Celles (a.r.r.)

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Lunch Time

Not bad results this time around.  Here’s a clip from the melee pocket right at the start of the 12’th hour.  I have the disruption reports on, so each number you see corresponds to the disruption levels.  It is no co-incidence that the more borders the counters are sharing with enemy units, the higher the level, and those not in contact at all have values of 0.

In the far west of the scenario I pounced on two self-propelled artillery units.  I didn’t get to crush any but I did deliver some good hits without taking any losses.  

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14:00 (Day -- Clear)

Another couple hours go by, and we continue to try and re-stabalize a losing position.  I think we are slowly getting there though.  It doesn’t help that I am pretty tired right now, and already did quite a misclick with one of my elite units that could have got me into big trouble.  But once I start a turn, it’s damn hard to be able to quit.

Many units of my FIRST Divison have flanked an isolated artillery company near the center of the board.  And when I say flank, that’s an understatement.  With my assault taking place at each bordering hex, that’s a bonus of 10 * 5 = 50% to my total fire power.   However, somehow that unit was able to survive without taking a hit during that assault.  I don’t know how, and I’m too tired to try and sort out what may have happened there.  

But in the meantime, that artillery would also have to dodge very heavy withdraw checks, and have no where to withdraw to.  Sure enough, he took hits and the unit disintegrated right there.  So for all intense & purposes, one can consider that company officially assaulted to death.

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16:00 (Day -- Limited Visibility)

I decided to zoom out of the map one level.  Even still, this crop still only shows a small section of the whole battlefield.  

I seem to be still making steadily progress in that melee pocket, though I had a really bad turn with the allied bombardments scoring quite a lot of hits against me this turn.  Seems every time I feel I’m starting to make good progress again, something else has to happen.  Losing hits always makes me cringe because they are never recoverable.

It seems during the next two hours visibility will be restricted to limited.  It will be harder to spot enemy counters but it doesn’t affect me too much, since I pretty much know already what’s in front of me out there.  And I don’t expect to do much roaming around either.

In the meantime, despite I really want to push a few more turns in, I’m going to have to take a break and will resume later after I get some sleep and can be more alert for logical plotting.

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18:00 (Night -- Limited Visibility)

We are now approaching night.  One reason you can tell it’s a winter map (besides the obvious snow) is that when night falls around 6 pm, that’s pretty hard to assume it’s summer season.  Our time from here on will start to skip by 4 hours a turn instead of the regular 2 (until sun-rise).

Anyhow, our last 2 hours of daytime activity went rather well for us.  We took no hits this time around, and were able to completely smash a couple companies.  One I am not 100% sure what it was, due to limited visibility rules, but I’m not complaining.  A unit destroyed is a unit destroyed (permanently)!

I also severely mauled up both a machine-gun company stacked with an infantry.  Both these counters were quite powerful, and I’m rather proud that I was able to whittle them down the last few turns.  Sure, it looks easy now that I seem to have a lead in numbers down there, but it wasn’t always so.

The engineer down south was one of my many units that were forced to retreat constantly during our assaults.  He’s in such bad shape I have him in tactical reserve until he re-organizes and I can send him back into the fire.  At least he’s lost only a third of his potential fire-power.

There is another engineer seen to the west (armored).  That one is actually from the FIRST DIVISION units I have near the centre of the map (not in current shot).  He’s just there to cause some problems for the nearby enemy artillery unit.  I don’t want to mix units of different divisions because of combat penalties.

I’m now looking forward to the up-coming night-time turn.  During the re-organizing phase, one of my key artillery pieces finally regained contact to its HQ, and none of those pieces have disruptions anymore.  However, moving at night has it’s major penalties, as well does assaults at those ours.  So I may have to tone down a bit here.

Clip taken during Attacker Advance Phase

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22:00 (Night -- Precipitating)

Instead of trying to tone things down, I kept on trying to press my advances.  Unfortunately this resulted in mass disruptions, to the point where almost everything that moved was no longer in any position to even be capable of carrying out an assault.  

