VASLeague Round 2 - AAR Part 1

Welcome to Part One of the VASLeague Round 2 AAR I'm writing. At least I'm pretty sure it's going to be more than one part given that all my other AARs are. Let's get to it!

My second round opponent was LTC Paul who is a reservist in the United States and has a PhD to boot. Given that we were in the same time zone I thought it would be a breeze to hook up and finish the match. Alas, it wasn't until last Wednesday when we were finally able to conclude things due to a protracted game of computer tag. I'm just glad that we had the two months to be able to play. When real life rears its ugly head wargames get shoved in the corner.

We decided on S18 - Baking Bread (available originally in MMP's Operations magazine but now downloadable here). Baking Bread is an allusion to the tense firefight for Bread Factory #2 (those crazy Soviet names!) during the battle of Stalingrad in October of 1942. The scenario was adaptable, presumably, from Red Barricades, the HASL module that many consider the best ASL experience, bar none.

Compared to the other ASLSK scenario set in Stalingrad (S2 War of the Rats), Baking Bread is a claustrophobic, dense, urban nightmare. Scenario rules make all non-building terrain "Rubble" -- that is, chunky +3 TEM, 3 MF piles of broken stuff representing the detritus of intense urban street fighting. No nice trees and orchards here. VASL was able to show this with Rubble counters over the affected hexes (see pic above). Other than an ambush modifier for Russian squads (probably representing their inherent fanaticism in defense of their once-lovely city) the scenario also gives ASLSK players their first glimpse at the Soviet Commissar leader.

The Commissar, for those who don't know their Russian history, was a very nice fellow who followed the rank and file troops around and thanks to Stalin's visionary leadership shared command of the units with the military officer. He really was a useless adjutant except that he had the authority to perform summary executions for the political good. In ASL, this means the 6+1 leader is really a 10-0 fanatic who, thanks to his scary powers, rallies broken squads with ease. The problem being that he ELRs then Casualty Reduces anyone who fails to toe the party line. Like I said, very fun at "parties". Haha.

Here's a shot of the map with some crazy markings on it. At first I was quite surprised at the size. It's a fraction of a full map, condensing a lot of urban terrain in one. If War of the Rats was anything to go by, this map with MORE units and a Gun would be quite unpleasant.

According to the historical notes, Sgt. Esser, observing the carnage around him charged his small band of Wehrmacht soldiers into the Bread Factory (marked by "V" overlays on the map). This is represented by the open blue arrow from the top left. Esser's band sets up in sight of the Bread Factory filled with Russian troops and back up by the "X" where the commissar is polishing his pistol.

Another small group of squads is in the buildings below, making the crossing into the street a (hopefully) fatal activity.

Given that I had only six turns as the Germans to take and hold the two victory hexes I couldn't be dawdling. My plan was to sweep the reinforcements from the left edge through the streets below and threaten the units on top in an aggressive advance. A subsequent reinforcement on turn 2 would support whatever position needed it. For the Russians, they would receive a mediocre stack of conscripts from the right edge on turn 3. I felt confident that they wouldn't be much of a threat if I took the factory asap.

The main problem? The Russians had a 45L anti-tank gun HIPped (hidden-initial-placement). Paul was honourable enough to email me an encrypted Word file with the Gun's HIP and CA -- to be shared when he unleashed hell on my troops. Neat eh? Not to spoil things but I gave him such a juicy target on the first turn he was blasting away with it immediately from the position marked with a "?". The Gun had Q5 and R4 in a covered arc.

Here's the first turn, set-up and ready to go:

[I have no idea what the red ringed halo is...]

The game begins in Part 2 later!

ASR - Advanced Squad Reader

Concurrent with most wargamers' interests in waging paper wars is their interest in history. I think that's a safe bet -- without the interest in theme we might as well all be playing Euros.

So, I think I'll start chatting up some war history books I've been getting into that have some relevance to ASL players.

First, I want to point out that I've got a little "Currently Reading" link list in the sidebar. Usually I have at least one history book on the go. If you're looking to find something to peruse check that out as I rarely post something I don't like.

