BERLIN: RED VENGEANCE
30th PM
JP defending as the SS
Well, things are getting hot around here but I feel that I am still doing OK as he has a lot of territory to cross before getting to the Reichstag. Last game I ended up with 17 squad equivalents which is an excellent result for me and I have a lot of confidence that I can win this CG. My buys are:
– Engineer Platoon, full, on board – I paid the extra to get them on board as I want the FT available from turn 1. These guys were expensive but with their underlined morale I feel they will be the lynchpin of my defence.
– SS Rifle Squad, full – with our depleted ELR’s buying Hitler youth or Volksturm would be a waste of points.
– StuG IIIG Platoon, full – I wanted more SMOKE capability and thought about buying the medium AT section for the same price but armour has a –1 depletion roll while guns have a +1 drm so in the end the choice was obvious, I lose the HIP ability that AT guns have but gain mobility. There is now a +3 drm on any of his Fighter bomber’s sighting TC so I am of the opinion he won’t be buying any air support anyway, and if he does I will just drive them into buildings or rubble to give him a tough drm on his sighting TC.
– MG Section, depleted – this one nearly gave me a heart attack!! They were depleted which means I roll a dr for each MG and a 5 or 6 means it is lost, I rolled 2 dice, one for each MMG and rolled double ‘5’, so lost both. Now I am thinking “please give me both heavies!!” and I rolled two dice again for a boxcars!! Now I have lost all 4 MG’s and am somewhat distressed, in desperation I double checked the rules (hey, who doesn’t??) and found the last part of rule B. which said I must re-roll until at least one unit is depleted and one is retained. Phew!! On the subsequent re-roll I only lost a MMG so am happy with that.
– I also bought 6 CPP of Fortifications for roadblocks and fortifying buildings as I am going to have to make a stand soon mainly due to running out of positions to hide from his mega fire groups.
SETUP
I will be going attack this game and really hope to setup last so I can start with a counter attack of his few troops that are in the north western corner of Himmler’s House. Obviously a few well placed sacrificial HS’s will also stop his FG’s from having concealment and he knows I have some decent fire groups of my own so I feel he will be the one doing the skulking for the 1st turn which suits me.
The idea here is to kill the guys in Himmler’s house and then advance to safety in L15 where none of his FG’s can see me. I will pop SMOKE in N15 to keep them safe from return fire in turn 1. I also have engineers with FT and DC ready to dive in and finish them off.
The FG in X20 (2) can fire at any of his guys trying to reinforce Himmler’s House and, thanks to his Katyusha barrage and the fact that it rubbled Z20 I also have a fairly good LOS to part of the eastern edge of the board where he can now bring troops on from. Just in case they do that I also have a crew and HMG in X19 to cover the road in front of Himmler’s house.
The 2 HMG’s in I18 will fire at any of his fire groups in the Customs House and then advance to I19 to cover the area in front of the Reichstag.
There are 2 mediums and 2 squads in F18 will fire at the western edge of Himmler’s House for support fire and can also do some long range fire at the area in front of the Reichstag.
In the eastern area of the board I am setup for his oncoming hordes and have some of my troops in cellars as I am expecting OBA or a Katyusha barrage around here, this area also has my King Tiger in it just in case he brings on tanks.
I hope to SMOKE a lot of his FG’s as I am finding it hard to retain control of the battlefield due to being forced to skulk a lot.
Overall I am hoping to keep him tied up in Himmler’s House so we fight for it in the next Night game and want to keep him away from the road EE15-25 where I have a lot of Wire setup for my last stand defence in the next 2 games.
TURN 1
We both went attack and I won the dr battle so he had to set up first.
The game started well for me, I SMOKEd N14 to protect my fire group in M14 from all his FG’s near the Kronprinzen bridge. SMOKE in EE14 also protected the left flank of my guys setup to defend the eastern edge of the board. My Prep double broke his engineer and FT in Himmler’s House while everybody else there was broken or pinned; I also berserk-ed one of the guys there as well. Unfortunately I also malfed both HMG’s in I19. I did little movement other than to re-set my Himmler’s House defence in preparation for his counterattack. In his Defensive he dropped a Katyusha barrage which errored to FF19 and broke every squad within its blast radius, including the HIP in DD19, all of a sudden my left flank was wide open! He also dropped OBA on I19 for no damage. I advanced a squad into K11 against the PINned guy but we ended up in melee.
As soon as he setup his reinforcements I knew that I had not put enough firepower on to the eastern area of the board, there was about 15 squads ready to arrive and Legion said there were more to come next turn. This will hurt!
