Combat Commander – After Action Report – Scenario 78 – By These Deeds They Shall Be Known

After a few months’ streak of fun games that ultimately lead to more futility, it was time to see if I could end this losing streak.

I hadn’t lost this many Combat Commander games in a row in quite a while!

Would I be able to right the ship and get above .500 again?

This tale from the Combat Commander ladder will tell you that.

The ladder is the monthly tournament of one of the best games out there run by the contemplative Patrick Pence, he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials fame.

This month’s scenario is from the Fall of the West battle pack, which is essentially the fall of France in 1940.

However, thankfully, this month’s scenario had the British and not the French troops (nothing against the French in general, but that 1-discard limit is killer!).

My opponent was Ben S, a guy who has been away from the ladder for quite a while but is making his return to competitive play.

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

In the scenario, the Germans (grey – Ben) are coming from the bottom of the board while the British (tan – Me) are defending a line trying to keep the Germans from breaking through.

Not too many special rules in this one, but the ones we do have are important.

First, the British have to set up all of their fortifications and at least seven units in hexes numbered 5-7. I ended up setting them all up that way, but I didn’t have to.

I set up the light mortar on the left side of the board in foxholes, covering both the reinforcement side and the German starting area.

The Heavy Machine Gun was in the center in a trench, hopefully to spread death and destruction through the brush.

And hopefully stopping the German HMG and mortar from doing anything.

Ha! That was a thought.

The rest of the British were spread out in command radius of somebody, all in the remaining foxholes.

Secondly, the Germans can’t set up in the A-F columns, meaning they’re kind of confined to the center and right side of the board.

Ben set up the mortar and HMG to the left with the remainder of his guys behind the hedges and small little building in the bottom right corner.

Thirdly, in two rounds, the German reinforcements come out and they must come in between A7 and E10 (on the left side of the board).

Finally, the German radio represents direct-fire support and thus doesn’t get treated like normal artillery. Instead, a hit doesn’t drift at all, and even a miss only does a minor drift.

Would the heroic Brits be able to hold off the evil guys?

Let’s take a look.

Each side has a hidden objective, but mine turned out to be the open “Elimination Points are Doubled” objective, meaning there would be a lot of killing!

The first thing Ben wanted to do was use his artillery to smoke out the British mortar, and he was able to do that easily with a 7 smoke.

He then fired on the British in the foxholes with the mortar and HMG.

Nothing happened…except a British time event!

That smoke quickly was gone.

Oh, and a Blaze started in the wheatfield in the top left corner.

No apparent reason to mention that…

I had drawn a pretty good opening hand for a defender (4-card hand limit): two Fire cards and two Marksmanship cards.

As defenders are wont to do, I spread out the attacks some to burn up some cards and hopefully do a double-break and kill somebody.

Sadly, the only thing that happened was Ben giving up the Initiative to forestall a massive attack (that ended up being really tiny instead) and a German sniper breaking Forbes!

That’s not what was supposed to happen.

Sadly, my snipers were completely ineffective while Ben’s hit a couple of times at least.

With Forbes broken and me not able to draw a Recover card, Ben kept raining fire down on his Trench.

Even with a low-firepower attack (after some Concealment played by me!) the weapons team manning the HMG were suppressed! The squad was fine and the broken Forbes drew a Time trigger and passed with flying colours!

This brought the German reinforcements on, which Ben mostly placed in the building on the road.

Ben kept firing, though!

The mortar fired, being Sustained twice. (Meaning if he drew doubles, it was gone).

He didn’t draw doubles, but he did draw a 3.

My guys were fine.

Well, they would have been, except the unbroken, unsuppressed squad drew a 3 too and broke.

They must have seen Forbes cowering in the trench and decided to join him.

Fire continued to rain down on them, though. The HMG team was still suppressed, the squad broke again (Light Wounds broke them down to a team) and Forbes would have died with a 4 morale roll.

I passed the Initiative…and promptly drew a 2!

So he did die.

Forbes, we hardly knew ye.

I can’t even raise a glass to him, he was so ineffective.

In the same order, the German HMG opened up, killing the lightly-wounded team and finally breaking the HMG team.