Here's a short list of stuff I really really like and have on the nightstand right now:

1. Stalingrad by Antony Beevor. This is a beauty. It's a nice thick trade paperback that covers not only the most famous battle in WWII's eastern front but how the Germans got there and its impact and aftermath. Gritty as all hell. I finished it and am reading it again. There are some great chapters and passages about the tactical aspects of the battle that would be of particular interest to ASL players -- especially Red Barricades and Valor of the Guards players.
   


2. An Army at Dawn by Rick Atkinson. I first got wind of this book through, of all things, a person's avatar on ConSimWorld. I checked it out at the local bookstore and the book is actually the first in the "Liberation Trilogy". Atkinson won the Pulitzer for this volume and it's well deserved. His primary thesis is that final victory for the Allies was laid from early experiences and blooding from North Africa onwards. I've not been the most interested of people in the North African campaign in WWII but An Army at Dawn really got the juices going. So far, there aren't any ASLSK scenarios for this theatre but of course full ASL players have a lot of choices here. Guess what!? Desert warfare wasn't always in the desert! Volume Two is already out and I'll be picking that up asap.
   


3. Panzer Commander by Hans von Luck. This is a terrific little paperback written by Rommel's reconnaisance commander. The length and breadth of his experiences from the "other side" is very interesting. Now, as most ASL players know, scenarios are drawn mostly from existing historical sources and it appears that von Luck's memoirs are a key source. There's at least one SK and one full ASL scenario based on his "adventures" in WWII (and his pun-tastic name) so there's a direct corelation between this book and ASL. It's a great read overall. (See J60 Bad Luck, S28 Out of Luck)
   


4. Stalingrad 1942 by Osprey Publishing. (Written by Peter Antill) Osprey should be a fairly well known imprint for those with an interest in military history. I find them good for being short, concise, colourful and excellent as an overview of their particular topics. Stalingrad 1942 is no exception and is recommended for those who are still plugging away at S2 War of the Rats.

Feel free to recommend some stuff in the comments.

AAR #3 - S2 - Rematch of the Rats Part 1

Welcome to Triple Point Blank Fire's third AAR!

It's what you've all been waiting for -- the rematch of S2 War of the Rats between myself and ASL Life Partner(TM) Prawn. If you missed the first War of the Rats check it out here.

Since I'm feeling a little poetic in the midst of the snow and Christmas holiday I think I'll mix things up a bit in this AAR...

Private Demidov nervously clutched his rifle and fingered the safety. His superior officer had already "briefed" him with a hearty slap on his back and a hoarsely whispered, "Shoot them when they come, Demidov!" Demidov wondered if this Christmas would be his last... here in the rubbled buildings on the southern flank of the city named after the master of the state...

War of the Rats is the second scenario in the first ASL Starter Kit. Below is a VASL screenshot of the action that unfolds. Note that the Germans approach from the north with eleven squads, four leaders and seven support weapons. Their job is to take three victory buildings by the end of five turns. The ten sub-par Russian squads with three leaders and three support weapons are bolstered by an elite group of three squads, a good leader and support weapon sometime after the first turn. The Communist forces win if they keep at least one building out of the fascists' hands.

Demidov was spread out in the ruined building north of the old church with his fellow squadmates. They were to be the blunt front end of the defense of this small sector of Stalingrad. He'd already seen many of his comrades fall against the German war machine. With their backs to the Volga, Demidov's company knew that action would be imminent. Word was that there was only a small chance of a reserve being made available to them... The young private wondered if it was more propaganda from his commissar or wishful thinking.

In the shot above was the initial set-up. The Prawn was keen to try a modified defensive set-up and I'll try to detail it here. In (X), (Y) and (Z) he placed a conscript squad forward in a building to try to both draw fire and blunt any initial pushes. The German side would obviously be loath to take the bait and pour too much fire into these simple conscripts but moving up next to them we would still have to respect the doubled point-blank fire they could muster. I suspect that (X) and (Y) were primarily squads meant to slow me down as much as possible (the former having their sole MMG and each having a leader for rally purposes). Group (Z) seemed to be the more respectable defense -- I think that the Prawn was hoping to hold out longest here and apply his reinforcements there when they showed up. What the Prawn was most afraid of was my Flamethrower -- with good reason, that thing is a roving barbeque machine. Ignoring the +3 TEM of buildings in an urban map is pure comedy gold.

