6 player scenario!

AAR-G1: Timoshenko’s Attack

This past Saturday the SW Michigan ASL club got together for another multi-player scenario. This time, at Mark’s suggestion, we put together a six player one. Timoshenko’s Attack was the first of a series of scenarios published in the now defunct “General” magazine published by the Avalon Hill Gaming Co©. The scenario features a Russian attack across three separate boards against German defenders. The six player feature is that each of the three boards is a separate “scenario” with no LOS or movement between boards. The Russians have three separate groups which they decide on what board each group will attack. The Germans have one common “pool” OoB that they draw from to create three separate on board OoB’s and one reinforcement pool. The Russians win by exiting 13 VP off of any one board. As a note here, ROAR has this pretty heavily in the Russian’s favor although I don’t recall what the exact results were. We met at my place and started rolling around 5:30pm.

I faced off against Tony (Grand Rapids, MI). Don’t recall the board number, but my end was a small town with many stone buildings. The middle of the board is pretty open and Tony’s end had woods to cover his entrance. Tony is a strong player and I enjoyed gaming with him. The first couple turns went well for him. I had three squads, a mmg, and a lmg along with a 8-1 ldr to hold off 15 447’s 2 mmg’s and an assortment of ldrs and lmgs. One of the leaders was a commissar who probably helped me more then Tony as he ended up reducing several squads unwilling to enter the battle right away. Well, 3 against 15 didn’t seem that reasonable so I spend the first half of the game rolling 10’s and doing a fighting withdrawal back into the town. This let Tony move half way up the board with no losses. I request the 10-2, crew manned hmg and a couple of squads. Still a 3 to one advantage for Tony, but a 10-2 led crew and hmg is pretty nasty in stone buildings… And so it proved to be. Once Tony hit the outskirts of the town crossing the roads against stone building Germans proved too much for Russians who tended to conscript every time and a commissar who apparently didn’t like his own troops very much. I lost the 8-1mmg468 combination to a melee results and had another squad break towards the end. But the 10-2 and his charges went on some ROF rampages and managed to do enough damage before Xing out that Tony resigned on turn 8.

The middle board matched up Doug (Portage, MI) for the Germans against Steve (Hastings, MI). Steve had the Russian group that featured 3 T-28M34’s. Our sole consolation was that the tanks are radio-less so they have to move in platoon movement. However, the 76mm howitzer they mount and the 5 mg’s (1 aa, 1 cmg, 1 rear, 2 turreted bow) make them formidable verses a German OoB in 1941. I didn’t get a chance to pay too much attention to this scenario as I was busy fending off Tony’s hoards, but the gist of it was that Steve moved quickly down his board breaking 2 of Doug’s outlying squads and leaving it looking not too good for Doug early on. Because of this we sent the 37mm AT gun and OBA radio to him along with (I think) 4 squads, a leader and maybe a mg or two. In the end, we probably over-reacted with this group as Doug ended up bogging Steve down and between the AT gun and OBA stopping all three tanks and not leaving enough infantry to make the required exit points. Two boards for the Germans.

On the final board Todd (Portage, MI) faced Mark DeVries(Grand Rapids, MI) Todd, with all the joys of recently becoming a father for the second time, hasn’t had a lot of gaming time recently. On the other hand, Mark, an ex-Grofaz top 10 finisher plays weekly. I didn’t get a chance to see any of this battle so all I know is that Mark pushed down the board with Todd also doing a fighting withdrawal. Mark had around 9 458 Russian squads verses Todd’s initial 3 467’s. We sent the rest of the reinforcements to Todd (probably about 2-3 squads, mmg, and a leader) but in the scenario that ended the quickest (they had the least number of units to push) Mark managed to push the requisite 13 VP’s off the end of the board on turn 8. Well, the Germans almost pulled it off.

We all agreed this is a tough one for the Germans to pull off. In essence the Russians have three opportunities to win and the odds are they will win on at least one of the boards. That’s what happened this time. Also, 3 T-28’s are worth 15 VP, i.e. more than enough to win. Being 1941 the only worthwhile defense against them is the AT gun (which isn’t guaranteed – I think Doug bounced 3-4 shots off the armor before getting a result), the 105mm OBA (which has about the same chance), and a slightly weaker chance with the single 50mm mortar. With armor factors of 3 & 2, the mg’s really aren’t a serious threat. Street fighting is an option on two of the boards, but one board is wide open and it is probably rare that the Russians would choose any other board for the afv’s. If the German guesses which board the Russian tanks come on and set the AT gun HIP, he risks the tanks coming on somewhere else and simply driving off. If he waits and uses the AT gun as reinforcements (as we did) then the Russian knows where the AT gun is and can try to avoid it.

Anyway, as the scenarios ended everyone picked up another scenario. Todd and Mark played a small scenario by Adam Lunney “It’s Hardly Fair”, Tony and I played a hand of Up Front and Steve and Doug ended up doing a play-test scenario for MMP that I had. The whole gathering ended around 1am and it was a great time. Not sure what our next multi-player will be but watch for word of it on this blog!