 asl crossroads :
aar central — a b : broish :
Broish Bash - ASL A69 So Mike just trounced me in ASL 73 “Hell or High Water” when he had the Marines, he wanted to play me another, and I say, “Sure!” have at it, ya know? And I pick A69 from his list and give him side, he chooses Ami’s again, and I’m thinking, “Well, ya, right, this time your Green Machine don’t have ML:8 hitting beach and turning into ML:9/auto-Fan, good luck with the ML:6, buddy!” And I’m looking at that Ami 1st Line range and firepower, and I’m thinking, “Hey, this time I’m setting my mgs up 2nd Level, no mistake like I did vs. B.Fox in Le Herrisson, I don’t want yer damn power/range sucking me down like starved dogs, I gotta break you first with my machineguns” besides, the big stone Lev2 building is the biggest objective, most points, center of attention, place to hold, dig? And I stare at the mapboards and equipment and enemy and my stuff, and I’m thinking, “Hell, he’s got mobility up the ass, he might try to encircle me, and if I don’t do set up to counter that, I’ll get killed, but I have to do it with a sorta ‘arc’ perimeter that can fall back toward the objectives without getting creamed in OG or something like that.” And there I am, thanking Designer gods for the PF rules, because that gives my 1945 boys 14 of them, in potential, and that is a potential that can wipe his butt by removing it. And I’m staring at the mapboard and thinking, “Gawd, he can move tanks and/or hts, and/or transport damn near his whole force and get them all the way HERE, or HERE, or HERE, and how am I going to prevent encirclement, cover all this crap, he’s got a option to choose 1 of 3 board edges after I set up, how can I put up something that’s gonna, ya know, have a chance of keeping it’s friggin’ integrity? And my cool-man side of brain is sayin’, “Hey, don’t freak! You got movement, you got a SPW251/10, you got a truck, you can boogie people DT, or set them up with a leader in a central spot who’ll scream them at least 6 MF in any direction, American is the one MOVING at you, man, he has to pick, he has to take on negative rems, and you can just sorta set up to redirect Force, redirect Force, redirect Force,man, ‘cause after he sets up reacting to your setup, you can resetup to smash his setup, man! U GOT THE 1st MOVE!” Hey, I’m not gonna sit here and tell everybody exact hexes I put stuff down in, man, but I’ll say I had the Lev2 Stone mg-equipped, a squad on the nearby path, a whole damn platoon on another side of town, and the 37L ht and a truck loaded to the gills ready to move any direction, (hey, everybody had to set up within a 5 hex radius, ain’t that clue enough?) Shoot, but Mike didn’t come at the north side I bore-sighted, hell no, but he admitted attacking my south side, big-stone-structure side, “even though” it seemed to him I’d set up to defend against a southern encroachment, and he only moved one vehicle,( loaded ht), in a type of motion I had feared involved encirclement, but the other ht and both M24 tanks, and his inf-on-foot, came on frontally toward my "Town Hall" boys, and his troop-heavy truck labored behind everything through the bumpy damn pastures, out o’ sight behind treeline. Hey, well the Germans proceeded to roll the good dice, the Americans got the shaft dice, and Ami infantry broke, a hs died, but half my Psk squad died when Mike very craftily vbm’d his top man(9-1)/mmg666 into position, but my mg Town Hall and immediates was rollin’, (sent top man/mmg Amis routin' anna reelin'), but Mike just keeps pushing those M24s up closer and closer to my Town Hall, but they pop Mike’s balloons in th’ clutch and don’t do smoke, and in two turns both M24’s are brewed-up like Styx Folgers, one of them hit with a PF CH, I mean, *poop you not!*, you know what a CH with a PF is like? [ka-BLOOEY!...shredded metal wheaties, man!] So what’s Mike bringin’ those M24s up so close, for, (I think one tank wanted to combine with ht to encircle/cover road-route path) he got paranoid by the 6 turn length-o’-game, or bettin’ I have no ‘fausts, or what? This 1945. We got ‘fausts. We bitchin’! But mebbe Mike’d say, ya know, “Hey, I was 2-hex range both times, you hadda roll to have ‘fausts and hadda roll ta hit, and it ain’t th’ biggest gamble in the universe,” but I’m just wondering you go into buildings-ville, you let the grunts lead the way and sorta reserve yer armor a space, but whadda I know, my record is, like, not a lawyer in my defense. [To quote da Mike: “I am pretty sure that I would use a similar approach if I had to do it overagain, except maybe sending another squad with the support element.”, and da Mike again: “ Plus I would make sure that I always stayed out of effective PF/PSK range. Nice move to use Opp. Fire to avoid the Backblast whilst flaming the second M24, BTW.”] And meanwhile