Combat Commander – After Action Report – Scenario 55 – Graveyard of the North Shores

What is this?

It’s the first half of the month and I’m already doing my monthly Combat Commander ladder report?

Isn’t it usually just squeezing it in on the last day?

No! Not this month.

Merry Christmas.

And welcome to another tale of boardgaming horror adventure from the ladder, where I get to play one of my favourite games at least once a month.

Run by the august Patrick Pence, he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials fame (I think he does have a star on the sidewalk somewhere), the ladder is where at least one hundred people play a new scenario each month, fighting for supremacy.

This month, my opponent was Michael T, a long-time friend of my good friend Ted W (who I manage to play at least once a month against in fun games, some of which may appear as AARs some day if I get around to them).

The scenario is from the Normandy battle pack and has a force of attacking Canadians (fitting that I should play them) against a really small German defending force.

Here’s the setup (don’t forget that you can click on a picture to blow it up)

A couple of special rules to keep in mind.

First, the Normandy special rules are in effect, so hedges are +2 to movement and cover rather than +1. Roads do not have a -1 cover penalty either.

Secondly, prior to the German setup, both sides draw 6 random hexes, placing 3 Wire counters and 3 Foxholes (or Trenches if the random hex is a building).

Looking at the picture above, you can see that none of them did anything for either player really, other than two Wires that were in the Canadian way (the two Trenches that are in the picture are part of the German setup).

Thirdly, both sides can use Concealment actions as “No Quarter” actions, meaning they get an additional VP if they win in melee (we didn’t use this one).

Then the Germans (grey – Michael) set up 10 hexes deep from the right board edge, followed by the Canadians (tan – me) two hexes deep from the left.

See that guy circled up in the picture?

That’s a Scout, and both of us had one. Earlier in the week, Michael had played this scenario with Ted. Ted won right before Sudden Death by killing Michael’s Scout, causing a Surrender win (the Germans can only lose 6 units before surrendering).

Since he’s pretty useless for the Germans in this scenario, Michael set him up out of harm’s way.

Why am I mentioning this?

No reason…

One more thing is the hidden objectives.

Michael drew the open “Elimination Points are Doubled” objective.

This would be fun.

Anyway, with it all set up, let’s begin!

The Germans go first and the Canadians are out there in the open (though the wheatfields do cause a -1 firepower hindrance).

Hopefully for the Germans, they start with a Fire card…which Michael happened to have.

He Spray Fired, breaking the two Canadian squads alone in the south. He then tried to Rout them off the board for some quick VP, but neither one left the board.

Thankfully I started with a Recover card, but one of the squads failed to rally!

I also thankfully started with a Fire card, which is really important.

The Canadians start with three mortars, all capable of firing smoke. The German Heavy Machine-Gun was in the buildings to the south.

Time to smoke it!

Only two hit and both smokes were pretty lackluster, but it was a start at least.

Sadly, I didn’t have a Move card to follow up on it.

Michael sent some artillery up near the mortars, but thankfully only a couple of units broke.

And I happened to have two Recover cards in my initial hand, so that was no problem.

After Recovering, Sgt. Seguin and his men advanced forward, hoping to take the northern building since the Germans weren’t covering it very much.

An exchange of relatively ineffective fire happened, and I tried to put some better smoke down south.

Had one hit out of three.

What is with these mortars?

Seguin moved again and took some withering fire, breaking both his team and squad, though not himself.

The other stack survived the fire and moved down the road to take Objective 5 (my secret objective).

However, since I had forgotten to make sure I had a Recover card first, I decided not to move the other two squads that Seguin had activated.

They never activated again the entire game.

Some jockeying for position, as well as more ineffective firing, ensued (as well as rallying!) before the Canadian south moved out (figuring the smoke was good enough).

One setup mistake I had made was putting lone squads in front with the leader in back, so I ended up only moving two hexes away from the Germans instead of right next to them. Don’t want them to get some easy kills, and plus I need to advance into melee and it’s kind of hard to do with only one squad.

I had played this scenario with Ted earlier as well, and one thing that complete Canadian massacre had taught me was that you have to move. Get some smoke out and move.

With the Canadians sitting there (with 3 Recover cards and 2 Rout cards, along with a Fire), I decided to try and boost up the smoke a little bit with the mortars.

That worked a little bit (not much) but also drew a Time trigger!

Then I tried it again, having drawn another Fire card.

It worked a little bit again, though silly me forgot that I also wanted to fire with the Canadians down there, so I should have done that first.

Didn’t matter as my roll was quite big, breaking the SS squad and suppressing both the HMG crew and the leader.

But they quickly rallied.

Why not one more smoke attempt?

That got some big smoke out there (a -10) but I still had no Move or Advance card.

Then finally, the Move came!

Sadly, one squad stumbled into Wire and McCann and company stumbled into a Minefield.

The Germans also fired (thankfully the mines didn’t hurt anybody) and it resulted in another Time trigger.

Uh oh.

The fire also resulted in a two broken squads and a suppressed HMG team.

And one stack out of command radius.

And a Time trigger on the final Canadian defense roll!

This was starting to get dicey.

Especially when the first card out of the new deck, drawn for another morale check, was another Time trigger!

Thankfully I had a Recover card handy.

But one squad refused to rally.

Up north, Seguin continued to move toward the other Germans, but stumbled into Wire (these guys are really clumsy).

