| Close but no Bridge | ||||||||||||||
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Played with Vince Hughes on Skype in two sessions (9-10 hours total). Vince set up all his units near the bridge, exactly as he suggested last Summer. This made me happy because it guaranteed the scenario would play entirely differently than when I played it solo. I divided my Hungarians into three groups: one infantry-only group crossing the river to the north, another infantry-only group crossing to the south, and a combined arms group setting up in and near the eastern town to keep an eye on the bridge. My strategy was to surround the town on three sides, leaving either the south or the western side open for Slovaks to flee away from their main position. My groups moved into position and we started exchanging artillery bombardment. I moved a company within assault range as soon as the infantry platoon defensing an AT gun was disrupted. Unfortunately, the platoon recovered before I assaulted and thus we assaulted at only slightly better odds. My troops failed badly and were badly shaken. So shaken in fact that Vince took the opportunity to counter-attack and I took heavy losses. But at least I had a bit of luck and the other AT gun was eliminated when its crew decided it was time to high-tail it. After a few more turns of artillery exchanges, my infantry moved into assault position on the whole north, north-west flank. Although I did not win the assault outright, we made enough progress that Vince had to reinforce the assaults or fear losing the assaults in a few turns. That’s when I committed all my reserves and the battle very chaotic. I had no clue who was winning from turn 18 to turn 22 as it was too close to call. But disaster struck late in turn 22 when another favorable odds assault ended up in a disaster. I still had a small chance to win on turn 23 but the assault on the bridge was another disaster and I surrendered. Slovak major victory! Vince’s defensive setup was certainly much better than the one I used when I played the scenario solo. The question to where to put the AT guns is a difficult one for the Slovaks. Vince put them on the west side of his box as he wanted to (and used) the center as a junction point to move troops to areas under attack. This left the guns more vulnerable to my infantry. He could have placed them in the center but this would have lost him the junction point as I would have bombarded them every turn. All of this to say I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer here; just choices, each with pluses and minuses. I gave this scenario a “4” because it is an intense, well-balance scenario. It was fun to finally play a scenario against Vince and I learned something about how he uses the center of his defensive box to shift units around. |
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| 1 Comment |
Hugmenot,
I'll also add something about the AT guns deployment. There is an early temptation to have them in the woods, out of sight until you are right on them and hopefully getting them a first shot against any armour advances.
However, on thinking about it, I chose to dig them in in the open because once spotted, the woods offers no protection. This would mean, with their +1 column to bombardment, they'd be fired on the 30col. A highly dangerous column with low morale troops taking it and not many AND poor leaders available. It seemed better to have them dug-in and in the open and only suffer 21col attacks from OBA, near to modifying officers. I think in our game this made them more resillient overall. Mainly because enemy OBA was limited to just 23 points.
But you know what ? A damaging dice roll can put paid to any plan, no matter how logical it seemed at the time. :-) I'll remember this scenario for a very long-time.