ASl Scenario FB2. The Devil is Free to Have a Try (From Festung Budapest)

 Got in a game of Festung Budapest finally.  I've had this one for years and Tycho and I were both looking for a meaty campaign but I have the attention span of a...   (so I needed one with five or fewer campaign dates).  FB's first campaign is close to that (6 or 7?) so we went with that.  A big city fight with lots of late war heavy metal.  Just the thing.  First we needed a lesson in the terrain and even after playing I'm not sure about it.  EMRR is inherent but the LOS examples do not seem to match it being inherent...  Well it didn't matter too much in the end anyway.

The map setup.  The Russians have 7 turns to get 4 of 6 things done. Take some buildings, Takes a couple other hexes, Destroy the 75L, cause a certain number of casualties, or take 10 or 14 other buildings.  So quite a bit to watch out for.  The Axis are under severe Ammo Limits too - units will ELR if they make a bad IFT roll and SW have a lowered breakdown number.

Obligatory First Blood! shot.  Axis MTR gets a crit on a SU76.

End of turn 1.  Another SU76 is Immobilized by the MTR and another SU76 is Pinned by a little sniper (it would soon be recalled too).

End of turn 2.  The Russians probably need to go faster.  The Axis have a couple of squads ELR due to ammo shortage and an MMG goes Poof - along with the MTR which rolls boxcars and is removed due to Ammo Shortage.  The Russian smoke doesn't help much but it keeps me from firing with the 75L (but he is not aware of that).

End of turn 3.  The Russians make good progress to the North (left side) but do poorly in the south.  Getting across the EMRR is not going to happen.

In the Russian turn 4 prep I darn near failed a PMC.  The SU76 got a ROF tear including 2 critical hits on a stone building.  Other shots do not go as well and I manage to retreat most of my guys.  Then in the Axis turn 4 the 75L fires and kills the SU76 and then hits the stack nearby, a 3MC I think (I now remember the 8-1 leader rolled boxcars for the MC) and the Russian player conceded the game.  With 3 movement phases left he still had none of the VC locations and the two he was heading for were fortified and well defended).

The scenario is an interesting one, there are so many options it is not possible to setup a perfect defense.  The Ammo Shortage rules had the Axis forces withering away just from shooting (these are unique for this campaign).  In a few weeks we will be starting up Campaign 1 which has slightly different entering locations (A35 is an entry hex while still being in the Axis setup area) and the first campaign date VC are much simpler.  

The Dark Sands full campaign start

 Lawerence and I started our up The Dark Sands full campaign today.  Even with the test game we played a couple weeks back there were still mistakes.  I don't think any that are critical (since the opening turns are very scripted but still a bit annoying).

The map at start.  The UK will get pretty much all of the chits which makes the unit count misleading.  The Italians are going to take a beating.  This is actually a good thing simulation wise, in a couple of other games it is nearly impossible to replicate what happened to the Italians in this time frame.

The end of turn 1.  Most of the Italians have been eliminated already.  The rest fall back to Tobruk which was a bad move on my part - I should have read the TEC more completely.  The forts did nothing for them.  The would have been far more useful blocking the roads.

The end of turn 2.  All of the Italians are gone and the UK has forces in the Axis setup area.  Due to scripting the Italians had no chance but I might have saved one or two.  Also due to scripting the UK has no chance of keeping the turn 3 Axis reinforcements from arriving - though with slightly different luck and worse play on my part the UK could have gotten a LOT of troops into the Axis setup area.

Thoughts so far.

1 - A good simulation that is easy to play.

2 - Highly scripted due to the chits and reinforcements and withdrawals are on a set schedule with no consideration of what is happening in this particular game but the scripted nature of the chits also normally helps ensure things go semi-historically (at least so far).

3 - No tracking supply points!  Hurray!  The action chits handle that aspect of things pretty well (at least so far - if the Germans don't get past Tobruk and still have supply limited by lower chit counts it would seem a bit strange but I don't think that will happen).

Two complete game turns completed in four hours.  Not bad considering rules reading involved and this are pretty full turns in regards to number of chits to be played.  Next game is set for next week.  The Afrika Korps and Rommel come in and swing things back to Axis initiative.

