BERLIN: RED VENGEANCE
29th Night
JP defending as the SS
I have been busy moving house so I did not have too much time up my sleeve for studying the map. At the end of the last game he had established a toehold at the exit to the Kronprinzen bridge and, given that this was a night game I felt it was my best opportunity to launch a counter attack. I declared an attack as did Legion. Unfortunately the dice gods were in his favour and he won the dr battle – so I had to setup first and he would gain all the advantage of seeing my setup and moving first.
SETUP
I put an engineer and FT + DC in S10 along with a 7-0 and DC they had a HS engineer in S9 with a captured FT for support. (The T10 building had been rubbled due to fire in the last game, I technically controlled T10 and T11 while he controlled U9 and U10 but, he was going first so I had to setup a hex away to be safe.) The plan is to counter attack at the exit to Kronprinzen bridge and clean up my lines using the darkness etc.
BUYS
I had 34 pts and so bought 2x Hitler Youth Platoons (10 pts); an SS rifle platoon (8 pts); a PzKw VIB platoon (13 pts); and 3 CPP of fortifications. I put extra wire in my EE road defence (waiting for the 30PM eastern edge attack) and a proper roadblock on the Moltke bridge. this left me 2 fort points which I used as concealment counters.
The buying of the King Tiger was a bit of a gamble and I basically want to use them as mobile pillboxes to shore up any falling defence line later in the game as he will eventually run out of infantry and start buying tanks too.
TURN 1
Disaster!! He had setup a deathstar in AA11 which, thanks to the starshells from his U10 troops allowed him to get LOS to my guys in S10, a snake eyes to start the game put any question of me counterattacking straight out the window. The squad was CR’ed and the ldr killed, he then followed up with a 2,1 from the same FG at the broken HS and it died leaving a FT and 2 DC’s for him to pick up and use. He had what looked like 3 squads in every one of his available 3 hexes on my side of the river and they just swamped and surrounded my HS engineer carrying the Russian FT, I CRed a squad and KIAed one of his engineers but he melee’d my engineer HS in CC and now he almost has his FT back and a decent salient. While I lack the troops to dig him out of it.
In my turn I opened up with my deathstar. I have 2; one in the ‘stag at X18 level 1 to cover the Moltke bridge and the roads in row ‘P’ and ‘Q’ so he can not expand his bridge head too far. The other is in I18 level 1 which is more than 16 hexes from his deathstars and it can cover the open area in front of the ‘stag. This stack KIAed 1.5 conscript squads in the open field in front of the ‘stag. I bought on my Tigers and troops, mainly in the eastern edge of the board. My engineer HS died but took a 458 in CC with him.
TURN 2
He cleared the wire on the Marschall bridge (EE17) and now there was only one more wire on that bridge to slow him down (EE18). His men streamed across the Kronprinzen bridge as it was not illuminated and the whole aspect of the game changed. I am now fighting a battle of containment rather than being in a position to kill him as he charges the bridges. In my turn a run of high dr’s left me with little starshells and those I did get illuminated wasted space. I re-arranged my defensive lines but overall it is looking grim, the only highlight was when his MTR malf’ed on an IR round. I am really missing my MTR’s now, if you intend to play this game make sure you keep one MTR buy up your sleeve for the night scenario’s as this game could have been a win for me if I had been able to illuminate the bridges properly.
TURNS 3-6
He sent a platoon across the open ground towards the ‘stag and, although one got broken by fire the other 2 entered, I moved up to counterattack and a CH from one of his 152mm guns obliterated both of the 447’s that were half of my ‘stag force. The other half was my 658 and 2 HMG’s with a concealed crew and a 9-2 leader, they were able to get an ambush against one of his squads (not too hard with –1 stealthy –2 leader, -2 concealed and him having a +1 lax!!) and killed it – only one squad of his left!! However, these ‘stag guys were broken and the ldr wounded in his next Prep fire leaving him with a good order squad in the ‘stag and me with no-one in good order. He took a few hexes and then jumped into the hex where my Wnded 9-2 and my broken 658 were and CR’ed the 658 in the CC.
On turn 6 his starshells dropped all around the ‘stag so he could stop me from reinforcing but one avenue remained open – hex AA18 was still in the dark and I ran 2x 658, LMG, 8-1 into the Reichstag where I advance fired at the melee and broke his squad for no loss to my already broken men before jumping in and CC’ing him to death. I had also (way back in turn 2) placed a squad in T19 and he had not fired at it. When the starshells dropped in turn 6 they (finally, I had been waiting four turns for this…) did not illuminate the row ‘T’ and so I sent this squad along T18,17,16 and into U15 then advanced into U14 to take the foxhole which put no-mans land in front of the ‘stag and has stopped him from entering during the re-fit phase.
Lots of other fun things happened as well, such as my King Tiger blowing his T34/85 into smithereens and a merry little dance all around the N8 building which he entered when the illumination wasn’t available. (He ended up controlling N8 levels 0 and 1 and I control all the rest of the building) as well as a Human Wave at the Marschall bridge that got atomised by my other King Tiger defending the bridge exit – it rof’ed twice for three hits and only one and a half squads made it across, they got involved in a big melee in GG18 where they killed 2.5 squads for the loss of only the half squad, leaving him with a squad on the other side of the river.
FINAL THOUGHTS
This game could have easily been a major victory for me if only I had won the setup dr and had some of my MTR’s still in the game. Overall I lost pretty much all the infantry I had bought but still have my King Tigers so I guess I came out in the black.
Brown – Russian
Blue – SS
Purple – No-Man’s Land