• Black SS scenario #11, Perrier Ridge

Part 1:

Well I am into Scenario #11, Perrier Ridge from Black SS right now. Only the start of turn 2, so much action to go. Lots to think about in this one, for both sides, what to control, what points to go after, how now to lose too many units and so on. an interesting mix of units on both sides.

Part 2:

Continuing play:

The British have two forces, one on map 27 and the other on map 31. So when I brought my German forces on the Southern edge of the map boards, I divided their forces into two groups as well, as this is only a 22 turn scenario and the points for those town hexes are mixed on both maps and I don't feel the German can win if they don't go after some on both boards. But will there be enough punch to divide their forces, or should I have kept them together & hit one and have enough time to go after the other. Did I divide the forces into the correct groupings. Did I setup the British forces in the correct defensive positions? There must be a 100 way to play this scenario.

Right now I am on turn five and I am knocking on door on both urban areas but much game to go.

Interesting, as the conclusion notes of this scenario mention a twenty-Five-pounders & Typhoon but none of these units show up in the scenario. No big deal, as this scenario has a lot different unit types: ARVE, Firefly, Achilles, Panther, Marder III, NW41, and tons of Engineer units to name a few. Now back to the game.

Part 3:

The fighting rages as almost two separate battles, from one map to the other, until the end, when I tried to shift some forces around and some tank fire crossed both boards as well. The Germans were not able to hammer out enough town hexes from the British control but did take a toll on the unit count of the British but not enough for a victory. The Game ended in a draw but very close to a British minor victory, just three more points in fact.

German mistakes were spreading out forces into two attach groups. They should have tried to control one map area with combine forces first, then hit the second area if time allowed.

British mistakes were exposing some of their armor two early to the German Panther Tanks. They needed to just keep them in ambush areas, as all they had to do was defend. Two their credit, they did take out two steps of Panther tanks but if they hadn't lost so many armor points themselves, they would of had an easy minor British victory at least if not a Major.

Game mistake; forgetting to use scenario Special Rule #3, which would have shifted things back in the Germans favor a bit.

Fun scenario, would be hard to play out the same way twice, so it has good replay value.

This is an interesting scenario with a really wide mix of units including German rockets and the British Avre (which I found fearsome in city fighting with its 17 DF factor, but vulnerable to AT since it only has an AT range of 2). It also includes more engineers than any scenario I've played.

The British are split into two formations defending towns on two maps. The Germans have fairly free choice about where to enter. I think I condemned my Germans to a loss with a poor entry choice. I went for screening by having most of the Germans enter in some fields that provided cover. While this kept them safe it meant the Germans spent several turns slogging through the fields to get into attack position. I also put almost all the German forces into one group which hurt later flexibility and let the British move reserves into place without too much threat.

Both sides inflicted severe losses but the British were able to hold enough towns to win. I think a better strategy for the Germans might be to try and cut off the large town at the south end of board 31 and then pick off all the hexes rather than fighting their way into it from the field protected south-west. There is a lot to like in this scenario and I think it should be good for replay.

I guess I must like this scenario as this is my second playing of it. Since I already played this once, I’ll be brief. This time it was a German Minor Victory, 72 points verses the British 57 points. Map 31 became static with both sides blocking or holding objectives but the real battle was on map 27, with 51 British step losses & 24 German step losses, the later turns speedup with half the units eliminated. Two things to remember, never move your Marder III with your Panthers into armor engagements against enemy armor as it will go first and never move your Infantry adjacent to a ARVE unit, it will hurt you! Fun scenario to play!

This was another fine Skype game with Vince Hughes. Played over three sessions that proved to be very tense with each dice roll. Perrier Ridge has the SS engineers trying to break a stretched British line. They are well equip with Panthers and HMG's for the attack, even bringing NW41's to the fight. The British have an equal amount of infantry, a few more Shermans, a Firefly and Achilles and a AVRE to try to stop the Germans. Morale is relatively equal and the leaders chosen we equal as well.

The British setup first, as said in a rather extended line to try to hold the northern town on board 31 and limited on the setup on board 27 to the two towns. Several units on board 31 were positioned closer to board 27 to try to reinforce against an attack down the north south road on board 27.

The German attack came on board 27, with a holding force moving toward the north-east hill on board 31. The later consisted of the bulk of the ENG's, HMG's and the mortars and NW41. The holding force consisted of the AFV's, Panthers and Marder and GREN and ENG support.

The initial turns had the Germans moving onto the board and the British moving to respond. The first blood is struck on turn three with both German and British OBA hitting infantry. The Germans continue to move forward but the British OP fire was weak and did not slow them much as the ENG's and HMG's moved down the road on board 27. By turn 5 the Germans were engaging the British in the large town on board 27, knocking out Shermans and RIF's.

