The Last Fort (and the last battle)

After getting my rear end handed to me in Kettlehut to the Rescue, I searched around for another game. Steve Garvey, whom I had played earlier in To the Matter Born happened to be available and seeking a rematch, and after two consecutive crushing losses, I remembered enjoying his company in our last game, so I readily agreed to the battle.

We wanted to play on one of Jeff's 3-D maps, so after a few moments of routing around, we discovered The Last Fort from the Heat of Battle Das Reich pack. The Last Fort takes place in late September of 1939, and pits the SS against Polish troops trying to hold a village with a large fortified building up on a hill that must be assaulted. The victory conditions are very tough for the SS, as they must take a very large number of buildings from the Polish in a rather short amount of time. The Polish may be relatively weak, but they have a good amount of numbers and the SS has to move quickly.

Steve took the Polish, so I wandered off to return after he finished establishing his defense. The Poles get a few bunkers, some mortars, a few machine guns and plenty of warm bodies. Plus everyone starts the game concealed from me.

The SS have a large number of squads, quite a few leaders, a few demolition charges, two flamethrowers, a ridiculous number of machine guns, and two modules of Off Board Artillery (100 MM with no smoke and one pre-registered hex and an 80 MM with a radio on board). I liked the SS position. Instead of assaulting the fort directly, I chose to enter on the far flank and sweep up the board ninety degrees from the fort. I sent a smaller force toward the fort, but moving at an angle to meet up with my flanking force. I wanted to try to fix some of the defenders in front of the fort and limit his movement. I also pre-sighted the 100 MM OBA to pound a location in between the two offensive lines, hoping to later catch him moving as he tried to shift to his flank. The 80 MM radio was on the far flank and would be used to lay smoke to cover the advance over a small bridge later. The bridge had me worried, because I HAD to cross it by turn 6 to grab the building hexes on the far side, and the choke point would spell trouble. I wanted to cover it in smoke and march across under cover, at least that was the plan.

The game opened with me moving what seemed to be a ridiculous number of SS troops on the map. On the flank, I was probably excessively cautious as I took a path that kept me out of sight in the rear, but cost me a little time in the heavily wooded terrain. Eventually, I had to crest a small hill that slowed me down a little more. As the game progressed, I realized that Steve hadn't really defended the flank in a forward deployment, letting me get fairly far before I met resistance. Had I pushed harder, I would have been fine, so that was a mistake.

My radio operator was wounded on turn one by a pretty long shot, leaving him somewhat hobbled and slow. Unfortunately, I kept meaning to transfer the radio to an unwounded leader, but kept forgetting to do it. Turn after turn, he hobbled on, falling behind. I really can't explain why I didn't get him relief, but it never seemed to work out. Later this would cost me.
On the frontal assault, I managed to make pretty good time passing through a valley befire coming up on the Polish position. I had a few squads break under fire, but in typical SS fashion, they rallied and rejoined the fight. SS don't run, they just relocate to a better firing position. I began to bring down the 100 MM OBA, and this was another mistake. I was itching to begin pounding the area, and as a result I didn't wait for him to drop concealment. Because of this, I had to draw extra access cards (“Jah!! They ARE there, just fire the damn guns! No I can't see them, but I know they are there!”). This depleted my access deck unnecessarily, and sure enough, after a few missions, I drew the two red cards and the artillery command revoked my access and moved on to a different engagement. I manged to break some squads and strip some concealment, but the mission was largely wasted. Stupid mistake, and again I have no explanation.

The SS continued to grind forward, sweeping the Poles off the hills and taking a squad prisoner. Another squad was killed in Close Combat while my mortars got set up in a pretty decent position. I began to come up to the bridge, while he pulled some men out of his defensive position around the Fort and redeployed on the flank. He also managed to get quite a few squads to fall back over the bridge, evading the SS net and living to fight again. This would cost me.

It came time to cross the bridge, but my lagging radioman couldn't see the bridge enough to bring down the smoke. He did manage to bring it down on the fort, taking a few machine gun positions out of play behind the screen. I was left to run across the bridge taking brutal firepower from several positions, but we're SS...this is what we get paid to do, right?

As a result of an earlier Heat of Battle result, I had a fanatic SS squad. Their job was to go first and draw as much fire as possible. Off they went, marching down the road singing Deutschland Über Alles while the Poles unloaded with all they had. They took twelve down two shots, they took eight down two shots, they took four down three shots, and they loved it. They marched and sang, dreaming of the Iron Cross they would proudly show their village after expanding the frontiers of the Reich. They took Subsequent shots of four down two, leader directed machine guns with rate of fire. They took it all, and they carried on with their duty. In the end, they ended their movement safely across the bridge, right in the heart of the Polish defense, leaving a trail of residual fire in their wake. It was a proud moment for Das Reich.

After they made their historic march, I sprinted a large chunk of my forces up the road in a desperate attempt to make the crossing. I shouldn't have to do this, but I dawdled too long and also never brought the radio up properly. My guys were going to pay the cost of my foolishness. They ran in the wake of the Fanatics, and mostly survived. Some broke, some pinned, but most survived to get that foothold across the bridge. But the pin results left me short of my goals, and it was going to be very difficult to grab enough buildings to win the game. In the carnage of the road crossing, two heat of battle results spawned two SS Heroes. (The Bridge of heroes will be the subtitle of this scenario for now on.) One of those heroes would almost make a dramatic difference.

On the final German turn after the crossing, I managed to grab all but one of the required hexes to secure victory. No one else could reach the last hex with the available movement, but one squad and one hero could advance in during the final advance phase and battle in out in close combat with a Polish squad for victory. Unfortunately, the building was uphill, so the squad had to go CX (Counter Exhausted) to make the climb along with the Hero. The Heroic modifier canceled the CX result, leaving me at 3-2 odds, while the Poles hit back at 1-2. I need to win the combat to win the scenario.

He rolled a 3, resulting in the death of the squad and hero. I failed to kill him, leaving me one building short in another bitter defeat. It was a great scenario with a lot of replay value, and I liked it so much, I went up to the Heat of Battle people and bought the module pack.

I ended ASLOK 2-8 for the week, far from my too ambitious desire to win once a day. I'll talk more about that as well as a general wrap up a little later.