ASL Forums

[Fred Ingram]

Written by Steve Etzelmueller (Fred was too darn lazy):

Fred Ingram brought over the new J5 so he and I settled into the new DASL slugfest "Himmlers House" from the new J5 over the weekend. In this scenario, which uses all 4 DASL city boards, the Germans have to keep control of building aK3 at the end of 8 turns away from the Russians. While this seems a long time to have to hold out, the building has 27! locations (and rooftops are even in effect beyond that, although those do not affect control) and the SS Germans are fanatic in the building with a 9-0 political commissar (by SSR) boosting morale. Both of these advantages go a long way to retaining building control. To combat this, the Russian has *lots* of squads. 34 of them led by two 9-2 leaders, in addition to 6 tanks (two of which are OT-34 FT tanks) with a portion of the infantry force toting around 3 flamethrowers and several DC's.
I had the Germans. The first task Fred and I had to do was handle the 8 rubble creations, per SSR. We ended up rubbling mostly the area around dI4 and also a lot around dC2-C4 with some falling rubble coming into play, further blocking that eastern board edge. My thinking during this process was to knock down the L2 building in the dH3-dJ4 area, so I could see his infantry force attacking towards the VC building. It also would deny him a Level2 firebase close to my position. Although it did not happen, rubble falling into the streets blocking afv movement would be handy too. I think that selection of rubble worked out ok for me. I had decent LOS to Fred's troops as he crossed the map towards me and had to work his away around over to me, and he really did not try and do a cx sprint at me in a straightforward route. Not that Fred handled this poorly; he did a very nice job of pacing this advance correctly. The 4 guns I had in my OOB were another matter. Very perplexing on where these should go. Not being able to setup in building or rubble really limited their placement options. I eventually decided to forgo the HIP options and simply surrounded the VC building with them. I placed an 88 on the dE3 bridge, although it was not HIP or emplaced, it seemed to be a spot that the Russians had to drive near, and the other three ringed the VC building.

The game had a crazy start. I had my three MMG/HMG's up in L2 of Himmlers House right across the street from Fred. His prep knocked one nest out, and pinned another. But my 9-2 was still active and managed to inhibit some of Fred's movement of the infantry force creeping towards the building. My dff was pretty ineffective, but my guns gained some acq on big stacks of Russians. In bottom of 1, my gun prepped at the Russians massed across the street ... missed, then with Fred staring that gun down with a kill stack I decided to IF .. I hit and rolled snakes on the IFT erasing some Russians from the board. I skulked around a bit .. then in DFF the Russian kill stack led by the 9-2 proceeded to get some payback and to mow down both gun crews in his LOS and 2 full squads in trenches near them. Then in the top of 3 my sniper (Germans have SAN 6) nails that 9-2 leader and breaks the whole gun nest! .. the sniper hangs around these guys dm'ing them for nearly half the game) ..it was a very crazy seesaw chain of events.

Rest of the early game saw Fred being nice and cautious , moving his troops up through the rubble of builidngs, me getting some shots off from my L2 positions, and scoring some kills, but the Russians have the men to burn. My 88 on the bridge opened up on the lead russian tank, shocking it, then burning it. Later a schreck shot launched from Himmlers House and a lucky 50mm mortar shot from a rooftop took out both of the Russian flame tanks! Low ammo hindered other Russian tanks, and they were not much of a threat. Still, he had gobs of squads and for every one I broke or CR'd, two others seemed to take their place. Fred was using building aG2 as a jump off attack area.

Fred crept across the street (a boulevard by SSR actually) to gain a foothold in the trenches I had outside the building (maybe not a good setup move on my part, it gave him TEM) and then in a key shot he broke my 9-2 hmg 658 stack, as I rolled boxcars on the 9-2's MC. There were just so many darn Russians that even several KIA results on my part still left a lot of Russian squads. I was taking some losses as he closed around the building with squads, but the fanatic advantage, and the commisar was really turning a lot of breaks into only pins and bringing any brokies back fast.

