Combat Commander – After Action Report – Scenario 38 – Not One Step Back

It’s that time of the month again!

Time for another tale from the Combat Commander ladder, that monthly tournament of one of the best games out there that’s run by the renowned Patrick Pence, he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials fame (and formerly of the Top of the Ladder but not after last month)!

After a bad losing streak, I managed to get a win last month. However, this month’s scenario was looking pretty bleak for my side.

The scenario is Not One Step Back, from the Stalingrad battle pack, and it looks really hard for the Soviets (which I was). The Germans are pouring fire down on the Soviets from four levels up and the Soviets don’t have much, if any, cover.

However, up to my play, there were 20 games finished so far and the Soviets won 10 of them!

Maybe I could make it 11?

My opponent was somebody I’ve never played before, Bay C.

Here’s the starting positions.

(Don’t forget that you can click on a picture to blow it up)

As I mentioned, the Soviets (brown – me) are on one side of this long gully stretching across the board. The Germans (grey – Bay) are up on the Level 4 heights across the way.

The Soviets can set up 5 hexes deep from the south side of the board, so sure, I could be on the Level 4 heights too.

However, look at the ranges on these units (the middle number on the counter).

They can’t reach shit!

Not to mention that the Infantry Gun and weapons team have to set up on the bridge (which at least has some cover).

Plus, I drew the public “Exit Points Are Doubled” secret objective, so I had to set up at least a token force to try and prevent any exiting off of the right side of the board.

The only cover on my side of the board is two hexes of brush, which I positioned Sgt. Maisky in to keep Biermann honest.

I basically copied another player’s Soviet setup because they won their game.

So why not?

This is a rules-light scenario. Basically, the Infantry Gun has to be on the bridge and the weapons team can’t move or rout off of it unless the gun is destroyed.

Secondly, the other Russians have to set up on the hill, so no setting up in the gully for what little cover that offers.

They have to be out in the open (except the two brush hexes).

That’s it!

Want to see how I did?

That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?

This is actually going to be fairly short, compared to previous AARs, because in reality nothing much really happened.

But let me show you rather than tell you that.

The Germans go first, so if they have a Fire card, fire from the HMG (oh, did I forget to tell you that the Germans have a frickin’ HMG on the heights??) is going to be raining down on the hapless Soviets.

And of course Bay had a Fire card.

And a Spray Fire action!

So both the gun and Sgt. Kovalev were going to take some heavy lead.

He rolled fairly big, too, with a 21.

Thankfully, Kovalev got his men digging foxholes really quickly, which helped.

I also drew high, which also really helped.

The only effect was that Kovalev was suppressed.

(After another fire that broke Kovalev, we realized that Bay hadn’t added the +1 for firing downhill, which would have actually broken him this time, and thus killed him the next time. I offered to kill him but Bay graciously allowed it to stand. Either that, or he knew what was coming and knew it didn’t matter anyway)

Oh, I guess that was a spoiler that I had pretty much a shit first hand, eh?

No Fire card to try and smoke the HMG and ease up the fire. No Recover card to remove the Suppression (or rally him when he did break next time).

I discarded, and lo and behold, a Fire card!

And more foxholes if Bay fired at me.

Which he did.

And more Spray Fire to bring Kovalev into it again! He already had Foxholes, so that card didn’t matter.

The weapons team heroically stayed rallied, but Kovalev and his squad broke.

The gun fired by itself and I managed to place a 9 smoke on the HMG!

(Of course I moved the smoke onto the HMG, but just took the picture of it next to it so you can see the glorious 9 smoke)

I had also drawn an Interrogation event, making Bay discard his only Fire card.

Things were looking up!

Then I drew a Recover card.

Were things starting to brighten for me?

What’s the saying? Things are always brightest before the pitch black of midnight?

I think I’ve heard that somewhere.

Right after Kovalev recovered, Bay played an Advance to get his guys out of the smoke.

They were still very high above us, so fire would still be raining down.

And once again I had a crap hand.

After a discard, it was still crap. I was saving the foxholes and a Dig In (for the first Time trigger), but maybe I should have ditched one of them.

Hindsight.

Of course, Bay now had a new Fire card! No Spray Fire, though, so only the weapons crew broke.

Sgt. Biermann also took this opportunity to advance down the hill on the German left, though Biermann himself actually stumbled into some Wire that he somehow missed.

What is he, 65 and blind as a bat?

After a discard, I finally drew a Recover card so hopefully I could get the Infantry Gun back into business.

But Bay had yet another Fire card and torched him with Sustained Fire (which ended up breaking his LMG by rolling doubles, but that didn’t really matter) before I could recover him.

Since I no longer had anybody to Recover, I discarded a card instead, and drew a Pillbox that would have saved the team!

Oh well…

I still didn’t have any Fire cards.