Turn 6 had both sides fully engaged in assaults, OBA and AT fire as the Germans push for the town. Rifle units and Weapons units fall on the British side and ENG's and SPW251'so the German side, but they continued to push on to the town. Turn 7 has the German Panthers try to take the pressure off the attack on the town by trying to push for the northern town on board 31. A hidden AT gun gets one of the Panthers attention while the Achilles gets a flank shot for the kill. Return fire by the other Panther kills the Achilles, but the German probe was stopped, for now.

In the town on board 27, the Germans continue to press the British will success. Two RIF platoons, reduced HMG, Bren and Sherman are knocked out in the attack. They start to gain town hexes from the British but still need to keep up the attack. Disruptions and demoralizations slow the Germans but they don't stop.

The battle for the town reduces to unit assaults with casualties on both sides and pressure to hold mounts as the Germans consolidate there force for another push. Meanwhile, British units on board 31 try to get a counterattack going on the holding force. But the British command is indecisive and units move without coordination. One British LT is able to assault a reduced Panther and demoralize it. Subsequent German OBA forces it to take a double demoralization and the tanks are lost.

The Germans were eventually able to capture the large town on board 27 and inflict enough casualties to get the win. The British formations were broken and had to pull back to a new defensive line, but the German SS was batter enough to have to stop and regroup before trying any more attacks.

Once again another good scenario and very tough for the British with the firepower of the SS. Vince did his usual flawless advance with the SS which made my counter measures hard if not impossible. Good game.

Played with Alan Sawyer on Skype. I chose this battle for two reasons. The first being that it DID look interesting and the two plays before by Jay Townsend and Joe Oppenheimer had a Allied win and a Draw as the results. So the appeal of trying to get an Axis win was there to redress the scenario. Secondly, Alan had previously chosen two battles before this one which was from the same campaign on previous days with the British taking on the Hohenstaufen Division. I believed this one would make it a nice trio if added to our previous two scrimmages. So there we were BACK in the ubiquitous wheatfields of Normandy

After the Warwickshires secured Presles on the 3rd, they and several tank squadrons of 11th Armoured Division were ordered to relieve the defending Rifle Brigade at Le Bas Perrier. They would soon be surprised to find that they would find it extremely difficult going to mount an attack against an aggressive enemy. Both sides had roughly equal men and morale, but the Germans, although outnumbered more than 2:1 in AFV’s, of course had the better quality tanks by far. To balance this up in a favourable way to the allies, the German attack would be coming over quite open ground, with just wheat-fields for hiding in as cover and the attendant slowness they bring, and then, if all this was succesfully negotiated, they would have to battle into and capture towns. It was going to be an interesting conundrum for both sides.

The Warwickshire troops approached from the east and soon nestled into nearby hamlets as they were told that there were strong possibilities that their relief effort may be the subject of German attacks. In the event, at 1330 hours, some SS Engineer troops and a company of SS Hohenstaufen grenadiers covered the front of the Warks positions. These Germans were also supported by four tank platoons. Meanwhile, the main section of the SS Engineers attack would concentrate on the north and the positions of the Rifle Brigade. Here they threw their main strength consisting of five companies of troops, their mortar and rocket support and a host of half-tracks and pressed northwards up the battlefield.

The ordnance drove ahead and into the wheat-fields and dug themselves in in preparation of their bombardment onslaught they were planning to unleash. Meanwhile, the mixture of SS and Wehrmacht engineers were pushed forward by their officers at good speed. For their part, the Rifle Brigade, as well as covering each street of Le Bas Perrier with their numbers, they had also dug-in and lined the ridge of the higher ground in front of the town. After ashort while, the foot of these slopes were reached by the Germans, and this was thought by the German commander to be the toughest and riskiest part of the assault. This was because his troops would be in the open, attacking uphill against a dug-in enemy. To assist this, all battlefield and rear line artillery was used to soften up the enemy locations and the Panther platoons to the east held at bay numerous more enemy AFV’s from taking part in the fray.

Once the assault started, it surprisingly only lasted about 30 minutes as the German attackers went through the enemy line very quickly and also took out any M4’s that popped their turrets up. Also, the German ordnance just pounded and pounded any ‘loose ends’ the British would show and therefore cut off any further assistance the defenders on the hill would have had coming. Now, for the Germans, it was onto the town itself.

