nerdinmich (May 3, 2010)
I recently played the "New Mission" Scenario, which is a deliberate 3 player scenario with the two allied divisions not being allowed to talk after the game starts. This is to simulate the prejudice that still existed between the white infantry and the black tank squadrons. I played the infantry, which initially set up directly in front of two building surrounded by barbed wire, mines and a tank trap. The germans in this scenario have 3 or 4 mortar units which can conveniently be placed out of range of all attacks. The infantry have few special units (3 engineers and an officer and only the side directly in front of the mines and barbed wire has any cover hexes. The tanks in their separate setup board are limited in their break through to a single forest hex on the opposite side of the board.
I started out the first round, the only round the allies have the initiative with an engineer squad in the only hex on the set up side with a mine and removed it. During play the German player dropped repeated suppressive fire attacks on my units lined up hoping to break through and stopped there movement and prevented their movement. Then during play the German player used units inside the building and within normal range to shoot the engineer unit out of existence. Since the Germans start out on top of 4 initiative points to the Allied 2, the German took the initiative for all subsequent rounds. By round 4, with out ever having had a chance to move a single unit, every one of my 8 squads had been destroyed, 7 by mortar attacks and then the pinned unit with my officer in it was attacked by an elite unit moving out of the buildings. During all of this the tanks provided some relief and even destroyed a few units. I on the other hand got to roll a few red defensive dice and the game was over!
If any of you have played this scenario, I would like to know what you did with the infantry, other than using them as mortar fodder. I am thinking the best setup might be to keep the units back, out of Line of Sight so the mortars can not attack them and wait until the tanks get moving enough to pin the units in the building. The only other strategy I can think of is to line up as many as I can right on the border for the first turn and use them to assault the building by first removing the one center mine hex. It looks like a suicide run but it may be the allies best chance for advance. Frankly this looks like suicide for the allied infantry and I do not understand how they managed in the real life scenario. I couldn't find much tactical information about the original battle as most of the references I found talk about the personalities and the the military strategies employed.