More discarding ensued and then Bay had (yet again) a Fire card and a Spray Fire action.

The firepower was still hefty, though, suppressing one squad, breaking Kovalev and another squad.

Bay’s LMG was destroyed, though!

Biermann did try to move with his men off the Wire and closer to the board edge. Sgt. Maisky wouldn’t have any of that and fired, one of the last shots actually breaking somebody and drawing a Time trigger.

That was my only real hope, that Time would come fast and furious.

At this point I actually had two Recover cards, so all of my broken people were able to rally.

And I had two Fire cards too!

Sadly, none of Kovalev’s men were in range of the HMG except the squad that was stacked with him (did I mention that the Soviets have shit range in this scenario?), but nonetheless I tried to break the team so the HMG would go silent.

And I did!

Of course, Bay had earlier shifted the HMG from the team to the squad, so I didn’t actually break the unit firing it.

Which was good for Bay because it didn’t actually recover! Though the German squad with Biermann did rally.

Biermann and his men then moved more down the hill and took some fire, which caused another Time trigger.

Could it be? Could providence actually save me?

I kept firing as he moved, and in one of the humorous things that sometimes happens in this game, I drew a Foxholes event.

Which promptly told me to put them in a hex that already had foxholes.

Oh well!

Two of his three stacks ended up in the gully, where my guys couldn’t see them anymore.

Maisky was sad, and this caused me to do something that could have cost me the game.

Though it probably didn’t.

I decided to move them up onto the heights in front of Biermann so that I could see them all again.

But, of course, they could see me too.

However, it was the HMG that did me in.

It opened up on me, and promptly jammed!

But Bay gave me the Initiative and rolled again, drawing a Time!

I couldn’t give him that much firepower, so I gave the Initiative back.

The two squads broke, but Maisky drew a Time trigger!

So that was a waste of the Initiative card.

Another probably mistake.

Things were moving forward, though. But I had no defense against Biermann now unless I had a Recover.

Which I did!

But neither squad recovered, though I did draw another Time trigger.

We were two Times away from Sudden Death, but of course Bay had another Fire card.

He fired on Kovalev and had a weak roll, but Kovalev’s was even weaker so he broke.

I had three Fire cards but no Recover.

Bay then played a Rout order which routed the Militia squad right off the board.

After some completely ineffective Fire that actually brought the German Hero out to rally the lone broken German unit and then exit to greener pastures, I still had three Fire cards in my hand and no Recover.

Guess what Bay had?

Yep, another Fire card.

Fire rained down on Maisky and his broken squad, killing the squad and suppressing Maisky.

With nobody in range to hinder him, Biermann and his men headed for the exits.

My only real hope was two quick Times and a good Sudden Death roll, as I was still up by 8 VP.

Some Russian fire suppressed Lauerbach, but didn’t cause a Time trigger.

In a running theme of this scenario, Bay had exactly the card he needed.

Biermann and his men all moved off the board for 18 German VP.

Damn the “double VP for exiting” objective!

Lauerbach then decided to put Kovalev out of his misery, making a 29 (!) firepower attack, killing everybody in the stack and leaving me leaderless (Maisky was around but nowhere near any Soviet units).

In the only remaining bright spot for me, I drew an Infiltration event that brought me a Guards SMG squad appearing right on the German board edge!

Four quick VP for me, bringing it back down to a 9 German VP lead.

In desperation, I started firing on what I could reach, but that just resulted in two German Battlefield Integrity events, giving Bay 4 VP both times.

More German fire rained down, killing another Soviet squad, and I decided to call it quits.

There was no way to come back from this, and I hadn’t managed to kill anybody.

Here’s the final map.

All in all, this game took just over an hour to play and it was a nightmare from almost the beginning, at least as far as my chances to win.

It was a joy to play with Bay, don’t get me wrong.

It was just a nightmare for the Soviets.

I honestly don’t know what I could have done with the cards I drew, but perhaps my setup was bad to begin with, and I did make a couple of mistakes that made things worse.

Bay was merciless with the cards that he drew, as any good Combat Commander player should be.

I could have gotten lucky with the Time triggers. They were starting to come pretty fast.

Bay was an excellent opponent and I do hope to play him again. It was a fun hour, even as I was despairing of actually winning anything.

This puts me at 22-20 in my ladder career.

Pretty mediocre!

But let’s be positive and say I will reverse this trend next month.

Next month’s scenario is from the Normandy battle pack. These scenarios are usually fun.

If this interested you (and I forgive you if it didn’t, as I can see how it wouldn’t be that interesting to read about this one), why not join us on the Combat Commander ladder?

We’re a great group of people and you can always find somebody to play with, at least for the most part.

How about Tony?

Until next month, my advice to you is to not get yourself into a position where your enemy is above you with an HMG.

Most people are violently allergic to that.

See you next month!

Combat Commander Ladder – After Action Reports

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