EC - wet and no wind.
October 25th 1942.

Russian (San 5, ELR 3): Ken Havlinek
German (San 3, ELR 4): Nick Drinkwater

A briefer AAR than my usual essays this time, as on GT 2 we realized we had made a serious screw up which unfortunately had a probable big impact on the result (which was a total thrashing by the Russians). Basically, Ken was able to wipe out my 467, 247, 9-2, HMG, LMG combo on Russian turn 1 via bore-sighting (which is not allowed as I had onboard setup). Nobody's fault - just one of those unfortunate oversights that was just too major to get past. Just shows the 'rustiness' you get in this game sometime when you don't play it often - we'll get some of those key rules right one day!

For those still reading, in brief, this is the HASL remake of the old DASL "Berserk!" but set on the RB board. Ken has to stop me getting my frozen- fingered woollen glove-clad mitts on two single-storey stone buildings (F42, G43) directly south of the big three-hex "Bread Factory" in the far SW corner of the RB board. To do this, he has 1 x HMG, 2 x MMG, 2 x LMG, a 45L AT Gun, 4 x 458, 4 x 447, 10 x ?, a Trench, a 9-1 and a 10-0 commissar all set up with a one unit per location restriction within four hexes of the Bread Factory. On turn 3, he receives fresh proletariat blood via 3 x 426, and a couple of real squads and an 8-0 leader from the eastern board edge - it will take them at least 1 turn to get into the real action. The orders of the day - stand fast and take lots of Nazi-scum with you!

The Nazi-scum on the other hand receive 5 x 467, 2 x 468, a 9-2, a 7- 0, 2 x LMG and a HMG set up in the far NW corner of the game area, and a 548, 2 x 467, a 9-1, a LMG and a single DC set up in rubble and buildings directly across the street from the 2 objective buildings. These guys are from the doomed motorcycle battalion and on each German turn, the leader will go berserk (taking with him whoever he happens to be stacked with) if he rolls less than or equal to the turn number. On the initial setups alone, the Germans have only a two squad advantage and worse support weapons, but they receive 4 x 467, more LMG and a 8-1 reinforcement unit on German turn 2 from the west board edge. Obviously, they need to be in the two objective buildings and fighting for their lives before the Russian reinforcements arrive on Turn 4. I think this is a pretty tough job to do for the Germans, especially with the abundance of Russian SW, and obviously using "Team Berserk" correctly is an absolute must.

Briefly, my plan was to use the German HMG overwatch to try and reduce some of the Russian upper building overwatch positions on German turns 1 and 2, while steadily advancing over the walls and railroads due west of the bread factory and F42 objective building. Ideally, this slow advance would co-ordinate with the unknown quantity of "Team Berserk" and try and get it all going concertedly at a single point on the defense perimeter. There's no need to go too fast initially as the Germans have six turns to get to two objective buildings only four hexes away, but of course, we really needed the troops in place before the Russian reinforcements arrived.

Initially, all seemed to go well and my HMG went on a seven shot streak, but in an ominous portent of what was to follow, Ken's one broken squad survived about four 1 and 2 checks. Hmmm. Then in Russian Turn 1, the game breaker kicked in: Ken's wrongly bore sighted HMG placed in the upper level of the Bread Factory wiped out my MG nest to a man and that was pretty much it. When we realized the screw up one and a half turns later, we couldn't remember the exact results, but all those -1 rolls on the 6FP table would of course been 6 +1 instead (leader directed) - note that this was the starting point of my weekly-based "dice yourself again" session and I failed a lot of those checks by a lot, but it was probable that the leader and possibly at least a half squad would have survived the carnage in some form if we'd played it right.

The end result of this turn was that now I had squad parity against commissar-led Russians who still had loads of fully-working support weapons in stone buildings, and that's without my 9-2 leader. Despite this, I carried on safe in the glow of confidence of the miraculous victory I had somehow pulled out versus Ken and against all odds in "Turned Away" one month earlier (see the AAR). But a bit of desperation crept in now. Fearful of the effects of the Berserk roll, I tried taking the 548, DC, LMG and 9-1 combo across the street in the face of terrifying firepower from upper and lower building levels of the objective hexes - they were removed in a big red mist. It really is tough getting across that street - should have used smoke (exponent of 2), but forgot, and probably should have just given the DC to the leader alone and left him to get on with it, but hindsight is always a wonderful thing. I tried sending another squad around the back to create havoc in the backfield, but ran into Ken's cleverly placed HIP guy placed to stop this exact move in some stone rubble - nicely played Ken! Another squad out of commission.

