AAR Against All Odds (4)

[Gpig]

Away we go again with Captain Reimers Panzergrenadier company.

SPOILERS!!

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This time, it's during the battle of the bulge. Reimers company of (mostly) Veterans is now tasked with attacking through the snow, and taking a village sitting astride a road to Bastonge.

I'll keep this AAR short, as it was a messy melee.

It's a nice winter map, with three objective flags along the width of the village. The possibilites for advance are many. Rolling hills, and moderate tree cover (mostly tall pines).

Enemy Intel tells of a reinforced company of G.I.'s and maybe a couple of tanks and guns.

Swell.

Attatched to my company are a Stug, and a StuH 42. Plus, Lt. Kollman of the heavy weapons platoon, has managed to scrounge up an 81mm mortar team (in addition to his armored 251/2 mortar carriers). I have a feeling that this dismounted mortar will help with any enemy guns.

I decide to leave all my platoons mounted and behind cover except for Lt. Laudiens. His platoon will split up, and advance through the central low ground acting as a fixing/recon force. Hopefully misleading the enemy as to my real intentions.

On my left flank, I send a 251/1 to scout out the terrain. Hoping to draw out any AT guns. Cover is fair for him to dart about, to and from. He eventually makes it to within 200m of the left VL. No AT guns fired on him. Only a lonely MMG opens up, near the VL. My Stug, in overwatch in the center, soon silences this pest.

With the left flank approaches apparently unobserved by enemy AT assets I have the confidence to race up my other two platoons, my StuH, my heavy weapons platoon (including two 251/2 mortar tracks) and my CO (everyone mounted on 251/1's) to a nice piece of cover within 250m of the Left VL.

They are in a fine jumping off point to assault the left most VL. My plan is to overwhelm one portion of the defense line (and I've amassed enough force to do it, surely), and then roll the defenders up from Left to Right. There will be much good cover along the way.

My plan pretty much goes off as planned. Except the G.I.'s mount a stiffer than expected defense of the left most VL. I lose many men to a deadly accurate 60mm mortar who's tree bursts account for over 8 casualties!

Also, an enemy Stuart has reinforced the line at this point, taking my one crack squad under fire (from Lt. Detmers platoon), and causing a casualty with each shot. By the end of the turn, their squad is down to 3 men.

Another Stuart appears on some high ground far to the Right. My Stug has no LOS on this threat, as he's behind some tall pines.

The far right Stuart takes out one of my halftracks, as all the rest reverse into cover.

I order my StuH to engage the Stuart who is a bit quicker on the draw. But the Stuart misses a couple of shots, while my StuH manages a gun hit. The Stuart reverses out of sight. But I feel I won that little engagement, and thank my lucky stars for the efforts of the Veteran StuH crew.

I pull back most of my infantry on the left flank and then move a platoon towards the center in an attempt to take out the enemy mortar team.

I order my StuH to Hunt forward to try and take out the Stuart. A gamble indeed, as in the next turn, they come to blows.

The Stuart let's off a shot that sails overhead my Hulldown StuH. My StuH let's one go over the Stuarts head. Then, when I'm sure the next quick shot from the Stuart is going to finish my StuH, the amazing happens. The 37mm shell breaks appart on the hull! I feel like I have another chance, but as the turn counter ticks past 40 seconds the little stuart takes 2 more shots before my StuH crew has closed the breach for their second round. Both of these shots ALSO bounce of the StuH's armor!! I'm stunned and amazed! Then, my StuH gunner (who's been waiting patiently for the slow loaded 105mm C round) let's fly with a dead-on turret hit, blowing the Stuart sky high. Whew! That is one lucky StuH. I think they must have piled some Ardenne pines on the front of their tank before going into battle.

With the Stuart's out of the way, I rush my infantry forward and secure the left VL. Wiping out that deadly mortar crew.

My platoon in the center, has now gotten within 200m of the center flag. They have uncovered an emeny infantry position. But it appears to be only one squad, a 60mm mortar and an MMG. The platoon takes them out easily. The rest of the enemy platoon are in the heavy buildings 100m further forward. My Stug helps supress them from his overwatch position.

Now the left flank has a general route of americans occuring. My 251/2 mortars are letting fly at G.I. postions. Also, the americans are rushing reinforcements from the right side of the map, and these same reinforcements are getting caught in the open by all my HMG's and 251/1's. Then while they are suppressed, my StuH and the mortar carriers let em have a wallop. That breaks them and they head for the hills.

Then I start uncovering the guns. Mostly by losing a 251/1. The guns are in good positions. 57mm AT guns. I'm carefull about where I move my mortar tracks/tanks. But I manage to lose one of my 251/2's despite caution. There appears to be more than a "couple" of guns.