However, in the far west of the map I took my three elite companies of the Panzer Lehr division and tried to bust up a stack of three self-propelled artillery units.  My Stug was a little weak going into the battle there because it gained 1 disruption even moving the short distance over open ground.  As I said before, night-time movements and fighting come at quite some costs.  It reminds me way back to Civil War General when you could move at night also, but would face massive moral hits for doing so (and I think other losses as well).

My Stug took another disruption during the battle, and so did one of the infantry units, but I didn’t take any hits, so I’m happy.  

At the end of my set I finally got that long awaited reinforcement package of the 10’th Panzer HQ.  And one more turn would give me my other reinforcements of the 9’th Panzer.  

I think for now I will just try to move some of my far-out-of-reach artillery closer toward the west where the future action will be on the next day, along with my new units (as carefully as possible).

Also note, the weather is now switching into precipitation.

Crop taken during Movement Phase.

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02:00 (Night -- Limited Visibility)

A bit of an un-eventful turn, considering how everything else has gone from the get-go.  I moved many units off toward the west.  I also felt a bit guilty since I broke off from a few of the left enemy units in the middle/east of the map to recover.  This unfortunately, allows my opponent to recover also.  But it’s very hard to have your cake and eat it too.

At the end of my turn the last of the 9’th Panzer division arrived as reinforcements.  I will have one more turn to carry out before daylight arrives.  I should have moved my new units into very good positions by then (I hope).

All units from 9'th Panzer Div are highlighted in blue.

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06:00 (Day -- Weather is Clear)

The final night-time turn was yet again un-eventful.  I moved more units into place but there was nothing spectacular to mention.  For the time being, I think it’s time to re-iterate the victory conditions.  I think I can sneak a marginal victory here, but I want to go for the major.  This may be a bit hard since there is an awefull large allied army far to the west where the main victory points are.  

Furthermore, I only have until 6 pm in order to pull this off.  But whatever happens, I definitely do not want to run into a defeat.  My first milestone seems to have been a success, as I did break up that melee pocket before midnight.  Now I’ll try to focus on two new milestones.  The first is to clear up all the stragglers in the east of the map, while the second is to (naturally) bust up the larger forces in the far west and grabbing some cities.

Easier said than done, and I expect some more messy blood-baths.  Starting right now since we have rolled over into daylight hours…

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08:00 (Day -- Weather is Clear)  Sept. 26

Our first two hours of daylight went decent for us.  We butchered up the allies some more, on both fronts, but I’m not sure if it’s good ENOUGH.  Even if we can hold this rate of attrition.

Over in the west side, we see a bit of a familiar pattern again.  I’ve caught a stack of self-propelled artillery, and have enveloped it yet again.  Unfortunately I have mixed divisions on that front.  Three units from Panzer Lehr, and the rest are from the 9’th Panzer.  I am using the former just to add as BLOCKERS so the artillery can’t escape, while the 9’th Panzer units finish boxing them in and act as the attacking pieces.  Unfortunately I couldn’t bring as many armored companies as I wanted, since I’ve lost contact to their HQ for the time being.

The end result of this, was 2 disintegrated artillery counters, with one in such bad shape I can’t possibly see it existing around for another turn.

On the other side of things, you see now that very scary army to the left.  That’s something we’ll have to either out-smart, or crack head on.

Crop taken from West end of scenario (Movement Phase).

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10:00 (Day -- Weather is Clear)  Sept. 26

Did some more mop-up jobbing on those scattered units in the east near the old melee pocket.  I’m also finishing up herding them all together there.

Out in the west I had a few more skirmishes.  I’m rather upset that my Stug took a hit from an armour unit during the Direct Fire Phase while I was 3 hexes away and in a forest.  Arg!  Well, war is not always so predictable.  And I’m sure to take even more losses. 

Crop taken from eastern sector, during Attacker Advance Phase.  Note: The green-box numbers were turned on to report disruption levels after the assaults.