Meanwhile, to the east, the small holding force there kept the British troops interested enough so as to divert their attentions from the main part of the battle. However, after about an hour, British armour here decided they would have to go to the relief of Le Bas Perrier and they started to weave their way, a long way, round the edge of the battlefield, keeping out of Panther range. Seeing this occur, the German holding force launched a small attack to see if pressure could bring back that armour. Their attack though was seen off easily, albeit with low casualties and so the Germans had to hold their positions and be content with pinning down British infantry and some tanks. These British troops had to stay put so as not to give up the town areas they were holding, though they might have attempted a more vigorous attack themselves to rid the area here of German activity and release their own number as reinforcements to Perrier ?

Back to the north, and with the hills scaled, the Germans began to push into the towns. British casualties in both men and AFV’s seemed very high indeed. Le Bas Perrier was slowly being ground down by the German attackers, though local allied counter-attacks, and stubborn resistance meant that the melee itself went to and fro on many occasions. The German engineers also received some Panther support, and these proved effective in seeing off British armour support just by their closeness to the battle. Taking around two hours, Le Bas was finally tipping to the Axis troops. British efforts, to reinforce the ailing defence fell short as these were soon grounded down too. By 1700 hours, the British decided that the town could be held no longer and gave up any further aspirations of defending it. The concentration of German effort had paid dividends and pulled off a useful victory.

Losses were unsurprisingly high. German losses were 18 step equivalents against a British loss of 52 step equivalents. This high British equivalent loss was boosted upwards with the 13 AFV step losses soaked up against just 2 German AFV steps lost. The Germans also captured all the 20m high parts of the town of Le Bas Perrier, though no assault was ever launched at the 40m sections nor on the towns to the east. Germans accepted a minor victory after 15 of the 22 turns completed.

Enjoyed the battle immensely and it complemented our previous two beautifully. We'll have to play some of the smaller offering scattered about these pitched battle that the other scenarios offer. I give this a 4. It is obviously challenging as so far, all results have been achieved by the various players.

This scenario was played as a team event by my gaming group. I act as moderator and facilitator for each game, and I do not participate directly as a player. My listing of “winning” is based on the PG HQ site cannot support a neutral role in AARs.

This is the last scenario in the four year campaign in the gaming group, so I went with one a little larger with plenty of neat toys. The Brits got a Firefly and an ARVE, while the Germans had three Panthers, a nebelwerfer, 10 halftracks, and 13(!) engineers. The British had to defend all the town hexes across two boards, while the Germans had to take them; each town was awarded victory points based on which board it was on, and casualties also counted as victory points (tanks double).

The British set-up was not very good. The town closest to the German entry area on the British left was defended by nothing stronger than rifle platoons, giving the Germans time to set up and organize before going in for the kill. The good British tanks were behind the town, unable to assist in defense, and due to a hill in the middle of the board, unable to defend against any Germans choosing to flank the British right. Further behind the town was a small village defended with unimpressive anti-tank guns and flanked by dug in Shermans on either side.

The Germans came on methodically, set up an artillery park, organized their massive wave of SS engineers with SS HMGs and grenadiers and several halftracks for the town approach. The Panthers entered the center of the board, and the German Army engineers and HMG came on the British right. The Brits failed to respond to having their Shermans in primary range of the Panthers, and on turn 2 nine of twelve Sherman steps went up in flames. The Firefly couldn't see around the hill, and was unable to support them. Heavy German arty weakened several British defensive points, which was compounded by direct fire. Finally the assaults went in. German halftracks got pummeled, but German infantry forces, supported by long range Panther AT fire, crushed the British defenders on the British left.

Even the much weaker German army units successfully pushed into the British towns on the right, especially once the Panthers were freed up to lend more support. The Panthers were everywhere, and the British had no answer to them. Only the dead Firefly unit had firepower that could equal the German armor. It was a total rout.

The Germans eventually held half the town hexes at the cost of six German steps (five halftracks) and 54 (14 tanks steps doubled) British steps. And they did so using only nine of 22 available turns. We called the massacre here. The Germans had superior infantry combat power, superior armor (if fewer units), superior artillery, and no time pressure. While a more robust British defense could have certainly delayed the advance and inflicted more casualties, I don't know how the British could really hold. The players felt powerless to do anything of value.

We read the real life summary, which indicated the only way the Brits stopped the Germans was with their 25lbers and rocket armed Typhoons. Of course, this scenario included neither of those two potent British weapons. Even the Germans agreed the scenario would have been more fun if only aircraft were included. It just really wasn't a battle without them. Lame force defending against a well-armed foe who has all the time in the world, and the defenders not having the critically important weapons they had in real life, earns this scenario a 2. Wickedly one sided. A real disappointment for the last scenario in the four year campaign.