As for my set-up, the Germans in (A) and (B) were the elites with first-line back-up and toting LMGs. The FT was in stack (C) where there was least resistance crossing that deadly street. Stack (D) was an elite squad who would smoke hexes for stacks (E) and (F) to end run around and take that flank.

They all looked at each other. They had all heard it. The German command had been barked out across that bloody street and quick and deliberate movement was seen through the sudden rain of smoke grenades. Demidov's breath grew shallow as he pressed his rifle to his shoulder and flicked the safety. The distinct sound of a German MG42 accompanied by the whizzing of bullets across the face of the house he was hiding in made him duck his head. They were coming...

The action in the scenario can basically be divided into the battles on the northeast and southwest flanks. On the northeast side the FT detachment was slowly encrouching from the west while the main thrust by MG and DC supported squads advanced across the very very bare street. Two rolls for smoke in the NE zone came up nada and the Germans made a desperate push. Both (A) and (B) stacks were repulsed with broken squads but not before breaking the conscripts in (X). The conscripts in (Y) were vaporized by the FT.



In the SW zone a variation of the action occurred. The smoke here did work but an end run by (F) resulted in a shot up broken squad who ran back to the building they came from. The nice leader-led stack was able to break up the Russian leader stack (again from Prawn's Final Protective Fire barrage breaking his own men) but the super-conscripts in the front building broke them in turn. An 8/-2 roll on the IFT is very scary when you're on the receiving end.

Demidov couldn't believe it. He was still alive. The smoke made it easy to tell where the Germans were coming from but it was not a trivial task to still hold his bladder and pull the trigger when the ominous shapes of men grew from the shadows. His lonely squad was once again on its own -- the scouts on the broken rooftops had yelled down that the insipid lieutenant in the adjacent building had already run back to the church with his men and the machine gun. And now, it had started to snow... A beautiful sight juxtaposed with the crimson in the street and groans of the fallen.

For the first part of the scenario, the Prawn and I rolled a lot of eleven's and boxcars. It was actually pretty comical for a bit. I've photographed the offending dice to document to the Dice Gods that yes, it was funny the first three times in a row, not so funny the next few times. Time to buy a dice tower!

Above: The view around the mid-game from the Prawn's perch. Note the incredibly bad job of defense by the farmboys of the Ukraine.

To be honest, the Russian defense was a lot harder to crack than the first game. It was clear that the Prawn had done quite a bit of thinking for this rematch. At the end of turn three in the NE zone the Germans had suffered some losses taking the easternmost Victory building when a CXed stack huffed around the back and cut off the retreat of stack (X) containing a leader, MMG and a few broken squads.

Funny ASL Moment: The Russian MMG broke (one of those boxcar rolls) and so did their squad who subsequently were eliminated by failure to rout. The funny part was the German squad that got into the hex was able to recover the MMG and then repair it. We spent a good couple of minutes joking about the Russian conscripts:

"Sir! We've broken the machine gun again! It won't fire!"

"RUN!!!!"

[Germans enter the broken building.]

"Herr Lieutenant, I'm not sure why those Russians didn't shoot us in the face point blank!"

"Well Corporal, it appears they didn't undo the safety..."

Funny ASL Moment: The Prawn and I think Die Hard is the best Christmas movie ever. I think though that he might have found it less funny than I when I kept channeling Hans Gruber as he read the letter from John McClane, "Ho, ho, ho, now I have a machine gun..."

The situation was getting a bit dire for the Russians in the NE. The eastern building was basically goners and the FT stack was only slowed temporarily for a turn by a broken squad. I should also mention that the arrangement of the German offense in this area made skulking unsafe -- there was literally no where safe to skulk to.

On the SW side the Russians were doing a much better job, probably aided by the amazing conscript squad which repeatedly resisted massed firepower and kept breaking my squads in Defensive Fire. I think they broke once and rallied immediately in the next RPh and came right back to laugh at me. (They inspired the Demidov story.) Below you can see that the German Wehrmarct was being stopped cold.

Demidov brushed away the dust and caked on blood from his face. It was yet another Christmas miracle, he was still alive. The German squad had advanced into his building and in the heat of battle Demidov's little band was able to hold them off in a deadly melee. Demidov's squad looked at him in amazement -- he himself had killed a half dozen of the invaders. Even the commissar was wide-eyed, "Demidov, you are true hero of the Soviet Union!" It was Demidov's turn to be surprised. What a Christmas present!

