This is the first full turn, but has some special rules. In particular, the Allies get a pre-Turn bombardment that simulates the actual artillery barrages and airstrikes the Allies executed prior to the kickoff of the Guards Armored assault. In earlier games, this was relatively ineffective because the Germans had the opportunity to disperse in the prior Turn. With the Phase 13 start, they do not have this option.
All of the airborne units raced to their objectives with varying degrees of success.
XXX Corps (Map D)
The pre-Turn barrage was moderately successful, with no damage inflicted on the west (left) flank, but heavy damage inflicted on the entrenched units in the center. The central tank columns moved up a little in preparation for the real assault beginning in the next Turn.
Meanwhile, the Germans worked to move their Headquarters from their terrible starting positions to useful locations. (You can't see them in the pictures. They are in Entrenchments on the main road.) They also moved up units from the rear-area Entrenchments in an attempt to block the Allied infiltration of their positions.
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| Guards Armored units advance prior to Turn 3 assault. German units move up on center-right. |
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| Overview of Map D - Start line to Eindhoven |
The Allies cleared the two German Flak positions northwest of Zon, but accomplished little else as the Germans brought up tank elements from the 9th SS Panzer division to block all of the crossings over the Wilhelmina Canal and began a counter-attack in the area of Best (bottom-left in the detail below).
Further north, units from 501/101 seized the main highway bridge over the Zuid-Willems Canal at Vehgel and established a defensive perimeter along the west side of the highway.
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| Turn 2 action along the Wilhelmina Canal |
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| Detail of the Vehgel area |
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| Overview of Map C - Eindhoven is just off the bottom of the picture |
The 82nd had a relatively easy time of it because there was almost no opposition. Part of the 504/82 captured the highway bridge over the Maas River at Grave, then moved on to Grave itself to remove the German Flak unit there.
A little to the east, the rest of the 504th Regiment advanced on the Maas-Waal Canal and captured the secondary road bridge at Malden. On the other side of the Canal, part of the 505th Regiment advanced from the primary drop zone towards the Canal and captured the railroad bridge at Mook. The rest of the 505/82 moved to secure the primary drop zone area.
The 508th Regiment moved towards Nijmegen and the Germans brought in reinforcements south of the Maas River near Mook.
The disrupted units in the pictures below are German Flak units that were disrupted in the pre-Game airstrikes by the Allies.
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| 1/504 at Grave |
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| Turn 2 action along the Maas-Waal Canal |
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| Detail slightly to the east of picture above showing the 82nd's drop zone |
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| 508/82 advances on Nijmegen. Two lonely German defenders wait for them. |
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| Overview of Map B |
After the disastrous landing, the 1st Airborne moved out to its objectives. The 1st Para Regiment (1/1) occupied Arnhem in force. KG Kraftt attempted to escape encirclement by the 1st Air landing Brigade (1AL/1) while the 1AL/1 moved forward to do just that. A Recon unit reached the railroad bridge south of Oosterbeek, just as the Germans were blowing it up. British Anti-Tank (AT) units occupied key intersections to block German reinforcements and movement (the Panzer AT gambit). Finally, Model made good his escape and set up a new position far to the west.
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| The main area of operations - Oosterbeek on the left, Arnhem on the right. |
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| To the west. (Note that this picture is upside-down relative to the rest.) Model is on the upper right edge. |
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| Overview of Map A with a good bit of Map B at the bottom |
This concluded play for the day. We did the Setup, partial Turn 1 and full Turn 2 in just over 5 hours.
(This comment is Steve's.)
ReplyDeleteDave asked me to periodically record my thoughts about the game. I’ll try to make this as objective as Dave’s commentary has been. We picked this 35 year old game because (1) it’s one that Dave likes, (2) we both own a copy and (3) Dave’s been dreaming about playing this one FtF for a long, long time. It wasn’t such a big deal for me, but I’ll admit that once I got into the nuts and bolts it is a fascinating game despite its many flaws.
