AAR - Primosole Bridge CG I

AAR

Doug and I started the Primosole Bridge CG I. Doug choose the Germans/Italians and I’ve got the British. We’ve played the Pegasus Bridge CG twice and both times Doug played the British so it made sense to switch. Also, Doug has a habit of failing morale checks with British elite troops so he figured he was better off with the Italian conscripts.

July 13 Night: Like Pegasus Bridge, this CG starts off with a British night Glider landing but also adds Brit paratroopers. The Italian on-board set-up is pretty structured with the Italian units in the buildings/fortifications adjacent to the paved road and a small German contingent that shows up on turn 5 traveling in convoy. The British have two wings of Paratroopers and up to 4 AT guns delivered by Glider to attack with. I choose to drop the paratroopers in the compound and just west of the village. Later, another platoon of para’s enter on-board cloaked. The gliders all landed in the SW corner so as to guarantee landing and avoid being overrun by the Germans if they land north of the village. Good plan except I rolled 6’s for two of the gliders as they landed. They crashed malf’ing the guns, eliminating the crews, and bogging the jeeps. Hmm… 4 easy CVP for Doug right off the bat. Well, at least I kept 2 AT guns in good order. May entry dr goes great and my para’s enter right away. The ones dropping from the sky do their job. The west attack into the village goes smoothly with almost no losses. The Compound attack also goes well for the Brits. This allows the cloaked para’s to move up the road quickly and stay cloaked as they assist clearing the final buildings in the town. It doesn’t help the Italians that the NVR went down to 1 on turn 2. By turn 6 the town is taken and the convoy rolls down the road and into the north part of the town – and unknown to them surrounded by concealed/cloaked brits. After the ambush, the 88ATgun and truck are eliminated (but the crew survives) as are two other trucks and respective half squads. Doug does catch a few breaks though. One half squad will end up advancing out of a CC and into a building giving him an isoloated strategic location in town (that half squad will eventually escape). The gun crew ends up in uncontrolled territory where he also will be retained. The surviving truck in no-man’s land will also escape along with the Italian truck that left much earlier. End of the scenario came on Axis turn 6 when Doug rolls a “1”. That left the British in control of all the village/bridge/compound except for one building in the village. All the Italians eliminated (except the truck) and most of the convoy eliminated (except a half-squad, crew, and truck). British CVP is 27, Axis CVP is 6.

July 14 AM: I think Doug will attack this turn. The British are at their weakest and the Axis strategic location in the middle of the town creates some no-man land hexes I have to work around. I, on the other hand, want to go Idle – not waste an attack chit with so few troops and defend in the stone buildings against one of his 3 Attack chits. Course, I end up being wrong, Doug chooses to go Idle in order to have two replenishment phases to work with. So, no scenario is played.

July 14PM: OK, I don’t really want to attack, but I need to get rid of the Axis strategic location in the middle of my set-up (it doesn’t go away in the Idle day as you don’t repeat that section of the refit phase on an Idle day) and I’m thinking I need to stretch out a bit and build some entrenchments to serve as strategic locations for the future. I select attack. Doug, now flush with lots of troops (I guess as he has a ton of CPPs to spend) also selects Attack. On reflection, this is a bad decision on my part. I should have realized that Doug would have to Attack or else simply fore go the chance to force a British withdrawal at the end of 14PM. I should have gone Idle also. If both of us Idle I save an Attack chit for later when I get all the CPP and I will not be forced to withdraw my Paras before the night and he ends up wasting a lot of troops as he is forced to withdraw later and would only get to use these troops for a limited duration. Since we both picked Attack, I’ve just wasted an attack chit. So we’re playing this one with a Dual attack. Brits end up rolling to set-up first. More to come….