiltz” from Journal 3 tonight. The Americans are trying to exit the west side of Board 39 after coming on the north side of Board 17 on turns 1 and 2. The Germans come on the east side on turn 1, and another 3 squads come on the south on turn 2. Both sides have a light amount of toys—the Germans get the usual suspects and two PSK, the Americans get the usual suspects plus a M5 Stuart and a M8 Greyhound AC.
Since neither of us showed a particular preference, I rolled randomly and took the Americans. As ROAR shows it 31 to 23 pro-German… and with my record, I took the balance. So Patch went first:
Initial German movement, the American entry area is marked in blue. Green arrows are movement, blue is advance, red is rout.
I had had just enough time to fiddle with the opening before Patch’s move arrived, and he ended up about where I figured. This made figuring out my first move a bit faster, as I already had some thoughts about what I didn’t like in what I saw.
We thought at first I’d lost my initial HS in the intersection, but Patch realized that he’d forgotten CX, which reduced it from a K/1 to a 1MC—which he promptly failed. But, Patch didn’t realize what my plan was yet, and neglected to put down an FL.
Movement in the first American turn.
Patch reacted to my turn about the way I hoped he would. He looked at the firepower that was facing him and went for cover. Sadly, part of his force is marching down the board 39 road, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Thankfully, that’s true in reverse as well.
German movement with their turn 1 forces. I got my first break of the game in W3. 😀
And the turn 2 platoon took the obvious good routes:
German movement with the turn 2 forces. Exit area is marked for reference.
We finished off the evening partway through my turn 2. Patch is getting very worried that he hasn’t been able to stop my movement yet. It’s pretty obvious that the main fight is going to be over the area just in front of the woods covering the exit area.
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