J38 – BITTER DEFENCE AT OTTA
Legion defending as the British
JP attacking as the Germans
ROAR (G:B – 9:2) – 8th April, 2007
Time for the 3rd in the Norwegian Sage and ROAR does not seem to give my British much hope this time… the last 2 games have been close, with a win each way… can the British buck the trend here and grab a win against the odds?
Initial Thoughts
Obviously the size of this scenario and the number of terrain transformations in it has put a lot of players off. It has 13.5 turns and 3 maps, though the OoB is not that large. Again the Allies are trying to hold off the powerful Germans in the snow.
Initially both side are relatively equal. The British have all first line units and some useful heavy weapons; they have roadblocks and an AT Gun for the Panzers as well as a 76* MTR to deal with the infantry in the woods. The Germans have a few elite ski troops (2x 548) as well as a company of 1st line units, they have better leaders than the British and a pair of Pz IIA as well. For reinforcements the Germans also have an Assault boat carried contingent of 6x 467 who must cross the river after entering from a pre-registered zone with a random entry turn. The terrain is of some assistance to the British with Hill 621 of Board 2 dominating the terrain.
Unfortunately, as previously noted, the terrain transformations are complicated. Level 2 hills are Woods on the smaller peak of board 2 and board 5’s Woods are Pine Woods; the Pine extends to Board 2 whenever there is an unbroken connection… to be honest it is all a bit confusing. We are playing in VASL and are also suffering from the Snow transformation making the level 0/1 crest lines hard to spot… for that reason I am again turning on Night Shade to darken the features.
Winning is really not going to be that hard for the Germans… they must exit 14VP off the North edge of board 2. 14VP is achievable with just the river crossing reinforcements alone! Wow, this is going to be hard to stop, he has a total of 48VP in his initial force then 16VP in the reinforcements for a total of 64VP! He can afford to lose over 75% of his force and still win!
British Setup
I sat for some time to think of a way to hold off the Germans, it really will not be easy as the British have too weak a force to cover so many possible avenues of attack. In fact I even thought of entirely setting up to the rear and just defending the Board 2 exit zone but that would allow the Germans ease of travel over the board. My end plan is based on the fact that my fortifications and Guns can setup HIP, even out in the open due to his off-board entry… it is a plan that I think will take JP by surprise as it is relatively aggressive for such a small force.
My Roadblocks are HIP and will stay that way until he has committed himself to an attack; they are at 5Q6 and 2R1. The one along the Pine Woods road is obvious, if he attacks that way with an AFV then he is really not thinking right… though he might try to trail break through the trees or remove the Roadblock. The 2R1 block paired with the woods-road one will be able to stop him easily moving anywhere East of Hill 621.
My Guns are the lynch-pins of my defence and I have placed them in what I feel will turn out to be either game-winning or game-losing positions. The 25LL AT Gun is HIP at 2Q6, though he will not stay HIP for long it will hopefully be able to catch his force by surprise; from here this Gun has a commanding view over the battlefield and can cover almost all sectors of the play area – this Gun is also light enough to be easily moved should the need arise. The 76mm MTR is HIP at 2P5 (lucky he doesn’t have OBA); again this is for the LOS this position gives and because this position looks over the most wooded section of the battlefield. Both these Guns will be of some use when his River units attack too.
2B3 & 2B6 457 Since the final defence will be from these hexes, these units are here to dig foxholes and act as reserves
5M2 457 Someone to make him think about his movements down the woods-road
5P4 2x 457 To make him think ‘anti-tank’ these guys are more to deal with infantry movement
2S3 247, ATR AT defence covering the roadblock
2T1 LMG 457, 7-0 To help cover East of Hill 621
2T6 HMG 457, 8-1 In a HIP 1S Foxhole they will cover the Guns and the approaches to the West
2U4 MMG 457, 9-1 In a HIP 1S Foxhole they will cover the Guns and the approaches to the East
2V6 457 Blocking squad
2V8 LMG 457, ART 237 The major force to cover the Western side of Hill 621.
2V10 LMG 457, 8-0 While this unit bolsters the defence on this West flank I need to keep this leader alive.
I suspect that JP will send a HW force over the transformed hill 538 (all level 2 hexes are level 1 woods) to try to fix me into place while his main force will head either through the Pine Woods of Board 5 or along the Western edge of Hill 621.