The Prawn finally triggered the Leader Creation rules in this game. A 8-0 leader was created out of a CC.

If things were going badly for Germany in the SW then the opposite was true on the other flank. As you can see below, one squad with the fixed Russian MMG was sitting on the building awaiting the Russian reinforcements while the other stacks were also anticipating their arrival. There was no way the elite Russian squads were going to come through on this side of the board (and the Prawn objected on the moral grounds that he wouldn't have his men killed by their own machine gun).

At the end of turn four the Russian reinforcements still hadn't arrived (nice rolling Prawn!) but all wasn't lost yet. The SW zone was still being tenaciously defended by Demidov's super-conscript buddies. (Everyone else were broken and ELRed multiple times.)

He actually started to believe he might survive this firefight. Demidov allowed himself the hope that this Christmas would see him live to fight another day -- better yet, live to enjoy the simple comforts of a warm fire and the company of his family. That's when he heard the sound of another German officer extorting his troops forward. Would it ever end? Demidov took one last look around the hunkered down troops around him. Who would live? Who would die? Here, in the bombed out, burned out remains of an apartment buildling in Stalingrad? And then the fear began to constrict him again...

Alas, the Russian defense of the SW flank ended all too abruptly when the super-conscripts finally failed their morale check in the face of the German superstack. In fact, another German leader and supporting squad with LMG had infiltrated the victory building from the other side of the map (where they fell in CC but not before breaking a few more squads and scaring the Prawn). By the way, do you see the Russian reinforcements? Me neither!

I think this above picture says it all.

Here's the board position at the very end of the game on turn 6. The Russian elites finally showed up and were mercilessly gunned down in the SW area as they crossed the open fields. The other Russian squads had all evaporated from failure to rout or routing off the board. Here's the magnificent defense that awaited the reinforcements: (A) first-liners with a Russian MMG; (B) Elites with a LMG; (C) Leader with two squads, a LMG and FT; (D) Leader with squad and MMG; and (E) squad with LMG.

We hashed out the scenario again and here were some preliminary thoughts:

1. Die rolling was atrocious but even.
2. Did I say die rolling was even? The Russian reinforcements were late again!
3. Super-conscripts were amazing, though even in the end they faced the music.
4. Stalingrad, with all deference to the reality of war, is a fun place to play ASL.

Demidov woke on a hard cot. He remembered firing and firing and running out of bullets. He remembered running. He remembered getting shot in the calf as he reached the trees. He half-remembered someone pulling him over their shoulders. And then he remembered nothing.

He thought he heard the soft singing of a Christmas carol but doubted himself. There would be no overt shows of religion here in the very battleground where Soviet Communism strove mightily against the fascists. And yet, as he looked up through the open rafters of the triage centre he couldn't help but hum a little Christmas tune, glad to be alive and glad, perhaps, to be able to fight again...

AAR #3 S2 Rematch Preview

The slaughter of the "mighty" Russian war machine continues unabated...

AAR #2 - S2 - War of the Rats - Part Three

Wow I better get this second AAR wrapped up because the Prawn has asked-- nay -- demanded a rematch of S2 War of the Rats and it's ON tomorrow!

Okay, the first thing I want to go over was the situation at the end of the game. The Prawn conceded at the end of turn 4. The reinforcements he was to receive sometime starting on turn 2 had still not shown up and there was every reason to believe that even if they had, it would have been too late.

Here's the pic of the final board at the conclusion of turn 4:



According to my pathetic memory, here's what stood in Prawn's way: (A) a first-line squad with LMG; (B) two squads with MMG; (C) two squads with leader and DC; (D) a squad, a leader, a LMG and FT; (E) two squads, one leader and a LMG; (F) a first-line squad mopping up some conscripts who routed north. Versus (G) a Russian squad with MMG and leader. [There was another squad and a half of Germans too.]

The Russian reinforcements would have entered from the south (right side of photo). They would have been two first (elite?) squads, a 9-2 leader and a LMG. I don't believe for a second that they would have advanced far enough in a turn or two under murderous fire to challenge one of the three victory buildings.