We agreed to play the revised 2nd edition rules set with almost all the optional rules. As anyone who has read the reviews or played the game knows there many serious errors, omissions, contradictions and flat out fantasies in those rules. They include errors in the Table of Organization for both armies, numerous and excessively bloody combat phases, flawed topographical representation, bizarre and unrealistic unit combat values and effectiveness ratings, incomplete Close Assault rules, failure to reward combined arms actions, badly skewed stacking values, overly simplistic ammunition depletion rules, and more. Many of these issues were addressed in Decision Game’s new edition of the game, though I don’t know how successfully. And even with all those faults I still think it’s a good “game”.
What’s more we agreed to play allowing un-limited front for the British XXX Corps; Dave thought there was no point to repeating the conservative British approach. He wanted to know how Patton would have done in the same circumstances. Of course there was a geographical reason that the British armor could only advance on a limited front, one not reproduced by the game rules. We also allowed the British 1st Airborne to use ahistorical drop zones. Dave says this simply allows the Allied Played a better chance of surviving at Arnhem. I think it’s more like the British player having perfect intelligence, a far cry from reality. Finally, we incorporated some “house rules” based on our own gaming experience. None of these last have an earth shattering impact on the game.
Based on my limited experience with this game I can make a few generalizations from the German point of view: one, artillery is an infantry killer, so avoid it at all costs. Two, the German cannot stop the Allies everywhere, so develop a strategy of slowing down the tanks long enough to eliminate the 1st Airborne. Three, the German cannot prevent the XXX Corps breakthrough. He has two choices: stay in his entrenchments and die slowly hoping that his sacrifice will buy enough time for the 9th and 10th Panzers to finish the job in the north or attempt a rolling rearguard action, preserving your forces in principle and getting in the way enough to slow down the British advance. Later I’ll let you know how I think I did and the (many) mistakes that I made.
Since Steve has provided his first comment, I will do the same. In the Turn descriptions I am trying to be an objective war reporter giving equal time to both sides and describing what happened. However, it is a lot more interesting to know the why behind what is being done, so I will do that here.
ReplyDeleteAs Steve already mentioned there are a lot of flaws in the game as a simulation, regardless of which side you are playing. A three mile supply envelop for an armored division?! Useless airstrikes! It infuriates me, that I have to give up Victory Points for out of supply units that are doing their jobs by racing ahead to seize bridges, towns, road crossings and putt the enemy out of supply. These are compromises in the abstraction of the game design and we have to live with them. This is still an extremely fun game with lots of little tactical puzzles that have to be solved on both sides.
Steve has already mentioned what I consider the main problem of this game, which is the excessively high kill rate built into the Turn Phase structure and the Combat Results Table (CRT). In the game we played through Turn 12, prior to the start of this blog, once the Flak Brigade arrived, Steve was killing 3 British Airborne units a turn. Since the British 1st Airborne division only has 90 units, simple arithmetic tells you that the game is going to be over no later than Turn 40 because all of the British will be dead. Beyond the fact that I have no wish to be boxed in by the bad doctrine of the historical leaders, the Allied Player must have the flexibility to broaden the attack if he is to have any chance of winning.
As far as the ahistorical drop is concerned, the historical Supplyhead location is indefensible and was in fact overrun by the Germans. The rules require all units from a formation to be out supply for full day before the Supplyhead can be moved. If you believe as I do that the game is really only 40 Turns long or less, then that means that the British 1st Airborne is going to be out of supply for 25-35% of the game. That's just unacceptable. The solution for the Allied Player is to place the Supplyhead in a different location right from the start, except that the rules state that the Supplyhead must be within an established drop zone. That's the motivation for moving the Pathfinder for the 1/1 Brigade.
One final comment about game design. There are 1200 counters for combat units. Some of them are blanks. 440 are German. 760 are Allied. That's 1.7 to 1 in favor of the Allies. Most of the articles I have read suggest that odds of 3 to 1 or better are required to achieve victory. What were the Allies thinking? The Germans will have local odds in excess of 3 to 1 in the Arnhem area well before the end of the game. The only solution to this for the Allies is speed.
From this basic analysis, I conclude that I have to (1)push XXX Corps forward harder and faster than they did in real life, and (2)extend the longevity of the British 1st Airborne division. There are techniques for doing this that I am still discovering. Our earlier games were marred by a lot of sub-optimal play. I hope to do better this time.