In his Prep one of his HMG groups went on a ROF tear and was slaughtering my guys, Legion kindly reminded me that I had scored a SAN and the ‘1’ – yes, you guessed it – killed the 10-2 leader directing the fire and both crews with him failed the LLMC. His OBA broke the ldr and squads at the now malf’ed HMG site I19. He had an 76L ART Gun malfunction. And then he started streaming on-board, he did a lot of search dr’s obviously looking for hidden surprises and as he probed forward I disrupted a pair of Moabits (now with an ELR of zero these guys are next to useless unless you want to draw fire). At the Moltke bridge I killed 1 squad equivalent trying to cross into Himmler’s House and also double broke 1.5 Moabits in the house. During CC my man in Melee died for no loss to him but in F14 one of his infiltrators from last game CR’ed when it tried to CC a Hitler Youth.
TURN 2
In my prep I SMOKEd his BB13 FG and also killed a 628 squad as well as berserk-ing a 458 but in the process my ART in I19 ran out of SMOKE. I placed a DC in Himmler’s House and his OBA scored its first red chit. F14 continued Melee and that was all that happened. Other than me trying to re-organise my defence at the eastern edge. I was unable to rally anyone in GG19 where all my broken units had run from the Katyusha so now I knew I was in serious trouble.
In his Prep his OBA red-chitted out (this OBA was left over from last game where it double red-chitted – 5 chit draws and 4 of them were red!) He took a lot of Opportunity Fire for his FG’s were obviously waiting for a HIP to expose itself. He started moving into the HH18 block and things were looking bad, he also bought on 2 FT tanks plus another half a dozen squads and I exposed a HIP 236 and PSK but did not get the kill – he died for FTR later in the turn.
At Himmler’s House the battle was going well, too well, I KIA’ed a berserk HS and a berserk 458 with a 36FP PB shot.
His FT tanks opened up and the 1st one rolled 6,6 (yay!) while the second KIA’ed a 658.
TURN 3
The eastern edge is turning into a rout and I decided to send as many people as I could from the western edge across to the eastern edge but, its going to be 2-3 turns before they get there. I parked my King Tiger in DD21 and it was the only thing between him and the Reichstag – a SAN broke my last squad in the DD19 block. I lost a StuG that also tried to get to the eastern side from his now repaired ART piece in level 1 Z9 – that gun has killed about 4 of my tanks this CG; brilliant placement!
He mopped up the 2.5 broken squads in the HH18 block and also got a man into the DD19 block. I have about 5 squads spread across FF22 to II23 but he is now driving his FT tanks to 2 hexes away and just blasting at them, I can’t hold him much longer.
TURN 4
I fired for little effect, the guys in the FF22 block can’t pull back without being under fire, quite honestly the speed of his advance took them by surprise, Legion was happy to lose squads to draw fire and just kept moving men along the river road where I am unable to mount a defence due to the massive number of fire groups with LOS to the road-side buildings.
In desperation I decided to put my King Tiger into the building in DD22 where it has LOS to FF24 so I can keep his FT tanks at bay and will pull all my men out of the FF22 block into the DD22 block with a view if holding that block until my western troops arrive and then counterattacking north into the DD19 block. Good plan, huh? Except for one thing: My Tiger dropped straight into the cellar as it drove into the building. At this point I realised that with minimal AT defence he would be at the door of the Reichstag by the end of turn 5 and I felt that holding on to the ‘stag would be well nigh impossible and I surrendered.
THE WRAP UP…..
Great game!!! Best CG I have ever played!! Loved it!!
However, for as long as he can rubble the ‘stag I doubt the German can win, maybe a house rule that the Reichstag cannot be Rubbed or Blazed would be good, if the ’stag had been in one piece I would have fought out the last 2 games but so much had been rubbled that he was able to fire at guys on the western side of the building not only from the west but also from the east!!! The rubble also meant I lost 2 levels where I could have troops and also lost the fortified location bonus as well as the critically important fact that he could not advance into it while a squad was there.
This was my 1st time playing this CG and if I were to do it again I would try to hold a line AA10 to LL12 on the north side of the river as that stops him from crossing the Marschall and Kronprinzen bridges. Quite honestly, I would try to hold that line for the entire game, that way when he gets the 30PM troops on the eastern edge south of the river you can put some serious flanking fire on him. I underestimated how many troops would enter in that area and it was just a bad tactical error on my behalf.