ASL scenario Battlegroup Nor Mons (Beyond the Beachhead pack from Bounding Fire Productions 16) (conclusion)

 Tycho and I finished up our Beyond the Beachhead game today.  We played out a half turn of it by email (was planning on more but life and rules lookups got in the way).

Last report left off with the German turn 2 done.  We finished the UK turn 2 and then I rolled for wind and got snakes followed by a 5 (or whatever causes the wind to increase).  This had the effect of getting rid of all the smoke.  I was shaking with that one, at least I had a turn to scatter my troops so they did not all get nailed by arty.  Tycho then managed to draw two red chits.  The Germans were off to the races to boot.  One Sherman (top right ) backed up one hex and was hit and turned into a burning wreck by the Stug on the road (lucky shot with the CE being just enough to make a hit).  Another Sherman bogged backing up from the PZIV (middle) and his fire was ineffective.  At this point the game was called.

Probably a good scenario but the luck at the worst times struck the UK player combined with some bad placement.  If the UK arty had come down when the smoke cleared the Germans would not have had a clear shot to the VP buildings but also by that time the UK troops were mostly broken or out of position.  I would play this one again sometime but with so many scenarios...

The Dark Sands Learning game

 Lawrence and I dug out The Dark Sands for a learning game.  It was different enough to be hard to "grok" just from reading the rules.  We played out the first turn of the second scenario (where the Germans first arrive).

The setup for the scenario.

End of first turn.  Where did the UK go?

It seems like this will be a nice simulation of the war in the desert.  The other ones we tried were too fiddly (SCS Afrika 2) or didn't have the flavor of the campaign (The Afrikan Campaign - which also had some major rules issues).  This one has no supply point tracking - that is handled by the chits available to each side each game turn, this does tend to choreograph (or railroad) the game a bit but much of what happened was outside the control of the participants so we will see how it feels.  As an example - the commanders on the ground had troops constantly taken away for other theaters and it is very hard to simulate that since some of the taking away was due to success in the desert earlier...

Next game for this, the start of a full campaign, starts on the 20th. 

ASL scenario Battlegroup Nor Mons (Beyond the Beachhead pack from Bounding Fire Productions 16)

 Started this scenario today.  The Germans have 7 turns to take the buildings indicated.  They also must clear the UK off of the 2nd level locations in the big circle.  The UK gets VP for each good order unit on a hill hex at game end.

The Germans get a 150mm Rocket attack at game start, all it did was DM a single unit on the hill.  The UK got two Arty types,  One was 80mm and the other 120mm.  The Germans got another OBA as well, also 80mm with smoke and HE.

Time was short and we had a couple of rules lookups so we only made it through the end of the German turn two.  The German (me) is more afraid of UK arty then offensive use so I smoke the field to keep the UK from getting a LOS to my guys.  Worked out quite well since the UK arty request was blocked by smoke.

ASL scenario Into the Rubble 3. Tough as Nails. (Finished it up)

 Tycho and I finished up the New Years game this day.  Here is a link back to it.  Turn 4 is what was completed this day.

Writeup

ASL Scenario IRT03 Tough as Nails.

 Keeping our News Years day tradition alive Tycho and I played ASL.  After the last game with way too few counters we decided on a Stalingrad slugfest with BFP's Tough as Nails.  Boatloads of squads, flamethrowers, Tanks, Guns, Stukas, and MOL-Ps.  Whats not to like?

We played till the end of the Russian turn 4 movement phase.  Tycho probably needed to push his Germans a little faster (taking risks with the tanks to sleaze freeze perhaps) and was nearly out of time to get to the second VC building.  Notable items were his Stukas doing two mistaken attacks before finally attacking a stack of my reinforcements (I got cocky by that point and the Stuka punished me appropriately).  The last Stuka attacks went after Dummies.  The MOL-P managed to take out a Flame Throwing tank after not killing it with the first hit (and surviving the FT attack).  Another notable was a Russian squad killing 2.5 Germans squads in HTH melee and only being reduced in return.  Finally the Snipers were active and the German 10-2 was wounded early and turned into a rally machine and the Russian sniper kept DMing the same squad over and over that the leader was trying to rally - at least the leader was not killed.  The Russians had two leaders wounded but I forget how though I think one was a sniper.

Next up is Beyond the Beachhead 16 on the 16th.