Ah what a wonderful way to spend Labor day. Went over to Jim Holts for a bit of gaming and insideous plotting against Chris Spell for the KGP CGIII game we are about to start. I had been looking through my Hollow legions scenerio cards and decided playing a low ELR nationality would be a good learning expirience for me. I stumbled cross "A High Price to Pay" (ASL53) and decided, Small board, infantry heavy, and some elite italians so I do have a hope of getting to the front line. Looks good. Jim concurred and we set up, me the Italians, Jim the Brits.
Jim set up his entrenchments between the walls wood and buildings to form a line from 17G9 to 7V9, and then entrenched through the brush from G9 to E10. He set up a secondary line around the SSR bunker in 7AA9, and set up his mortar way back in 7AA4. A 9-1 leader, squad and HMG sat alone out in 7FF10. My idea, upon looking at this, was to set up a fire base in the woods around 17B4 to enfilade his line on the road and soak up enough paras to allow my brittle 1st line troops to take the entrenchments from a jump off spot in the olive groves around G6. My elite troops slunk into the wood cluster around 17 N6 to stay out of sight and force Jim to keep a covering force at his flank. Once the line was broken up by the artilery, and the remenants of my first line squads were in the trenches, Jim woulld be forced to move troops from this covering force, allowing the elite troops would charge through the flank and take the pillbox in CC. Of so the story was supposed to go...
The fire base around 17B4 consisted of my HMG, 2 light mortars, a 68mm infantry howitzer and the 2 AP 41 armored cars, plus a handful of squads to offer protection from counterattacks and to replace the gun crews as they broke and fell out of line. One thing I can say for this game is that I have never seen such an abundance of extreme rolls. We stopped counting at 8 snakes and 8 boxcars. My opening rolls were 3 snakes in 4 rolls, that annihilated the squad in 17G9, (later returned as a half squad when we realised the LOS had been blocked) But this set the stage for the opening of the game. The 2 armored cars and HMG raised havoc on the road and Brush line with some of the best rolling I had ever seen from my hands (I usually suffer from an extreme dice curse). I was even frustrating Jim with my morale rolls as the British HMG and Mortar rang shot after shot at my howitzer crew who passed 1MC and MC like they were rambo. The Italians through an armored assault nearly surrounded the para squad Jim had moved as a DIP unit in I8, and the elite squads made it neatly into the 17N7 woods cluster. Then we took a break for dinner. Dogs, beans and slaw. Typical Labor Day Faire for an atypical italian force.
Well I dont know what was in those hot dogs but when we came back Jim was on fire. Despite having depleated his WP and suffering poor gunnery all afternoon, Jim's 76mm mortar the crew was undeterred and proceeded in going on a ROF spree that, A: Broke the Howitzer crew, B: Broke and multiple ELR'd both of my mortar crews and HMG crew down into broken conscript half squads, and C: landed his last smoke round on top of the Armored Car that was about to gun the Mortar into oblivion. The odds appeared to be turning for the brits as the squad in I8 managed to pin every unit that was bout to swamp him In CC, and the cursed the Mortar 2KIA the elite squads who had charged forth to 7V10 to overwhelm a leader and Para in 7V9, who then managed to drive off the 2 squads in 7U10. Then Jim's luck turned as he gacked 3 seperate SWs and flubbed a point blank 18 FP attack from I8. Things swung back in his favor when I gacked my return 20FP firegroup in I8 allowing him to escape, and then I lost an armored car to a LMG CH while I ws trying to get behind his line to cut his rout paths and get some encircled shots. This forced me to fall back and regroup while I tried an interesting tactic with Vinne the teamster. Long live the death trucker!
I dont know about these Dutch trucks I've heard talk about but Jim and I had a real laugh at this Italian one. In an attempt to cut off the route paths of the retreting para in I9 and a broken unit in G9, Vinnie revved up his engine and executed the 1FP overrun on G9. He then Exited and stopped in H9. About 15 min of rules scrambling occured when Vinnie shrugged off 3 IFT kill attempts and left the 2 broken units in peril. The arguement centered around the defintion of "Armed Vehicle". In the OR rules we concluded that any unarmored vehicle can execute a 1 FP OR with its inherant crews 1 FP. However Broken units are only eliminated by failure to route by armed units. As truck with a CS is armed, one with a cs (which applies to passengers) is considered unarmed. Vinnies truck had a cs so although he got the overrun, he didnt get the route eliminations. Nedless to say, Jim wiped his brow and proceeded to grease the truck the next turn in CC. Long Live the Italian trucks! BEEP BEEP! =)
Continuing on, I finally managed to rally the crews in the Fire base (Who kept getting broken by Jims sniper) and remanned the Howitzer right when the Italian 81mm mortar got going. All attention centered in Jims mortar whose crew quickly succame to the rain of fire. Then I started working over his HMG group who were attempting to get back to the Bunker. I managed to break them, but ws too busy to exploit this as Jims Paras rallied up and broke almost every Italian along the stone wall and entrenchments they'd captured. Then I broke every Mortar I owned and gacked the howitzer. Repairs succeded in eliminating the 81mm mortar and when the "Elite" squads in the N6 woods, (Now mostly conscripts due to ELR), vaporised under another assault, I had to conceed the game, as there was simply not enough time left for me to rally all my broken squads, repair the weapons and get to the Bunker. Quite a good game, even if I got my troops pasted. I threatened Jim with 20 years of Spagetti Operas as revenge. =)
What could I hve done different.? Well I think my biggest mistake was attacking with my troops while my fire base was knocked out. The italians are just too brittle to make any sort of assault with out heavy fire support. With most troops, they break and you can rally them quick to full strength. But when you have broken half-squads with a 4 ML you can roll till your fingers fall off and they wont come back. It was truly amazing to see how quickly these troops dissolved. All progress I made ground to a halt when I ran out of men to throw into the fray. I should have waited back for the big guns to rally and soften the brits up. Then I could have attacked and faced much less resistance. I had the game turns to wait. I should have used them.
A second mistke came with the location of the field gun. For what I was origionally planning it worked excelent, clearing the brits quickly from the wall along teh road soI could occupy it myself...Unfortunately, the line of brush hexes behind the road, stacked up so much hinderence TEMs it wasnt worth firing at the VL bunker, and with the 5 step, Limber/hook up/move/unhook/unlimber cycle there simply wasnt enough time to move it to another location. I should have drove it into the olive groves and set up in G6.
Finally I failed to use my armored cars. Jim mentioned at the end of the game that he was worried about my armored cars overrunning his HMG squad nd the leader. I have to admit I thought of it but was too fixated in breaking them into the british rear to zap his route paths. Now that I look at the map, had I overran those squads, the pth through the "marsh" hexe would have been open and I could have parked on the bunker and ruined his day. I wish I had used one of the ACs instead of Vinnie in that route path cut off. That would have really hurt. He didnt have the squads to spare.
Well Thats it. Wow I didnt expect it to go this long. Any comments are welcome.
Chris Kozloski