Yesterday, I played Tom Harper in The Red House. I am trying to become more fluent in the night rules. JR Van Mechelin's Bring On The Night became a more used resource that the rule book for this one. Great article with many practical tips.
The Germans setup to defend the "Commissar's House" by fortifying every ground level hex and starting with at least 5 squads in it. The rest were predominately along the BB row with HIP units in AA22 and BB13. Trenches were behind the BB row. Since I need to control either the Commissar's House and/or 4 other buildings, I decided to go for the four other buildings. Forget the "and" and go for the "or".
I put a 5-2-7 with both MMGs and an 8-0 in G22.1 to provide fire support to my attackers. As it turned out this was very ineffective without a -1 leader there. Normally, I'd face +4 or +5 DRM shots, which did little except risk breakdown and sniper attacks. I did not cloak these guys, as I planned to opportunity fire them on turn 1. I put 6 other squads and two dummies to the south and most of the rest to the north. Each flank had a -1 leader following it up to rally broken units. I felt the -1 DRM would be needed to help remove the DM status in terrain without the rally bonus. A 6-2-8 with a DC was positioned to move into the sewers on turn 2, from which it would emerge in the CC18 cellar location. His job was to be a threat or a nuisance to the Commissar's House defenders and hopefully tie them down.
My plan was to get behind the German line ASAP and grap the hopefully empty buildings on the back row and north end of the German setup area. And pretty much that is what I did. My first unit to move was shot at, but no flares were fired. So everyone else got up close to the three most northern German defenders for ambush attempts. To the south I tried to creep past on the board edge to take the A22 building, which did have a HIP unit in it. The German reinforcements entered turn #1 and inexplicably went to reinforce the A22 building and Commissar's House instead of grabbing the buildings on the back row.
By turn 2 I could put a lot of pressure on A22 by sending a DC carrying 6-2-8 against it who broke from its final fire. I then sent a dummy cloaking counter into an OG hex that was ADJACENT but not illuminated. The defenders FPF'ed, but rolled low enough to not break and to eliminate the dummy. To the north I force more CC to tie up the remaining squads outside of the Commissar's House and tried to keep the 9-2 led 4-6-7 with HMG blinded with flares. The 9-2 leader definitely needed another squad with a MMG in there to make a killer stack. The 8 -2 + TEM + 1 LV did not intimidate my attackers and broke very few of them.
Basically by turn 3, I had a couple of units behind the German line and had grabbed enough buildings for the win. I used turns 4 and 5 to consolidate my gains and to keep a couple of extended melees going. I tried to eliminate whatever Germans I could and / or to keep them tied up in melee, so they couldn't maneuver during their turns. Several times I used the black melee numbers to extend the melee as long as possible.
By the German turn 5, his last units that could possibly take back some buildings broke from a 16 (+2). I had 7 buildings by that time and the Germans just did not have enough guys outside of the Commissar's House to root me out.
Key points seemed to be the German not defending in depth, not reinforcing his rear buildings, not making his 9-2 a kill stack leader and not getting flares up after the first shots were fired. I kept cloaking on several units until the end of the game. While the German defense denied the Commissar's House to me quite easily, they did not have enough outside it to stop the Red hordes at night.
I would recommend this scenario as a shorter, all infantry night assault. We finished in about 3.5 hours with only a few trips to the ASLRB. Most questions were answered by the cover of BackBlast #1.
One tactic that I did not use because of the time it would take up to prove it is legal, but I wanted to just to have done it, was to move a cloaked unit through two connecting trench counters and then advance into the cellar of BB18. (The 9-2 and HMG also influenced this decision.) Since trenches allow a unit to move through several connecting trenches without losing concealment even though non-assault movement is used, would cloaking be lost if a cloaked unit moved through 2 trenches that were illuminated? Normally, cloaking is lost if using non-assault movement in an illuminated location, but would trenches be an exception?
Chuck