As we begin February, it's time again for another Grumble Jones trainwreck...uhhh scenario!!! I spent this morning catching up on the doings at Winter Offensive. Winners were crowned and three new fellas were inducted into the ASL Hall of Fame. Congrats to Dave Mareske on playing the most ASL at Winter Offensive. No small feat to get in 10 games!!
My own ASL weekend was fairly awful. Dan Best and I played our four games from Rally Point 2 and I would lose all 4. I'm currently on a 6 game losing streak. Bad dice combined with difficult scenario objectives to pretty much wax my backside over the course of 4 games. The last one had me attacking with 11 x 6-6-6's across open ground and uncovered level one hills (Starter Kit board) against 4 x 5-4-8's, a 4-6-7, and a 4-4-7 with an MMG, 3 x LMG's and 2 x 8-1 leaders. You can imagine how that battle went. A ratio of 4 MMG's to 6 squads....seems a little excessive for the Carolina League.
As with most Rally Point and Schwerpunkt scenarios...you don't have enough time to be thoughtful in your attack. I had to ensure no Germans were on the three hills and then take two buildings at the board edge behind said hills. I hadn't taken a building yet on Turn 4. I would be able to take 1 building, but the Germans had 2-1/2 squads in one building hex and 3 squads in the other building hex. Each of course led by an 8-1. I gave the concession rather than give Dan the opportunity to KIA more of my boys with 32 factor shots...which even with Assault Moves would be -2. It's games/scenario situations like this one, that just turn me off sometimes. I have enough respect for Dan as an opponent (particularly when defending) to know how the scenario is going to go for me...when I have to attack across open ground with 6 morale troops against 8 morale Germans with too many machine guns. It's not rocket science. And of course, I didn't help my cause with my excessively high die rolls, which have been plaguing my game lately.
This month's scenario comes from Volume Two of the Armored Bears. I received these over Christmas and both books are very good. Great writing and excellent pictures. Well worth adding to your collection if you don't currently own them.
The book describes the actions of the 3rd Armored immediately following the battle of Kursk as the Soviets counterattack and begin driving on Kharkov once again. The 3rd Armored was positioned towards the northwest of Kharkov and it's Panzer-Grenadiers were heavily engaged in delaying actions. The Bears were down a large number of the AFV's and steadily losing ground. At one point, the Soviets flooded the zone with T-34's and the Panzer-Grenadiers were facing certain encirclement and destruction. They had been promised Panthers from the Das Reich Division. These arrived by rail and were attacked by Sturmoviks, which destroyed or damaged a few of the Panthers. The rest arrived in the nick of time to throw back the Soviet armor after inflicting heavy losses on the T-34's. This scenario attempts to depict that particular action. 4 Panthers will take on 14 T-34's. This could be very tough on the Panthers as ASL isn't always able to reflect the kinds of heroic actions that took place from time to time. If your Panthers never get rate of fire and the T-34's successfully swarm all around...well then it could go very badly for the Panthers, who historically wiped the table of T-34's. As a person, who rarely gets rate of fire...I know this kind of situation is very possible. But here's hoping better people than I will control the Panthers!!
As always, these monthly "Basement Quality" Scenarios are offered for fun only and as a thank you to the readers of this blog.
Remember to open pictures in a new window in order to maximize the size.
All Grumble Jones scenarios are available from the ASL Archive website.
(Just search on Grumble Jones)
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