Round 3 - ABtF4 First threat
I had the Brits defending against the SS of Mike Daniels who had exchanged the delights of Amsterdam for Blackpool (a very unequal exchange in my book). My setup had the 6 pdr in the wooden building at the end of the U hexrow road with a dummy gun in an orchard hex in row T with a WW squad underneath just to be a bit random. Two 648s were in the 2 hex stone building up front, one WW squad in the small stone building at the crossroads, 3 squads and LMG in the wooden buildings near the river, and everone else near the rear with the MMG and -1 leader concealed on the roof of the large multihex building and a same-sized dummy stack on the adjacent roof hex.
The squads up front gave up without a fight. Def fire was ineffective, one was broken by Adv Fire and finished off I-don't-know-how, and the other was jumped in CC despite being stealthy. Mike sent a large group right around the North edge of the playing area using armoured assault, sent some more straight up the road towards me and kept a PzIII and halfsquad in the backfield to take potshots at my concealed roof dudes (Not much happened with them. Most of the fire was directed at the dummy stack but they kept their ? and both groups kept skulking down and back up waiting for a target.)
With no SS near the South edge I sent two squads forward through the factories, which we agreed after was probably one too many. They did stop Mike using the hedge line as cover (as they may have caused rout problems or kept broken guys DM) and forced his PzIII in the backfield to move out before being CC'd. In the midgame the SS took the single hex building at the crossroads and started massing his troops North of the victory area, around the orchard hill. Still no CVP scored by the Paras.
In 2 consecutive move phases Mike got good results on inf smoke with 2 smoke counters each turn on the crossroads. This allowed him to get his tanks past row U without interference from my 6 pdr and later to get squads into the N part of the victory area safe from the LMG now stacked with the ATG. The Brits created a hero but def fire v. SS in the streets was ineffective and his troops advanced into my buildings.
Brit reinforcements came on around S18/19. 2 squads with a 9-2 advanced onboard onto 2 SS squads and with a -5 ambush modifier (!) took them out for the first Brit CVP. Big mistake here was not advancing a hero and squad onto a PzIII in an orchard hex in row T. A PIAT shot bounced off the Panzer, my concealed 9-2 and 2 648s all broke under heavy fire and had nowhere to rout to. The PzIII went down soon after but things were grim now for the Brits and I called it a day seeing next to no chance of turning things round in my last player turn.
This was my first playing of ABtF and I really liked it including the map (all apart from the vomit coloured hill). Water shortage really hurts, but it was the SS inf smoke and the breaking of the Brit 9-2 that swung it. Good opponent,good game.
Round 4 - A103 Mayhem in Manila
This page last updated 4/26/00
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