The Game
TURN 1-3
His men enter the battlefield with about half coming in on Board 2 and the other half on Board 5 – this is not what I expected, the Board 5 is certainly great cover for most of the journey but once the giant woods are left it gets open very fast. I immediately start taking shots with my MTR and AT Gun from the Hill 621 ridge but the majority of my shots for these first 3 turns are absolute rubbish – I rarely gain ROF and only hit a single target (though that ends up assisting in the ELR CRing of one of his MMG 467s). JP has made the decision making in this easy for me by keeping his AFV well out of harms way thus freeing up my AT Gun, he has not taken the opportunity for a combined arms assault and that is fair enough, Blitzkrieg tactics are still in their infancy after all! The position of the Guns on the crest have also allowed me to see the majority of his force distribution as about 80% of his force lost concealment thanks to these vigilant crews!
The German attack seems to be focussed exclusively on the board 5 Pine Woods… he has units in the Board 2 ‘Hill 538’ Woods but they are moving forward at a snail’s pace to avoid my MMG and HMG. The men in the Pine are much more aggressive and in Turn 2 4x 467 with a 9-1 and 8-0 made a massed attempt to swamp a single 457; the plucky British MMC, though the eventual use of FPF, managed to fight them all off – breaking an 8-0, Pinning 2x 467 and seeing 2x 467 broken by fire from the nearby 2x 457 stack. This action alone accounted for the biggest firefight of the whole game thus far and forced JP to pull his head in and withdraw to re-group. In fact Turn 3 saw the British without a single target worthy of firing at while the Germans took a Turn off to gain concealment and prepare for a more concerted push.
As usual JP has stacked his heavy SW together (in this case 2x MMG), they were with 2x 467, 9-2 and had made it to the potentially dangerous 2Z1 hex… from here they could hit my Guns and my MMG position – luckily his shots with this stack were as hopeless as mine! Finally though I was able to score the only hits of this entire first quarter of the game with the Guns and MMG, resulting in the breaking the 9-2 and ELR CRing a 467… again JP withdrew to rally and transfer weaponry while waiting for his concealment to return.
While taking this turn off to sort himself out JP also allowed my British a chance to re-assess the situation and as a result I have made preparations to move my HMG (the 8-1 here was eliminated by a freakish SAN result) by moving the 8-0 up to assist with the portaging of the SW – a 457 LMG will take their place in their foxhole. I have also dug a foxhole at 3B3. I don’t need so many men by the river, but I have started to pull men away from the 2R1 roadblock position (they were replaced by units from the West of the ridge) to go to the 5T1 Pine Woods to cover his expected breakout.
British: 8-1
Germans: 247
We stopped the game here and will take it up another day. But so far we are impressed that this scenario (which I must admit did not appeal to me at all) is really re-creating the synopsis of the story… a German attack stopped cold and needing to find a way to Pin down and out-flank an effective enemy. My money for the win is still on the Germans, but it is not going to be as easy a win as we both expected it would be!
TURN 4-6
We returned to the VASL server to face off for another few hours of this battle.
JPs men had started to really push in earnest down the Bd 5 Woods-Road and it was not long when the leading Pz IIa found the Roadblock, he actually seemed a little surprised! With no-where to go this Panzer turned and fired at my adjacent concealed 2x 457 and in what was soon to be a trend rolled low enough to actually strip concealment and then low enough again to force one of them to break! When he tried to push his luck with infantry though he suffered a break as well and was forced to pull back. Due to my LMG 457, 7-0 (5U2) in the adjacent Pine Woods JP is forced to stick to the centre of this forested area. The only other highlight of Turn 4 for me was a lucky MTR tear on his re-concealed MMG stack – a number of MTR shots hit and in the end he is left with just a solitary MMG squad still standing. My moves continue to attempt to re-position for the eventual break-out from the Bd 5 woods, but the Snow and the mountainous terrain really slows me down and my HMG is out of action due to movement for a whole turn. Things have not been helped by my continuation of the last playing’s DRs – my Guns are VERY lucky to get even a single ROF shot, and they very rarely hit! My MMG also malfunctioned during my Turn, though it was immediately repaired.