My center platoon now rushes the center flag, and kills the enemy platoon leader, hiding in the top story of a heavy building. Then, as they advance into the town, one squad comes under fire from what has to be an enemy 105mm howitzer. They are devastated.

I run my left most platoons from cover to cover, and manage to take out one of the 57mm AT guns.

Then, having watched in anger the loss of a squad of good men to the enemy 105mm howitzer, my CRACK squad of Pnzgrndrs (down to 3 men - K98/MP44/MG42) decide to take things into their own hands. Despite having LOW ammo, They sprint across some open ground all the way to the enemy's gun pit. Here a feat of arms occurs as the howitzer crew desperatly attempts to wheel the gun carriage around through 90 degrees, all the while under close assault by my Crack troopers (who are within 15 m). After the gun crew loses 4 members to grenades, bayonets and rifle butts . . . they surrender!

The third gun (57mm) is tougher to approach. He has some good ground to watch over. But Lt. Kollman and his dismounted 81mm mortar crew make short work of him. Kollman directs his mortar crew to a thrid round KO of the enemy gun. Impressive!

Mopping up, comes next. My StuH proves invaluable. One shot = broken enemy squad.

Axis Major Victory.

Axis

39 casualties (9 kia)

5 vehicles KO'd

men OK 129

Score 82

Allied

163 casualties (53 kia)

7 captured

3 mortars destryd

3 guns destryd

2 vehicles KO'd

men OK 21

score 18

Nice battle. Lot's of fun.

As I'm playing these battles, the only thing I'm noticing that is a bit of a downer is that the A.I. is never up to the task. In the introduction to the battles, the designer states that these battles are designed to be played without bonuses for the A.I., and the the A.I. should be placed on "Free to Place Units." This is due to the fact that the enemy forces are already out of balance. In other words, the designer already has given the allies bonuses in manpower, reinforcements and what have you. But I think that they could possibly be a tad more powerful.

Maybe.

Or, at least the enemy set-up zones could utilize better defensive ground. As in battles 3 and 4, the set-up zones for the allies were NOT in the best places, terrain-wise.

Where I expected to encounter stiff resistance (or, at least where I would have set-up, being the allied CO), there was nothing.

Just a thought.

Overall, I'm still LOVING the little bits out of this mini campaign. The feelings I have for my men has grown in leaps and bounds. I'm already on a first name basis with all the squad leaders.

On to the next one!

Gpig

[Fred]

Good AAR!

Well, force balance is a difficult task for a designer.

There were some other players that only achieve a draw (or even lost) some engagements.

Seems you are simply a very good player

Maybe players that are very good should give the AI +25% OR a +1 modifier.

The campaign is balanced for the 'average' gamer, like me (and during gametests even I lost some battles )

Fred

[Gpig]

Hey Fred.

Well, I can understand the balance thing. Especially for this mini-campaign. And actually, the more I think about it . . . if the allied forces were any stronger, I'd really have been hard-put to pull out a victory.

I just finished the next one. And BOY! What a difference a battle makes. Turned out as a DRAW.

I'll post the AAR if you want.

Gpig

[Fred]

Gpig,

I would like to read the AAR (as #5 was the scenario I tested nearly 20 times before I got the computer AI to attack

Fred

[Fred]

Gpig,

in this forum thread you can see how others fared in the mini-campaign:

http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=6&t=001131&p=

But watch out for spoilers of scenario #6 in the last few postings of this thread!

Fred

[ 11-21-2001: Message edited by: Fred ]</p>

[Gpig]

Ha! Awesome! Nice to know others have been enjoying it. Guess you feel the same way, eh?

Thanks for the warnings about #6 spoilers. I don't want to ruin it for myself.

I'll post my AAR about #5 after thanksgiving. (It was my toughest fight yet!)

Thanks for the link.

Gpig

P.S. Are you ever going to do some more of these fictional mini-campaigns? I was thinking it would be fun to do the life of an armored platoon. ('Course, you'd have to have some infantry thrown in . . . )

You know . . . a platoon starts out in Stugs. Graduates up to MkIV's. Then IV's. Then the big TIGERS. (Not sure if this was the way that it happened . . . but it'd be kind of fun.)

[Fred]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Gpig:

P.S. Are you ever going to do some more of these fictional mini-campaigns? I was thinking it would be fun to do the life of an armored platoon. ('Course, you'd have to have some infantry thrown in . . . )

You know . . . a platoon starts out in Stugs. Graduates up to MkIV's. Then IV's. Then the big TIGERS. (Not sure if this was the way that it happened . . . but it'd be kind of fun.)<hr></blockquote>

I will, but this next campaign will start on June 22. 1941, somewhere east of Warsaw...

Fred