that lone loaded ht boogying up behind treeline through open fields on my right flank is BU, hell, and I see that, and I got this platoon of 447s in cx range, and the SPW, and I shoot a coupla bypass-those-treelines squads and the 3-rof SPW 37mm right up to 1 hex, 2 hex range of this BU platform of sleepyheads, (Mike’s kicking self for not going CE in APh, to quote him even much later: “Then there was the debacle with the bu HT on my left. I'm still seethingover not paying enough attention to go CE. Enough said about that.”), and even though my 2nd Liners get spooked and do nothing after running into OG like thinking they’re Japs, (hey, where’s the PF? I don’t know, I don’t got the damn PF, let’s PIN!), the SPW declares a Gun Duel when Mike tries BFFing his loaded ht in MOTION before moving his first-hex-that-MPh, (I found the fine writing, God bless PBEM fer trainin’ purposes), and exit ht and 8-1/dmmmg666, with crew taken POW, give us yer Lucky Strikes, boys, we tired of German tobacco, and my 2nd Liners fall back into tree line toward their concealed, “Unterfeldwebel Bravenott” 8-0 leader with their prize o’ POWs an' 'bacco, while Ami infantry is rallying/massing to south-southwest, obviously stuck with my still totally GO Town Hall a big wrench in their damn imperialist dollar-worshipping plans. Meanwhile, Mike has whipped his other ht (from behind treeline- closer- to- Town Hall, after dropping off top man units), right into center-village, (I’m chasin’ my eyeballs with a spoon), so I send my victorious SPW back into town to kill it, Mike’s ht crew pops smoke grenades, I can’t find my eyeballs, SPW malf’s shot-through-smoke, (repaired immediately next chance, whew!), Ami ht escapes, survives VTT/effects DR from hmg and does a loop around th’ town square, evidently coming back to encircle my Lev2 9-1/hmg(that just hit him!)247/247 in Town Hall/Lev2, but those ballsy ht Amis get Stunned by mere rifles and sit like ducks in a carnival for my 447 that moves up to 1 hex range, whiffs PF shot in AFPh and on toppa that fails to kill BU ht in CCPh, and I’m foreseeing sending this squad to the Eastern Front along with Colonel Klink, right. Ami ht crew pops smoke grenades again, laughs, “Eat smoke, Jerry!”, an’ my 447 boys pin themselves rather than whip out another ‘faust, ht reverses back up street behind smoke, pivots, and then goes and tries to overrun my SPW, (my eyeballs bouncing down steps to basement, I think), I’d moved said SPW and 7-0/POW447-guards back to deal with a possible double-timing flanking movement by Ami grunts, (thinking my German inf would deal with ballsy Ami hit, but they too busy making love to mother earth), and well, suddenly there’s this Ami M3 roaring up on my one AFV from behind, can you believe it? My SPW 251/10 has that rof3 gun, but the aamg can only fire into rear arc, but that’s the arc the ballsy ht is revvin’ into, an’ I fire the aamg w/PBF before I even know he’s doin’ overrun , an’ I miss, and on comes the ovr, (I’m shittin), he misses my SPW crew w/mg...while in the meantime the Ami infantry isn’t doing the Big Frontal Assault on the Big Lev2 Building Town Hall thing, but they’ve got themselves moved up on the west side behind/inside the treeline, (with one Ami hs going down in CC in OG terrain near the treeline, against my 447 by closest objective-bldng), to hit my weaker locations in a big end game charge, or PFPh break my guys with many while Bldng Control is performed by a few, or what? Take everything but the big Lev2 ? But I’d already pulled back my Lucky Strike-stealing, POW-guarding boys from that treeline area, to get away from Ami range and cover open spaces on other side of treeline, when that damn ballsy ht came in from behind them and tried to ovr the SPW. So it turned out the Ami Top Man (9-1)/mmg666 rallied, sneaked back closer, but then broke under fire and got Encircled, near Town Hall, and the squad surrendered an’ coughed-up more Lucky Strikes, while the 9-1 went down under the weight of two 447s CCing, you know, I don’t need 9-1s running around in my yard . That left the ballsy OVRing ht, but it got CH’d by SPW, while the "massing" [cough!] Ami infantry broke under mere 447 rifle fire while they're still in woods, but how’re they to know these Reservist dudes were members of Bavarian Hunting Champions of ‘39? ;-) Shoot, even Mike’s hero got wounded, so he sends mailer with subject about throwing plural towels, an’ sure enough, it’s a surrender in the 5th turn, but it was only a 6 turn game, and if the dice averaged out it sure as hell wasn’t on Mike’s side of the electric table, as Germans only lost a hs. Mike will seek revenge another day. Meanwhile, German Top Man (9-1) sits in Town Hall in Broich, smoking cigar somebody brought’m from Ami Top Man (9-1) who is gone to cardboard heaven. --Paul |