The Canadians in the south were sitting in the smoke, so close to the Germans that they could taste the beer in the kitchen, but didn’t have any Advance cards.

They even had an Ambush! But no Advance.

Meanwhile, the Germans kept taking potshots at them, thankfully not doing much to them.

But with Time moving fast, these potshots were making me worried about wasting so many cards.

Then a Breeze blew all of the smoke away!

Time for the mortars to kick in.

And only one hit. Thankfully it was a 6-smoke directly on top of the German HMG.

A lot of stuff had happened without too much effect, so let’s give you a map refresh.

Seguin and his men had gotten out of the Wire and were in decent position, but rushing the Germans up north seemed dangerous.

A blaze started up in the middle of the field, which would make things slightly annoying.

In the south, a stalemate with a couple of broken Canadian units.

With me out of Recover cards, the Germans fired at the broken squad in the Wire down south, eliminating him for the first casualty of the game.

That also put an end to my plan to jump two squads, a team, and a leader onto the HMG stack, overwhelming it (even though I would lose a squad in the process).

Finally, an Advance card!

Time to do it.

McCann and his men were jumping out of the minefield, so this was really dangerous.

Thankfully, no harm was done.

Michael only had one Ambush card, and I had happened to draw another one while looking for my Advance, so I had two.

One German team eliminated, leaving me at a 10-5 advantage in strength.

Michael rolled badly the first time, so gave me the Initiative.

And promptly rolled worse.

The German MG nest was history!

I then rallied everybody, and drew a Walking Wounded event.

My one dead squad showed up…deep behind German lines!

Was there anybody back there to stop them?

Some more jockeying for position ensued, then a Canadian discard summoned a hidden German HMG and team into the trenches to the north, bolstering that position.

That really worried me because time was advancing (in fact, my deck had just run out so there was another Time trigger) and I knew I had to destroy those guys.

An HMG slicing up my guys, and that blaze blocking my mortars from getting smoke up there, was not a good thing!

Not a heck of a lot happened for a while after that. Some fire broke some units, but they rallied, the blaze became a 4-hex conflagration, a German Walking Wounded event brought a dead team out on the north edge of the board, another Time due to deck-depletion (one round away from the first Sudden Death roll!).

That’s when things started to get interesting again, as the Canadians were getting desperate.

I had 38 cards left in my deck.

Then 33 as I couldn’t do anything but recover my broken guys and ineffectively rout Michael’s broken team.

And one of my Elite teams died!

With one Move card finally, it was time to do at least a little something.

Yes, my Walking Wounded squad started marching. First they were going to go off the board for points, and then they realized that there was somebody just lounging around in the back, smoking a cigar and having some schnapps.

Then the German artillery started raining fire down on the Canadian mortars.

I had drawn another Move card, but otherwise had a hand of crap, so discarded three terrible cards.

And promptly drew two Advances!

More artillery, but thankfully no deaths.

There were 16 cards left in the Canadian deck, so time for a desperate move, even without smoke.

It was time to Move up north.

And Michael without a Fire card!

The other squad then Advanced into the German Scout’s hex, interrupting his snooze.

He promptly died.

More German artillery, this time to try and stop my Canadians in the north (DANGER CLOSE!), but it was ineffective, drifting behind the Canadians. Michael then Advanced his new HMG team into Cpl Kunze’s hex to beef up the firepower in it.

I had 2 Advance cards in my hand, but only 5 cards left in my deck.

First, I moved the Scout-killer squad off the board, just in case Sudden Death didn’t happen and we got another round.

It was now or never, even though I only had one Ambush card.

Eliminating 3 Germans would give me a Surrender victory and hey, there were now 3 Germans there with that HMG team!

I had an Ambush…and Michael didn’t!

This left me with a 17-11 strength advantage.

The first German card draw was an 8, which would mean mutual annihilation if I drew a 2 (the lowest possible number)…but I would still win.

So he gave me the Initiative (I had given it back to him to prevent a Time trigger earlier) and rolled again.

A 4 ended the game.

I drew my attack card anyway, and a Sniper trigger would have actually broken the German scout if he had still been sitting there.

With my secret objective revealed, I ended with 4 VP, but since it was a Surrender victory, that didn’t matter.

For the second time in 4 days, Michael had a Surrender loss due to his Scout dying.

I felt bad.

Sort of.

Here’s the final map!

I loved playing Michael. It was a great game, tense, he’s a fun opponent and skilled. It could have gone either way.

In fact, I was seriously worried there toward the end (though I guess drawing less than 7 on the Sudden Death roll isn’t *that* easy). I thought Time would run out on me.

Also many thanks to Ted for some timely rules help and for the other spectators in the game.

This puts me at 17-14 in my ladder career, a bit of a cushion for my inevitable losing streak.

Next month’s scenario is from the Resistance expansion. Those are always fun ones.

I think we’ll need rules reminders for this one!

We always do.

Why not join the Combat Commander ladder and get to play your favourite game with a great bunch of guys!

You can almost always find a pick-up game if you ask, and you’re guaranteed one game a month at least!

That’s it for this month.

Until next time, my tip to you?

If you’re all alone, don’t get drunk and smoke a bunch and then forget to watch out for gangs of roving Canadians.

Combat Commander Ladder – After Action Reports

To see all of my Ladder After Action Reports since May 2021, go here!