Part of our post-game discussion last week was whether the Prawn was right to concede. I think, more and more, that he did the right thing and saved Russian (cardboard) lives. Perhaps a few more games under our collective belts would confirm our suspicions.


Mistakes

1. Well we corrected some of our laziness and actually laid down residual fire counters this time (though we slacked off at the end again). We were pretty meticulous on the DRMs for all IFT rolls -- FFMO, FFNAM, Hindrance, Smoke, Leadership Mods, TEMs etc. I think on the whole we may have missed only a couple of mods which is a good improvement on last time.

2. So what did we miss? Prawn's Russians were mostly "Inexperienced". That means that they had less MF, cowered twice as bad and their B#s were all one less as well [5.4]. To be honest, there was very little cowering for some reason in our IFT rolls so I don't think it was decisive. This probably was balanced by the forgetting that German squads with the FT provided opponents' fire with a -1 DRM -- again though, this wasn't decisive in my memory [4.2]. Even stevens then and we'll get this right for sure in the rematch.

3. Final Protective Fire. I had to check this multiple times because it got nuts. On at least two occasions, Russian squads fired at least half a dozen times versus adjacent German units who had shown up on their doorsteps in MPh. The original DR counts as a NMC every time they fire and they can fire indefinitely until they break [3.3.3]. As I said, on two occasions Prawn's Russian creeps blasted adjacent Germans 5-6 times with FPF to no effect until they themselves broke. In hindsight this breaking of low morale troops probably hastened his demise. The sheer number of shots though was breathtaking.

4. ELR. [5.1] I think we may have ELR'ed a unit or two in Rally Phase. Rallying does NOT equal Morale Checks. ELRing occurs only on UNBROKEN units failing a MC bigtime. I think we may have ELRed a broken unit or even one in RPh -- I'm not sure but this is something to keep in mind for the rematch (and let's face it, not like the Russian Conscripts were ELRing down to "Moron" status).

And that might be it.... As I said in part one, the new rules added from S1 to S2 were basically SWs and ELR. We easily captured those rules into our game. [As an aside, my creation of the eASLSK3 has really helped my proficiency with the rules.]


Lessons

5. Smoke is good. I don't care what the Prawn says, smoke was good in leaving up +2 hindrances so my Germans could cross the big empty streets with a lot less casualties. Having a Russian have to roll a 9 instead of a 7 to force a NMC is a big difference.

6. Skulking. Okay, I finally get what this is about. ASLers are always talking about "skulking". Basically it's a "gamey" technique of Assault moving your squads out of LOS of your opponent when you're the ATTACKER and defending the scenario objectives and subsequently Advancing them in APh back to their original hexes. Why? To avoid the incoming Defensive Fire Phase which is sandwiched between them. "So what?" you say. I think I broke at least a few squads of the Prawn's who sat around in their original hexes who Prep Fired to little effect earlier. The argument against this is that it's "gamey" -- that is, a tactic that is allowed by the rules but is ahistorical or not something the squads in "Real Life" would have attempted. Until this scenario I always thought it was a stupid and "gamey" thing to do but I think Prawn's final results have a bit to say about its effectiveness. Besides, nobody should be arguing about realism when they're pushing cardboard around a paper map.

7. Defensive Options. Okay, Prawn and I discussed this a lot at the end of the game. I felt that his defense across the board was probably sub-optimal. I really felt that his placement of the MMG in the rear was really not good. All it did was dissuade me from going to the back of the map which was, uh, empty of victory buildings. Was this a poor reverse-slope defense? I think so. Would it be better to anchor his flanks with the MGs in front? Prawn's counter to this was that I had the first shot and second set-up so I would naturally put my MMG across the street with the best leader and squads I had and blast away in turn one (and yes I would have). My rebuttal was basically that the MMG in the back was not the solution to this problem. I don't know if there's a proper solution to this puzzle and maybe that's what is so great about ASL -- the fun just in thinking about tactics.

8. Conscripts. They suck. Prawn's current thinking is they are best used to soak and absorb and speedbump the Germans en masse on a specific part of the map and should not have been so spread out. Their primary task is to keep the Germans occupied and distracted until the "elite" Russian reinforcements show up. I think there's no question that the tougher row to hoe is the Russian side in this scenario -- a lot of close sheparding of crappy squads is necessary and a solid set-up and plan is critical. Then again, isn't this what makes games like ASL fun?

