Round 5 - SP24 Forest Fighting In Latvia
I had the Russians defending against Mike Stanbridge's Germans and made some big mistakes in my setup. It didn't occur to me to use a 3 squad foxhole as someone mentioned on the list the other day, and my forward pickets were one hexrow too far forward allowing Germans to assault move adjacent and enter CC with concealment (as my def fire was pants). Nevertheless one conscript took a 467 down with him in CC on my left flank. The other conscript picket voluntarily broke, routed back to the only Russian leader in a trench and rolled snakes on its first rally attempt only to become disrupted by HoB and surrender shortly after. My real problem was in the centre where a 447 malfed his LMG, got broken by advancing fire (I think) and took an age before it finally rallied - this left a huge gap in the middle of the board for Mike to move through. I decided to try and push one of my guns out of the clearing along the path but as Dave Schofield later pointed out this is probably 'not a good idea'. I think he was being polite.
Mike also had a free run down my left flank and my eyes lit up when he moved 2 stacks adjacent to my forward gun in the clearing, both in his CA pointing to the board edge. The other gun had LOS to one of these stacks and my LtMtr in woods behind the clearing had LOS to one other Germ squad on the other side of the clearing. This was the time for some big dice action but I think I fired at the wrong targets in the wrong order - the MTR boxed his first shot (never repaired), both guns hit with their first shots breaking 2 squads, but the one with the adjacent targets malfed on an IF shot and the crew surrendered.
By this time Mike had captured the 3 entrenchment hexes he needed and set about finishing off my remaining gun which kept changing CA to meet the main threat, which was now from all sides as one squad had run right around my right flank surviving def fire in the grain there. In my penultimate player turn I malfed the gun on another IF shot and made a real Horlicks of my movement. I had the leader, 2 squads and LMG in a trench line in the brush on my right so they could either move to threaten a 4th entrenchment in the last turn for a win, or pull back to help out the gun. In the event I managed to move them to one of the few places on the board where they'd be in a position to do neither - what a gimp!
I had one 'hail Mary' chance at glory at the end (a looonnnggg shot) as Mike had earlier set my captured crew free in order to advance onto my MTR squad. They tried to assault move onto their own gun and make a recovery attempt to pull a very unlikely one out of the fire, but they faced bucketloads of def fire and predictably got shot up in the process (interesting to note that unarmed units are still good order and the gun didn't have to be working to meet the VC, only posessed).
This was a good little scenario (like all the Scwerepunkt ones I've seen) to end 3 days of enjoyable gaming. Many thanks to Steve and Trevor for their efforts over the weekend - see you all next year.
cheers,
Dave 'should unpunch my counters before going to a tournament' Tye
This page last updated 4/26/00
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