My 'creeping line' at the walls/tracks were achieving next to nothing (couldn't roll lower than a 9 at any point it seemed on the attack, and even when I did, Ken just brushed the MC off). Also, Ken's expert cyclical skulking defense was kicking in and I was finding it hard to get targets without getting exposed and shot to pieces myself - any MC I took was guaranteed to fail. Finally, in an act of some desperation and having managed to break both overwatch MGs with some heavy prep fire, I sent a squad over the tracks and into the western hex of the bread factory itself. A nice move that for once asked some questions of the defense, and Ken even missed on a bunch of first fire attacks - woo-hoo! Of course, I ran into the hidden AT gun and was ambushed by the stealthy, concealed crew. Amazingly I survived the first round of HtH CC, but as was normal, on the second round of HtH CC, was wiped out to a man while of course rolling a 12. I know now why I never, ever gamble.

The last act of this tragi-comedy on German Turn 4 was for me to break my newly recovered HMG (of course) and to fail to mend it on Russian Turn 4 (of course). At that point I conceded as I was down to about 6.5 squads, had advanced about 1 hex in four turns and inflicted precisely 1 HS of casualties on the Russian.

Plus points:
Seeing Ken playing yet another very good Russian defense. His placement of the Russian trench meant that he could easily recycle his broken troops back to his commissar in the rear of the bread factory where of course they rallied every time. The skulking defense of Ken's worked very well, and the HIP placement was spot on. Nicely done.

On my side, I thought I handled the trade-off between stacking and big FG quite well and was able to offer a 9-2, 16FP FG as a bludgeon at a cost of only 1.5 squads, but of course we couldn't mitigate against a bad joint mistake and horrendous dice. The move into the Bread Factory was a nice one and seriously asked some tricky questions, but by then I had too few troops to exploit it as those that were left were already providing fire support to reduce the Russian MG overwatches in the first place!

Minus points:
My handling of the berserk team - you either go non- berserk immediately in turn 1 when Russian setup limitations mean the defensive firepower is limited to 16FP (4 FP + 4FP MMG) per location or you go later (Turn 3) hopefully having done some damage through use of the HMG combo. The western of the two victory buildings is slightly the easier to get to via shellholes and the fact that it is exposed to larger German Firegroups, but of course you will still be taking damage from the Russian HMG. Either way, I got it wrong, neglecting to use smoke and going when insufficiently supported with the Russian defense solidly in place.

A note about dice:
It's so easy to get really whiney about the dice, but both Ken and myself agreed my luck was horrible. After that first long HMG streak (who's net result was 1 broken squad), I pretty much failed everything I was asked to do. I think I'd failed roughly 10 out of 12 morale checks when we gave up counting. Ken failed about 8 all game, and of course every commissar-led rally succeeded with no shooting to encourage the others etc. I managed to shank my only decent support weapon and then failed to fix it. From Ken's five repeatedly firing SW, (including two B11 LMG and two B11 MMG) not a single failure! Ken had three sniper attacks (including two ones), I had none, I suffered two or three CR (I think), Ken had just one, and the sole damage I managed to inflict in the entire game was a solitary Russian HS. Ken never reduced once on any ELR, I think I reduced at least 3-4 times. Ken was regularly dropping big clunky MGs and of course finding them again instantly when needed.

And my point is? Obviously, all of this was divine retribution for the two turns of dicing I gave Ken a month ago.

Overall:
It's hard to give an objective appraisal of this scenario as we failed the "know your rules" task check so badly - it didn't seem to be too bad but we both preferred 'Turned Away" where the Germans and Russians probably have more toys and a bit more of a tactical challenge. If you can get the Berserkers and the DC done correctly and get a German foothold in the objective buildings, I could see it could get into a fairly tight endgame that might be fun, but the Russian plethora of machine guns in stone buildings with commissars and height advantage over adjacent shellholes makes that pretty hard!

Nick