So I hope this wrap up of the first War of the Rats was educational. War of the Rats II: The Reckoning lands soon!

AAR #2 - S2 - War of the Rats - Prawn's Perspective

[Hello gentle readers! This post is the Prawn's AAR. Minimal editing was done and my review of the action follows soonish.]

Smoke Shmoke.

The best game of all time, and my fav by far is Aliens. And why this is relevant is because I learned a lot for that game. Most importantly, it is fun to lose. The only thing more fun in Aliens than winning is seeing Hudson and Drake get ripped apart just squares before they make it out of the Reactor Room. Or seeing the Queen chomp on Hicks as Ripley watches helplessly.

So, with this valuable lesson in mind, my fur coat and an extra large glass of vodka, I went to play my second ever ASL game. This time as you might of guessed as the Russians. I am a personal fan of Russia and the Russians, but with that said, I am going to play them the same way Stalin and Kustchev would. Bloody and without remorse. Body count on both sides baby!

My second game turned out pretty much like the first ones. Lots of smiling Germans. So, why did it turn out so?

1) Rules. Not a factor. I get the game. Easy enough to understand [scrub- I am teacher of the year!]. It was not missed opportunities (or dice rolling), or not understanding rules that led to my defeat. I am surprised how easy the rules are [scrub- maybe I chatted up the complexity too much]. And our second game was still less than 2.5 hours.

2) Tactics. Scrub might have me here to some extent. He uses a more concentrated tactic of focusing his fire to defeat a small group. I tend to hit more, and pin/break many of his units, but am never able to finish many of them off. I do try to concentrate fire and part of it is because he is attacking, so he tends to get to pick his battles more than I do. I can really only react.

3) Complexity. Yes, a bit of an issue. I am not used to looking so far ahead and having to keep so many things in the back of my mind. I have to spend slightly more time on my moves. ASL is definitely more like chess and less like Hungry Hungry Hippos.

4) And this leads me directly to scrub's rule - Know the Goal - In both games I wanted to out blast scrub’s Hans Grubbers like John McClane. Most games that is kind of the goal. However ASL is much more complex. Both missions can probably be won without ever defeating any German units.

5) Finally, this leads me to where my improvement must come. I think in both missions the battles were lost before the first die was rolled. My overall strategy must improve. Know the goal, have a plan and be able to avoid temptation. With this in mind I have some thinking to do before I next cross hammer and sickle with one comrade scrub!

[I am not Severus Snape.]

AAR #2 - S2 - War of the Rats - Part One

Welcome to Triple Point Blank Fire's second After Action Report!

For those of you who have been following the action, I've basically progressed in ASLSK play to having competency in SK#1 level rules. My current opponent of choice (a.k.a "ASL-life-partner" -- a term I've shamelessly lifted from the hosts of 2 Half-Squads) is the "Prawn". What his pseudonym choice has to do with his unholy love of Sea Monkeys is up to your imagination.

The Prawn wanted a Stalingrad-type of scenario and as luck would have it, S2 War of the Rats is set in Stalingrad during September 1942. The Prawn, when he isn't making sick love to brine shrimp, is fond of the Russian way of life so he naturally wanted that side. He's a VASL screenshot of the map and the Germans and commies involved:

The Germans must control ALL three buildings by scenario end. Control being defined by being the last player to have Good Order troops in them at any time. The Russians are seeking to prevent this.

Set-up is divided along the long diagonal (northeast-southwest) road basically. Additionally the Russians will enter along the bottom map edge (south) sometime after turn 1 based on a die roll. If you play the SK scenarios in order, you get a good progression -- S1 has basic elite squads with no Support Weapons (SW) and ELR is not an issue. S2 starts to differentiate itself with ELR (both sides have ELR 3 and can and will degrade over the course of the scenario) and SW (yay toys!). The Russians get 2 LMG and a MMG with a host of Conscript-level cowards-- sorry, comrades to start with. The reinforcements they get are first-line troops with a good leader and LMG. The Germans get Elite and first-liners with lots of LMG, a MMG, Demolition Charges and a fun Flamethrower -- but no reinforcements, they make do with what they have.