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12:00 (Day -- Weather is Clear)  Sept. 26

For some reason I was hoping to do better on my assaults during this turn-set, but things went satisfactorily nevertheless.  I took a crop near the old Melee pocket to see what’s left.  We are finally GETTING some closure there.  Only 3 tiles left now with something worth destroying.

Interestingly enough, I did get a little bit of unexpected movement here at one point.  It seems an enemy unit in my EZoC tried with withdrawl, failed badly and took damage.  Since there wasn’t any hits left for it to lose, the counter disintegrated.  This then awarded my neighboring units to gain a defender advance phase.  Though it wasn’t as if I needed it in any way just now.  But sometimes it does come very handy.

Eastern Sector -- Defender Advance Phase  Note: Displayed counter numbers switched so that Red # = Division & White # = Regiment (easier for me to keep track of mixtures).

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14:00 (Day -- Weather is Clear)  Sept. 26

Finally!  I have eliminated all counters from the middle to the east of the board.  For a moment it looked like I was just one hit too short on killing the last HQ over there, but then he failed to properly withdraw and POOF, no more HQ.

On the other hand, I had a small disaster in the west.  I decided to try and hurry some units over to grab another city worth 50 victory points so I could grab a major victory.  Now of course I know there’s a risk here and that I’m bound to walk into an ambush.  But I cant get a major without trying.

Sure enough, I lost my precious Stug counter completely by running into someone.  And I also now have a hurt infantry company which I will be lucky to disengage with on the next turn-set.  Oh well, I give up for the major now and will just try to hold out the next few turns to settle for a minor instead.

Western section, Movement Phase.

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16:00 (Day -- Limited Visibility)  Sept. 26

Alright, I’ve changed my mind.  After looking again at the map I realized there is a chance for one last ditch effort to emass some units and try to knock out one of the blocking UK tank divisions to my target.  It seemed good in theory, except that out of 10 possible die rolls, I seem to have rolled the absolute worst.  Oh well, that’s Murphy’s law.  If you have a 10% shot to screw you, you will hit that 1/10 shot every damn time.

However, I did at least get one hit on that tank, and forced it all the way to a level IV disruption.  This gives me a big break here, since it prevents that tank from now exerting an EZoC on my units despite we are touching neighboring hexes.  I should be able to by-pass it now without getting pinned for hit by opportunity fire.

The big mystery though -- are there other units hiding in the city directly behind it to the west?

Western Section -- Assault Phase

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18:00 (Night -- Limited Visibility)  Sept. 26

I can’t ask for much better during those last two hours of daylight.  Turns out there was no hidden phantom lying in wait in the victory town behind the tank.  Better yet, there were no other units even adjacent to that town hex.  So I was able to roll right in and claim it (for now).

I wasn’t exactly telling the truth when I said units at level-4 disruption can’t give opportunity fire (he just did).  But their penalties are so high that it would be very hard for them to mange to hit anything.

Now, some good news and bad news.  Good news is we are heading into the very last turn of the scenario.  If I am able to hold my gains I can pull off my lucky major victory here.  The bad news is capturing this town seems to have triggered the AI into marching his stacks right down toward us.  

Actually, now I think about it, since the AI has been winning the initiative, and just  already did his turn for the 18:00 in front of me, that SHOULD mean he can’t follow up anything now anyway.  So I SHOULD be safe

Let’s continue now and see what happens (I‘m a little tired again here)…

Assault Phase...

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Victory!!!

Ahh, yup.  Seems there was no way I could have lost the game on my turn.  The AI didn’t even have a turn left to react to me.

But me being tired now, I still moved a few units up front (just in case), to create some EZoC traps to stall anything that may blitz toward my last captured objective.  I really shouldn’t have, since it allowed my opponent to nail me for 2 more hits on opportunity fire!  That gets factored in the final score as well, but who really cares now.

Almost hard to believe at this point I was able to pull off the Decisive Victory, when much earlier things started to look very grim.  But a little bit of luck can go a long way on the battlefield.

I’m going off to bed now, and to celebrate my win.

Victory...