Finally in turn 4 Fred broke into the building in force, and I had to pull back a bit and concede several hexes to him. These were not stairwell hexes, so if some were to be given up, those were the ones to concede. My turn 4 prep did not go well, I had pulled my MG's back deeper into the building itself at this point, but their point blank shots didn't do a lot of damage, and I was not able to throw him out of the building , his toehold was secure, and 1 turn to early, according to what I was hoping for.

But then his turn 5 fire was not all that successful and I had new life.

By the way, this is making this seem altogether way to structured. We had shots flying around all over the place, snipers activating, Fred created a hero and a guy went fanatic for him and another berserk, my commisar is bring back dm guys left and right as I am simply jamming as many broken guys as I can into his hex . As I said earlier, his FT tanks both go down on fairly lucky shots by me and Fred is crawling around in the fringe of the buildings breathing down my neck.

But it was only to get even more messy ..

My turn 5 I try and fake Fred out by taking two leaders ( a 6+1 and a 7-0) and advance them by themselves concealed into the two middle hexes of the VC building. Plan here is to hope Fred thinks they are squads and to prep at them. Top of 6 ..he does. Disrupts one though, so is still able to move into his hex, but that tactic did buy me some time as he does not gain much ground in the builiding on his turn 6.

Two and a half turns to go now, and all the action is happening in the building. thank god this is a DASL map! He has around 20 squads in the building and I have about half of that. My turn 6 I stuff the stairwells with hs' and leaders and move my remaining decent troops with the mg's up into the upper levels of the building. (Germans are not subject to upper level encirclement by SSR).
Fred literally has the building surrounded on three sides and is clobbering me with fire, including his 3 sw flamethrowers which are rolling really low, and causing a lot of damage.

Turn 7 he gains a few more hexes by placing DC's and defeating some hs I threw in the stairwells to block him in CC and I have to rout up into higher ground. Things are crazy now. I comment to Fred its like we are playing a game of 3D chess there are so many things going on at so many different levels in the building.

Finally turn 8 is upon us. Fred has the building nearly totally surrounded. He has a JS122 tank and three flamethrowers and I'd guess around 15 squads in the building. I have around 8 units left, nearly all in level 2, about half of them broke. In the corners of the building I have tried to place my best units, blocking them with the remaining hs' and leaders. Fred preps and blows away 2 of the units allowing him to move into their location in the Mph, that was big because it enabled him to get to a point where he could advance then yet another location closer to my units hanging onto the corner of the buildings. He clears a stairwell and begins racing units up it, but I have a 658/lmg firing at him from another location and the resid layed down pins a few and breaks a unit. I am barely hanging on. CC comes and he ambushes and kills 2 more units, taking one corner of the building entirely, (the commisar fittingly was the last unit holding out over there!) and leaving me with a 658/mmg in one corner of the building in level 2 as my only lone GO unit. I have broken units, but he was able to get adj to all of them giving me no rout options.

Bottom of 8 and I have no options but to prep. I fire down into the hex outside of the building where he has gathered 2 flamethrower squads. I break one, but not the other, no rof. His DFF. If he breaks me I have no rout option and will die, if I do not break I win. One FT fires at me and I survive the shot. Second FT from the opposite of the street fires up at me and manages a 2MC and I break, perhaps due to the encirclement, IIRC. My last unit goes down to encircling flamethrowers! Can't say I didn't fight it out till the end
Fred had 2 more shots at me from other areas, not devastating shots, but pretty good 20+3 type shots, I may have shrugged them off with my 9ML, maybe not. Either way, it literally came down to the last fire phase and we had a lot of fun.

One of the best DASL games I have ever played. And it was a big one, but not the "monsters" that are in the SoF pack, that I'm not sure we could finish in a day. This one took us about 9 hours and was the perfect size to give the DASL effect, but doable in a day's sitting.