Advanced Squad Leader Scenario 3 Situation Report
My US forces “only” needed to control 25 building hexes over the crease of the map. No small feat for sure and the battle isn’t over. But it’s probably not far off. A rookie error led to the devastation of an important stack on the first turn of the game and I’ve been trying to recover from that SNAFU ever since.
The idea was simple. Feint down the bottom side while bringing my flamethrower and a few other squads along the top to clear the buildings there. During this time I’d position an LMG in the building at the end of the wooded path to hold any troops back that wished to join the defenders above and use my troops in the center to harry the defenders opposite. Finally, use the flamethrower and squads to methodically sweep left and down mopping up and claiming any empty buildings available.
The plan was forced to change after Captain Dunn (The green arrow) in his wisdom (er… actually mine) decided to run his squads into the hitherto unseen direct firing line of an HMG (that kept successive rounds of fire on his conveniently placed stack) wiping him and a squad from the board and routing the rest.
At the end of turn 3 my plan has been discovered and the defenders are moving in to support the units in the top building from the devastating effects of the flamethrower! My two broken stacks will hopefully manage to be brought back into the battle by a leader (currently situated in the bottom group). My loses are heavy, but I hope the task is not insurmountable should I manage to bring the broken units back.
Unfortunately my host and ASL mentor has had to take a trip away so I will be unable to continue this conflict until his return in a few weeks time. Perhaps I will give VASL a go to pass the time between now and the finale as I am still waiting for a delivery of Beyond Valor before I can have a proper look at full ASL.
Update: Mission Over AAR
After what felt like months, my ASL teacher returned from his trip and we were able to complete the game. Unfortunately… I think there was some confusion over what turn we left on as I only had two movement phases left (according to the turn record) which meant that there wasn’t anything like enough time to maneuver my troops into even a few of the VC buildings, let alone the required 20+!
No worries. I completed one more turn to see how my flamethrower would fair at the top of the board, then called it a day. The squads final positions can be seen below.
I’m already looking forward to our next meeting (hopefully in only a few weeks time) and I’ll keep learning the full game and try to push for an infantry only scenario from that.