The Dark Sands continues

 We finished up three turns bringing us up to the start of turn 6.  The Commonwealth is pushed back to El Alamein but the Axis is running on shoestring supplies.  On turn 8 the Commonwealth gets a healthy dose of supply (lots of action chits) which could allow them to breakout of Tobruk and cutoff Axis supply if the Axis (me) is not careful.  So far Axis losses have been extremely light with all of them being restored by replacements while Commonwealth losses have been heavy.  Now does the Axis go for the knockout in two (just barely possible) or get a bit more conservative.

The West has not seen much action.  Some reinforcements are stuck due to lack of supply.  An oddity of the chit driven nature of the game. I had no Move chits and only those for Rommel and Afrika Corps and those were more important to use at the front.

In the Center the Commonwealth has been penned up in Tobruk since turn 3.  

In the East the Commonwealth make a stand at El Alamein.  The chits allowed them to make a hasty retreat from Mersa Matrah.

Festung Budapest Campaign 1 Day 01 end

 

The Heavy Winds clearing the smoke and the ROF streak of the German mortar bring campaign day 1 to a standstill.  Another turn and the Russian arty may have done more damage to the defenders and cleared an opening since it never drew a red chit and ended up being very effective after a couple of dud fire phases.  Towards the bottom of the map the berserk Romanian died in a hail of bullets but not till after exposing a dummy stack.  The Mortar (near the FFE C) had one more good roll killing a Russian in the building a couple hexes below it).

Next week is a standalone scenario - not enough time to get purchases and setup done - before starting up day 2.

The Dark Sands Game 2 turns 1 and 2

 Actually entered this nearly a week later - so much to do lately.

We restarted The Dark Sands after I messed up the first game, badly, and the Axis had no chance.  In this one bad combat results and chit draws leave the Commonwealth in a bad starting position for Rommel to come on.  On the plus side they are far away...

The setup.  Doesn't change from game to game but I still post it...

First blood to the UK!  (to be expected) the unit is eliminated with no Commonwealth losses.  The Commonwealth rolls after this would not be good.

End of turn 1.  The Commonwealth is not nearly as far along as the first game.  Partly that is due to my playing better but largely due to bad chit draw order and dice rolls for the Commonwealth.

At the end of turn 2 the Commonwealth is not even on the leftmost map (East, West?   Can't remember).  More sub-optimal chit draws and combat rolls for the UK.  They have taken a LOT of step losses from combat that they can not really afford this early.  Last game the Italians were down to a single unit left and Benghazi had been taken.  Rommel comes on next turn so we see how it will go from here.

ASL: Festung Budapest Campaign game day 1

Finally got round to starting up the Festung Budapest campaign game Tycho and I have been planning on.  Only about a month later then planned.

The setup.  The Russians also need to capture a building or two on the first day.  

End of Russian turn 1.  The smoke made it hard to slow them down but the minefields managed to break a squad.

End of German turn 1.  Smoke is really getting to be a pain.  A 75L gets the first significant kill of the game taking out a T34.

End of German turn 2.  A weather roll of 2 followed by 5 and smoke is even worse.  Stopping the Russians is going to be VERY painful now.

Start of German turn 3 and ANOTHER weather roll of snakes followed by a 5.  All the smoke magically goes away with Russians in exposed positions.  Some hot dice could make this a very bad turn for the Russians.  

After a massive number of rules lookups for 3.5 game turns (ran into something new nearly every player turn) we finished up there for the day.  This is a LOT of counters in a small area...

Panzer Scenario 11 Redux part 2

 Martin and I continued our Panzer game.  The real fun happened on Turn 7 and 8.  And then we found an oops...

We played out a number of turns starting with Turn 6 but the important stuff happened turns 7 and 8.  The Axis infantry moved up so I had an SU-76 go adjacent to spot (spotting is by unit dummy!  So only the SU would have seen them till they fired or came out of full cover anyway).  The Germans did a close assault - wrong phase!  OK, oops.  It cost the Germans a lot of squad power and the Russians an SU-76.  Down at the bottom right the T34s moved around and fired on the Tiger and a PZIV.  The PZIV brewed up but the roll for Special Ammo on the Tiger came up short and the regular shot bounced right off.  All the German return fire did was immobilize a T34 so next turn in the crossfire I was hoping for a kill, Germans got first shot and blew apart both T34s...  

Starting over from Turn 6 in two weeks.  Not making the same mistakes twice (perhaps all new mistakes instead!).

The Dark Sands played by a dummy!

 Lawrence and I continued our game of "The Dark Sands".  This one image sums it up.

The whole time I was trying to figure out how the Germans could win - they could not afford the losses that combat would ensure...  Then Lawrence attacks after I "Brilliantly" surround his units so they would be eliminated for being out of supply and well he DID manage to roll a 6 when no other result would free them but less whiney is the fact that the MOBILE CRT is in use most of the game - the Germans should have been attacking like crazy and forcing the Commonwealth troops to retreat (and thus be eliminated for failure to rout when surrounded as they would have been).  So I updated the VASSAL module with a "little" note not to use the Assault CRT...
Going to start up the campaign again on the 21st.  If I use the wrong table again I need to start playing Axis and Allies, Checkers, or Tic Tac Toe.

Panzer scenario 11 redux

 Finally got round to the rematch of Panzer scenario 11.  Things are going better for the Russians this time around.  When nobody scores a hit things are even...

Situation at the end of turn 5.  The Germans have to pry the village away from the Russians, at least enough to make sure neither side gets points for it.  The Tiger fired at the 2 T34s but with smoke, movement, and cover did not score a hit.  The T34s shot at the Panzers near the bottom left and with range and smoke -same story.  The infantry creeping up to the town have not been spotted yet since they are low crawling.  One of the guns in the town took a pot shot at a tank at the far left but with smoke the to hit was 1 percent and it missed.  With the Germans pumping smoke like crazy it is going to end up a knife fight all around.