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Section Leaders:
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German Commander - Fionn
Kelly German
Turn 4 AAR: Orders Phase: My
probing Panzerschreck team and platoon HQ on the left are ordered to
continue pushing forward. Murray is advancing cautiously so I don’t
expect them to have any great impact but I’m willing to pay the toll
of 6 men if it means that I can get some intelligence as to Murray’s
route of advance ( and size it up a little). The
majority of the action takes place, as usual, around the small wooded
area from which I sprung my ambush last turn. Murray has men on the
right flank of the ambushers and a LOT of fire support only metres away
( including at least eight MG teams). It is obvious to me that I need
to displace immediately. I expect to lose half of my men in the
withdrawal but, given my bad luck as regards Murray’s advances to the
flanks of my platoon, this is unavoidable. Elsewhere
men are ordered to remain hidden and generally just hold themselves in
readiness for the enemy attacks which are sure to occur in their
sectors. Action
Phase:
Within
eleven seconds of the beginning of the turn my Elite infantry have
suffered further serious loss. At least a half-dozen of them have been
killed or wounded by the eleventh second of the turn. In the picture
one can also see a treeburst artillery round. Since I don’t believe
Murray could have possibly called down artillery fire this quickly I
interpret this as meaning that he has multiple 60mm mortars on-line and
firing at the woods from which the ambush was sprung. This is
interesting to me as it means I can expect to face a multitude of
on-map small calibre artillery support. Generally
I don’t like on-map mortars as I find them wasteful in terms of their
ammunition expenditure. Obviously Murray differs and has purchase many
of them. That’s fine by me, if he wants to spend points on units
which are less than useful in a close-in knife-fight then so be it.
Every 60mm mortar team purchased reduces his combat infantryman numbers
and, as such, helps me. Certainly the 60mm mortars are useful in their
own right but I think they are a poor purchase. I am going to pay
particular attention in the coming turns to neutralizing the
effectiveness of these mortars before Murray encounters my main line of
resistance. Neutralization occurs through either: a)
killing the entire
mortar crew, b)
causing the mortar crew
to abandon the mortar ( a nice quick artillery barrage is highly
effective at achieving this result). c)
Causing the mortar crew
to fire all their ammunition by exposing various non-essential units.
By
the end of the turn only twenty of the thirty-five elite Fallschirmjaeger
still survive. Four of these are trapped in the ambush location and
will, undoubtedly, be overwhelmed when Murray rushes forward to snap up
any survivors. Overall I will lose nineteen of the thirty-five
ambushers. That is, however, in line with expectations following the
bad luck I had whereby Murray got onto my flanks. I’ll just have to
hope for a little better luck next time.
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