Author	NBGB (Germany)
Method	VASSAL
Victor	Draw
Participants	treadasaurusrex (AAR)
Play Date	2022-11-21
Language	English
Scenario	DeRa019

This was a lengthy scenario (40 turns) that has some rather unusual hoops to jump through. In the end it ended being fun when you just set aside those silly conditions and just went for the kill.

I was the dreaded Afrika Corps going against the adroit Treadasaurus as the Limeys. The AK forces were split in to three groups to start. The armor was plentiful but way off in neverland and not able to activate unless the Brits got within a few hexes of them or knocked out 4 steps of AK units. The well armed machine gun battalion was also unable to do anything although they were slightly closer to the action.

As the AK you can only lose 8 steps, but you have to lose 4 just to get all of your units in the game. Pretty tough to achieve that in 40 turns. So, you basically have to play for a draw. The AK motorcycle units will not be ale to win this alone. Add in FOW and the AK commander has a pretty good challenge just trying to get all of his units in position for a coordinated attack.

I spent all of the daylight messing around trying to lose 4 steps and get off a few artillery barrages. Very unsuccessful. I finally got the 4 step losses and began maneuvering at night. The strategy was to bring the recon units to the north and west of the fertile crescent defense. The armor would swing in from the south and west and try to use their longer range guns and crossfires to pick off the Brit armor. Meanwhile, the very strong machine gun battalion would be the hammer coming from the east to root out the dug in infantry.

All this having to be done at night with 15 shortened turns due to Fog. The AK motorcycle units tried to get close enough for artillery spotting and the Brits kept mauling them with long range assaults from those nasty Bren's. They were very skillfully deployed in assaults and beat the snot out of me for a few hours. What joy it was when the AK panzers finally got in range of them and blew them to smithereens. Eventually, the armor was able to form a 5 platoon column of death and force a draw. The heavy machine guns wreaked havoc on the dug in units with 18 and 24 assault rolls. It took forever to be able to get them in the battle because of Fog. It looked like I would probably fall short of killing every one of the Limey's so a draw was accepted.

This scenario was like raising kids. You have a lot of struggles, but you have moments of great joy which make the whole thing worthwhile. So it was for me. Tread always cracks me up with his tracking of combat 7's and his visceral hatred of AT guns.