At the start of Turn 5 his boats appear on-board. Man, this is just so tough! Not only do I have a massive force to contend with on Board 5 but now I have to think about a bunch of guys assaulting in boats! Even without the boats this would have been an extremely difficult battle to win. As mentioned my MMG was immediately repaired, but a great LOS spotted by JP allows him to shoot at the MMG 457, 9-1 who had withdrawn to try to reposition themselves… naturally both these units fail their MCs. Due to the danger of being swamped by Assault Moving or Advancing Germans my defenders in the Bd 5 forest have had to withdraw to the tip of the forest (5T4) which has given him free-reign to send lots of infantry forward to attempt to clear the Roadblock here (5Q6) – when that goes I shall be really hard-pressed to stop his Panzers with their combined 10 Exit VP from getting off-map (the other Pz IIa had moved up to join the first by now). I have skulked a lot this turn and also made a lot of MCs for the MTR who is getting shot at from absolutely everyone with LOS – thankfully his 8ML has passed everything thrown at him; when this unit is neutralised I am going to lose my best Defensive option.
My 9-1 has still not rallied and to try to take advantage of this JP has started moving a few units over to the base of Hill 621. Luckily some sneaky LOS and the fact that I have been careful to not allow him too much access to the West side of the Bd 5 Woods has been able to stop this movement cold and even caused some casualties. In fact, this turn (6) really started to bite into his force. My 76mm MTR scored a CH that ended up vaporising 2x MMC (548, 467 – 2W5) and then a lucky series of hits from my usually-poor-shooting men eliminated a 9-1 leader and another MMC. Mind you… this is no great danger to the Germans… I have caused 10CVP of damage… this still leaves him with 54 CVP available for exit – he only needs 14 of those to get off-board! On the negative side, he has now managed to clear the vital Bd 5 Roadblock and a lucky long-range shot from a solitary 467 managed to break the HMG’s manning infantry, as well as ELR breaking the leader accompanying them!
Germans: 9-1, 548, 2x 467, 237
We again stopped the game here until more time presented itself later (and hopefully to allow the Dicebot to find me some effective To Hit DRs!).
The Boat-borne units are moving very slowly, they have to man-handle their boats from the Board’s-edge to the River’s edge and then make their slow way across the River between some convoluted island systems. I really have no brain-space to worry about them.. if they get across then they get across, the only danger I can focus on right now is the immanent out-break from the Bd 5 forest
TURN 7
To start the German turn off JP scores one of his famous Rally Fate rolls (5 in 3 games now) but any hopes I had that this would signal a reverse in my atrocious luck to date is quickly squashed when he lucks out with a massive hit on my MTR crew and kills them outright. The Germans move forward with their Panzers in the lead, they Bypass Sleaze a 457 in the Pine Woods and he is thus broken and forced to Surrender, but not before the AFV who moved into his hex malfunctions his 20L MA.
As for my shots… my AT Gun still couldn’t get ROF in his turn but in my own turn it goes on a totally useless ROF binge; his only targets are Infantry and the 1FP AP rounds don’t have much chance of doing any damage even with a CH – eventually this Gun just Malfunctions to save itself any further embarrassment! To end Turn 7 I have the great pleasure of watching the Germans roll low for almost every shot they take while my men still cant pass even a NMC, let alone anything more tricky – my men would probably break off of a PTC their luck is so bad! After the dust settles I have seen my 7-0, HMG 457 position reduced to a single 2nd Line HS. My movements though have allowed me to place a lot more units on the ridge and I now have 2x ATR, HMG, MMG and my 9-1 up or around here… this is really going to be the last gasp defence!
TURN 8-12
With Turn 8’s start I was rapidly losing not only men and defensive positions but also interest in this battle. While both JP and I knew there was a chance that the British might be able to scrape together a defence to hold the Germans off I personally think this was more because the Germans spent so long developing their attack and then switching nearly half their force to climb the Hill to eradicate my positions here… Most of the ASLers who had played this battle as the Germans (and had contacted me) had won it by half-way through!
My problems really started to compound with the loss of the MTR position in Turn 7, although it had not really caused too much damage, its location and possible ROF was threat enough to slow the Germans down. Once the AT Gun malfunctioned there was nothing to stop the Panzers from moving freely… my ATR were in the wrong locations (either due to LOS or range) and the Roadblocks had been cleared or left behind. Even worse than that was the Germans with their 6 range IFP being able to take numerous shots against the ridge which invariably rolled low enough to make the damage accrue. All this was helped by the positioning of 2x 467, LMG, 8-1 on one of the islands.. these Boat-borne attackers gave up their mobility to stop my Routs and harass rear-ward moving units – it really was a very good idea and raised havoc with my plans to reinforce the final stand positions.