Russians set-up first and the Germans move first. Why is this critical? The Germans get the first shot (their Prep Fire) and this weighed heavily into the Prawn's intial set-up. Here's how we set up for the War of the Rats:

Key things to note here (analysis and handwringing to come later): the Russian MMG was installed in the rear building and not on a flank or Victory building. Leaders were placed with the squads holding the SWs. I additionally put the DCs and FT in the hands of leaders as well. I spread out the 5-4-8s with the increased smoke exponents of 4 (due to SSR) across the line of advance to cover everyone.

The first shot of the game had my MMG open up on the Russian leader with squad and LMG on the east flank. I anticipated massive havoc and promptly rolled crap. Very well then, the squads would have to advance on their own. Here's a shot of the first turn (the label should say north-east):

The black acquistion counter is flipped to white to show German control (this wasn't to last more than a turn). Under heavy fire all the squads on the left flank have gone DM and routed leaving a leader pinned in the middle of the street with his DC (he wouldn't make it). The large-ish stack in the middle has a leader and two squads with a LMG and a FT. This Death Star stack would cause the Russkies a lot of difficulty in the middle.

On the whole, the FT was an MVP. It liquidated more than a few squads. The fact that it ignores TEM makes it the ideal SW in urban firefights.

On the south-west flank the approach of the other German squads was held up a little less as we were able to wrap around the buildings with smoke cover. Of note were the two conscript squads here that survived a 30FP DC attack by just breaking. They may have crapped their pants but they were still alive...

That being said, the Russians were taking an awful lot of casualties. I think we were both being schooled on the very very distinct differences between 8-, 7-, and 6-morale troops. The Germans were DMed quite a bit but the Prawn was never able to totally finish them off. The Russian conscripts, on the other hand, seemed to do a lot of running and melting. Here's the "pile o' dead".

Fun ASL Story #1: The Prawn's MMG stacked with a 4-4-7 and 8-1 leader broke very early on and was a non-factor for a couple of turns as the hapless Russians desparately tried to unjam it. When they finally got it back on track it broke down again on the very next firing. This was a source of much loud guffawing on both sides. This will forever be known as the malfunctioning machine gun story.

Fun ASL Story #2: The Prawn's reinforcements never showed up. His die rolls were never under the turn number. As the vast number of his conscripts started to disintegrate under the German advance, the failure of the die roll at the beginning of his turns became a grotesque reminder of the failure of the Soviet system and all it stood for. The fall of the Iron Curtain could be directly traced to this tactical travesty.

Above is a shot from about turn 3 from the Prawn's perspective. Things had started to really go sour for the Russians. The defense was basically in tatters and the conscripts were all dead or running. The Prawn really had only one functioning and defensible stack at his rear (the MMG stack) but they couldn't really do more than plink away at the southern victory building (and with my troops pulled back they couldn't even do that later).

Below is a shot of the map table as a whole. I included it to show our table set-up and how we play. On the left, we've stacked the info counters for easy access (this really speeds up play). The top of the map not involved in the scenario was our die rolling space (I have got to get me a dice tower or something). For kicks, we stacked the dead in the lower right. Just off the bottom we put the scenario card with the reinforcements and turn counter.

The piles of the dead continue to flow brown:

If it wasn't already clear the game was a slaughter. The Prawn conceded after about 150 minutes at the end of turn 4. He had only one stack (the losers in the rear with the very crappy MMG) and the reinforcements still hadn't shown up.

I just want you guys to note that my squads have already set-up massive defense stacks to murder the reinforcements had they even shown up the next turn!

Above: the losers cower in their broken, rubbled, dormatory for little girls.

Seriously though, I went to check out ROAR (the ASL scenario results database) after this game and I was a little surprised to see it only 63-57 for the Germans. The Prawn and I spent a good chunk of time just debriefing the firefight. He's even written up a little AAR of his own and I'll add that to mine.

The questions that arose were basically about the set-up and its effectiveness, conscript (read: crappy) morale, and the relative evenness of the die rolling and our generally good grasp of the rules (we did very little consultation of the rulebook). Should the Prawn had conceded? Was Stalin's purges having their unintended consequences? When did we have time for a rematch?

But that's for part two...

AAR S2 Preview

Yep.