Liberation, Scenario One: Surprise at Le Hamel

I felt in the mood to play something from Liberation and picked this scenario to get the British on the offensive and with a ton of Naval and airport and cool AVRE & Crab units to boot. The British led with their infantry and keep their vehicles out of harm way of the nasty 88mm German gun. Once that gun was taken out all forces moved dead ahead and the German tried to defend too many objectives and were spread too thin and got mauled and overrun. In the end the British had 35 points to the Germans 6 points for a Major British Victory. By the end of the scenario the Germans had lost 26 steps & 4 Leaders while the British had only lost only 3 steps. That Air and Naval support was devastating! Even though it was lopsided, I enjoyed a scenario where the British could win big time for change and using those engineer type armor vehicles was fun.

This is an AAR from a game played quite a few years ago. Overall, this was a very good and balanced scenario. We had to call the game before it was fully completed due to time constraints. However, we agreed that the game could have gone either way and was very balanced. This is why I chose to call this one a "DRAW". Was a very fun afternoon of gaming with this particular scenario!

AAR NOTE I am just now pulling these games off the shelf and recording our shared play results with my gaming buddy here in town where I live. Unfortunately, I can't remember the exact date of play on some of these games. However, I do know if we played them "pre-pandemic" vs. coming "right out of the pandemic lockdowns". If you see a play date of 2019-06-01, this is for a pre-pandemic game and AAR. 2022-06-01 is for our post-pandemic gaming reboots at our local game and magic card store.

This was a fun, smallish battle where the Germans held a tough but thin defensive line of entrenchments. The British took half the game to crack the line, but infiltrated units past the german positions which forced a fall-back and then rout of the German defenders.

This was a fun game once it got going. The Brits were up against a rather strong force of German infantry well supported by heavy weapons, mines, trench’s, you get the picture. The Brits get some weak artillery, an occasional Naval bombardment and some air power on the hour and half hour. It’s a take the town kind of scenario, with German infantry holding tight and proving to be tough customers.

Not a bad exercise, but one that is repeated frequently in this series. However, the maps leave much to be desired. Very dark, very green. It’s very hard to distinguish the woods from the “clear” terrain, and hedgerows seem to be big green blobs between hexes. I’m not a fan of the hill structure either, looks very much like a desert type hill, not Normandy.

Also, using 4th edition rules, what’s the difference between a village and a town??? The number of hexes they occupy?

In the end, the Brits manage a marginal victory. A so so game.