Another playthrough of Alamo at St. Mere Eglise

[JWW]

A video was requested. I just don't do videos. But I tried to do a playthrough with more pictures. I also put in some crude markers, red being fire and blue being moves. All pictures are at the start of the Axis turn except for the last. I also got lucky with some dice rolls and quickly eliminated the troublesome US half squads and won in five turns. I hate that that sounds maybe arrogant, because I've lost this scenario many times. But I played it once this morning with this result.

Turn 1 Axis - Destroyed US half squad by fire and moved into that position. Moved other units up to the building.
Turn 1 Allied - Bauer destroyed half squad in entrenchment with fire. Other units miss the other half squad.

[JWW]

Turn 2 Axis - Goal is to kill Andrews and the adjacent half squad now. I move my units adjacent to Andrews, consolidating the non-leader squads into one stack and advance both adjacent to Andrews.
Turn 2 Allies - Andrews misses in fire phase, I destroy all units in Andrews stack except the leader. Speirs and the remaining half squad move into position to fire on Bauer. Note I move every unit through that one hex in the street because it is out of LOS of Andrews and keeps Bauer out of LOS of Speirs.

[JWW]

Rembmer all pictures are at start of Axis turn.

Turn 3 Axis - Non-leader stack kills Andrews. Bauer takes the opportunity to fire on the remaining half squad and kills it. Only Speirs left now. Speirs take out a half squad of Bauer in defensive fire.
Turn 3 Allies - Speirs misses. Bauer pins one squad.

[JWW]

Turn 4 Axis - Bauer fires at Speirs and Misses. Other squad moves one hex. Speirs fires ad Bauer and pins the half squad. Both German stacks now advance adjacent to Speirs, minus the pineed half squad.
Turn 4 Allied - Speirs pins a squad in the leaderless stack. In defensive fire, Speirs loses a squad and has another one pinned.

[JWW]

Turn 5 Axis - Both stacks adjacent to Speirs. The object for this turn and if needed the next is to attrit Speirs with fire and then assault into the hex when odds are favorable either this turn or next.
Axis offensive fire pins a half squad, leaving Speirs with one full squad not pinned. Odds are good for an assault. I will move the half squad in with Bauer and then assault if Speirs doesn't get a very lucky defensive fire roll. Speirs destroys the half squad using opportunity fire. That's okay. I have a three-squad leaderless stack and then Bauer with two squads ready to assault Speirs with one unpinned squad. It might be bloody, but the game will end here. I assault with the unpinned stack first. It is repulsed with a lost squad and one pinned. I forgot to check to see what Speirs lost. I then assault with Bauer and eliminate Speirs. Game over.

[Monkie]

well done, but Speirs will be back, bet on it.

[JWW]

A couple of thoughts. Speirs will come to you if you make it hard from him to get LOS to you. He really should stay in the farmhouse on the other side of the roundabout, but I guess he is trying to fulfill the elimination victory condition, too. Other than that, consolidate and focus on one target at a time and look for LOS advantages like that one hex on turn two that allows the Germans to cross the street without getting fire from anyone. The LOS tool is your friend.

[JWW]

ORIGINAL: Monkie

well done, but Speirs will be back, bet on it.

The only leader I fear more than Speirs is Lehmann.

[JWW]

For the record I tried the scenario from the Allied side but played to avoid casualties, doing a delay/withdrawal type action, as you can see, and got a major victory. The Axis was really aggressive and as you can Bauer chased Andrews into the woods and destroyed him but couldn't get back around to deal with Speirs. So the game gave the US a major victory for surviving. That is one reason I really didn't like the elimination condition scenarios in the beta and still don't. I think this could easily be made into an objective scenario. On the other hand, I think it is challenging to play it as is as the Axis.

Turn 3



End of game

[MorningDew]

Thanks - will try to recreate.

[JWW]

ORIGINAL: MorningDew

Thanks - will try to recreate.

Also have to be lucky. I got a couple of quick eliminations of those random half squads. Still though I think at this point I could win this 2 out of 3 tries.

[MorningDew]

Attempt 1 - end of turn 3 and these are the only remaining German troops (Allies rolls of 2 and 3 on defensive



Turn 2 also lost. A little better, but you need super lucky roles and the Allies need bad rolls (IMO).

Curious if other who have struggled with this one have found a way to win 2 of 3.

[JWW]

ORIGINAL: MorningDew

Attempt 1 - end of turn 3 and these are the only remaining German troops (Allies rolls of 2 and 3 on defensive



Turn 2 also lost. A little better, but you need super lucky roles and the Allies need bad rolls (IMO).

Curious if other who have struggled with this one have found a way to win 2 of 3.

I may be wrong about the two of three. I do know the last two games I played and kept track of I won. That might be too small a selection, but the games seemed to flow well. I may have to play four or five tomorrow and report how I actually do.

[JWW]

Okay, update. Maybe 1 out of 3. I was watching the college world series final game and decided to try my hand three times at the game.

Game 1 - Defeat - I didn't get as good a start and Speirs entered the battle in a different way. I don't want to describe it to keep it a surprise, but it was interesting. And it was good to see from the AI.

Game 2 - Minor victory - Heavy casualties and one US half squad remained, pinned. It went almost like the game I wrote up today, except Speirs did something different at the end.

Game 3 - Defeat. This time Andrews and the half squad that starts near the roundabout did something different. Speirs ended up in a different location. I was still able to get Speirs with a turn 6 assault with two stacks, but several hexes away from the roundabout. I was never able to get a shot on the one US half squad that starts on the far right. The main action moved away from the roundabout and that half squad hunkered down and stayed away instead of joining the action.

This was interesting because in the one game that went the way I described it earlier today, I got a win. The other two games the AI did something different, first with Speirs and then with Andrews. I think that was triggered by slightly different things that happened in my opening move or two. But it was good to see.

So, okay, maybe I can get a win 1 out of 3 times instead of 2. out of 3.

[rico21]

Many thanks to everyone for expanding and improving the game![&o][&o][&o]
Speirs, Speirs, wait ...[;)]

[MorningDew]

9 hours - finally won Alamo as Germans with 1 unit standing (and many favorable die rolls).

I would be curious to try this one with the US having 1 less unit and one leader being a -1. Curious if that changes the balance to close to 50/50.

[Monkie]

I tried to import the Alamo scenario to change the OOB a bit and for some reason it crashes the editor while the other scenarios do not. Otherwise I would say try adding another German leader of your choice and see if that makes it more balanced on the German side.

[JWW]

ORIGINAL: Monkie

I tried to import the Alamo scenario to change the OOB a bit and for some reason it crashes the editor while the other scenarios do not. Otherwise I would say try adding another German leader of your choice and see if that makes it more balanced on the German side.

Add Lehmann and let Lehmann and Speirs go at it, and that probably comes close to balancing it. Either of your suggestions.

On the other hand, do we want all scenarios to be 50/50 balanced? Maybe some should be very hard to win. And the game instructions could denote a difficulty level, as some games do, like HARD, AVERAGE, EASY. That might be interesting.