Once turns 10-12 rolled around I had managed to cover the Pine forest side of the hill reasonably well though I had no way to stop him getting his 2 Panzers off (9 Exit VP; -1 due to the malfunctioned MA), but had just a single 457 (2B6) to cover the attack zone for his Assault Boat units. As JP (under my urging) hurried his attack a few more German MMC fell as they attempted to get off, but eventually (and fittingly) the 457 fell to a ‘3’ attack DR and that opened the door for his remnants to waltz off in peace!
The Germans have exited 14 CVP.
GERMAN VICTORY
This game was actually quite close in the end, but again I think this had a lot to do with the pace of the Germans attack and the diversion of so many forces to attack the hill. Even if my men were to have rallied up on the hill (the broken AT Gun crew failed to rally 5 times before he was put out of his misery) they would not have had the LOS nor the mobility to have stopped a mass rush of Germans towards the Exit zones. Also, more men attacking towards the exit would have allowed JP to sacrifice a few Squads to eat up First Fire thus ensuring the rest of his men got off!
I really enjoyed the first 6 turns of this game… it was of a chess match-like intensity, but the last 8-12 turns were very tedious and as such there is no way I could recommend this Scenario in it’s present form.
Conclusion
Well, there are 2 ways to look at this loss for the Allies. Firstly they did get totally diced from the start of the game to the end, the German’s attack rolls were so consistently low and the British morale checks (with the exception of the 76* MTR crew) were consistently high. The attacks that the British made were again consistently poor, their 3 ROF weapons rarely got ROF and even when they did they rarely caused any damage. JP only got 2 SAN and both of them hit… I had numerous SAN rolls and about 90% of them missed. However this would really serve to only cover up the real problem with this scenario…
There is a lot to like about this scenario… unfortunately there is a lot more to not like about it! Despite the excellent idea for the battle (a nuggetty British Force holding up a superior German force) the Terrain SSR were too much of a distraction to make this Scenario replayable for me. On top of that it has some real balance issues and in the end I was looking at it as a Norwegian version of ‘A Bridge Too Far’ – i.e. it is not a matter of who will win so much as seeing how long the British can hold off the inevitable!
The Terrain SSR were just plain old annoying… even with VASL being able to transform the map (we put down single-hex overlays to show the transformations) it was too much of a bother sometimes. Having to remember which Woods were level 2 and which were Level 1; having to remember that Boards 2’s Hill 538 is all level 1 with the level 2 hexes being Woods; having to remember that the marsh hexes were Woods hexes… Bah! Too much for what seemed to be mostly cosmetic changes. I would certainly suggest that the Pine Woods SSR be dropped completely, not only would it take away a lot of the LOS headache but the slower Woods would force the Germans to hustle a bit more. As for the Hill 538 transformations? Surely there is an overlay that could do the job… something must be easier than having to constantly make the mental effort (in the midst of fighting a tough battle) to see Level 2 Hill as Level 1 Woods.
As is obvious from even the Initial Impressions I had of the battle there are some serious Balance Issues. It is just too hard for the British to win this Scenario – hey winning isn’t everything and despite what I was up against I was not going to avoid playing because I couldn’t win – but there are a lot of players who will glance at this scenario and immediately say “No Way!”. How can this be rectified? Taking the British Balance could be an option; this means that the Germans have to get 17 Exit VP (27% of their OoB) off-board instead of just 14 Exit VP (22%). Like the previous Norway Scenarios we played I would like to see a CVP Cap for the Germans too… though JP disagrees with this. I think a CVP cap represents the Germans feelings about this Campaign, about the early-war desire to avoid losses.
There is one big positive about this game though; I have enjoyed the Defensive challenge it presents. All through these Norwegian battles my Allied defenders have presented me with a chance to expand upon this part of my ASL play. In this way sometimes scenarios are superior to CGs – they present one with limited aims and forces and say ‘make the most of it’. I really feel that I am gaining from playing these scenarios; tactically as well as historically as I get a feel for the Norwegian Campaign. In fact, while JP is probably the happiest I have ever seen him… allowing his Montgomery-esque style of attack full reign (Build up, Attack, Regroup, repeat formula…), I am getting a chance to push the envelope in a way that has become stale through the masses of forces allowed to me when Defending in a CG.