Artillery (Heavy Weapons Support) rained down on them but they remained steadfast!

Crowe opened fire with the British mortar and his squads, and actually did some damage.

One German squad broke with the mortar, and then the direct fire brought the German Hero Dietel out onto the board.

One squad had already broken and Dietel joined on the previously-broken squad’s morale check.

So Dietel quickly rallied them so they could break again instead of being eliminated.

Result: two broken German squads in the forest.

Ben quickly rallied them, but not before drawing a Breeze event that spread the fire a little bit…

I had finally drawn a Recover card! And the HMG was safe.

Incidentally, Ben desperately wanted to pass the mortar to Dietel because he can activate multiple times, but that would involve having somebody move out of the forest (you have to physically move at least one unit to spend the point to trade a weapon) and he didn’t want to face some withering fire out in the open like that.

Dietel never got the mortar.

Too bad he didn’t realize how few Fire cards I had!

With Forbes out of action, I wanted to move Hawes into a better position to let the HMG fire along with any other troops that joined them in the foxhole, so I managed to reposition him.

More German fire on the HMG resulted in Ben having to reveal his hidden objective, which was all Objectives are worth 1 VP, giving me 3 more!

That helped.

Then the mortar started missing whenever Ben wanted to fire more smoke.

Did they forget to pack the shells?

The artillery direct fire did manage to do so, though only a 4-smoke landed on the British mortar.

A British Advance allowed a new squad to join the HMG and Hawes to get into position to activate them all.

I figured it was only a 1-command rating for Hawes, so not really worth the one extra firepower for the HMG versus actually being able to command three hexes to fire.

More German direct fire and mortar fire rained down on the HMG trench, but only resulted in a British reinforcement of Corporal Cook!

Seriously, in 1940, he’s the only option if you roll a 3 on the Reinforcement event.

But he’s a leader, so maybe he could run down and help the HMG!

What could go wrong?

With the British HMG back in commission, it was time to rain some fire down on the Germans.

Did you know that I haven’t killed a German unit in over a month? Not one German died last month.

My attack drew an Interrogation event, which showed me all the Fire cards he had, and the one Recover that I had him get rid of.

Can’t allow him to rally all of those broken Germans!

Then Cook began his run to join his comrades! I had no Recover card in my hand, but really, what can happen, right? He’s running into a Trench.

The German HMG opened up, waiting until he had actually jumped into the Trench rather than still being further into the back before doing so. This meant everybody got hit.

And everybody seemed to be panicked by Cook joining them!

Ben let loose with the HMG, sustaining it and getting a crossfire action too, giving him a 14 firepower before the dice roll. A 9 brought it to 23.

Things looked bad, but the HMG team managed to actually become only suppressed.

Everybody else broke, though.

What I realized afterward is that I should have just had him run behind the forest, and then Advance in on a later turn.

Especially because I had trouble drawing Recover cards.

Ben kept up the fire on the trench, rolling high enough to cause me to give up initiative again.

Only two less, but with concealment it happened to be manageable.

Amazingly, the Germans were still broken in the mortar hex!

A British Rout order forced Ben to give me the initiative back because not only would the mortar team have routed off the board, but I had drawn a Time event!

This was hilarious, because that’s the only roll that would have routed him. I commented on that, saying “I need a 12…” and lo and behold, that’s what I drew!

Sadly, another Time event was not drawn, so they were safe.

However, two 10s were drawn. While the team remained on the board, the squad ran screaming, giving me 4 points.

Ben had drawn a Recover card (one turn too late, just like me most of the time!) and in trying to Recover everybody, a German sniper broke Crowe.

This was getting frustrating.

With Crowe out of commission, it was time for the German reinforcements to move.

Maybe they could get off the board for points?

I could still fire, but only with the units in Crowe’s hex.

I didn’t have a Fire card anyway, so Biermann was safe.

I wasn’t sure why they were running down the road like that, but Ben later said he was concerned with getting blocked by the blazes and the minefield.

But it wouldn’t matter anyway, right?

I had to discard because I didn’t have a Fire card at all and I knew I would need one.

Thankfully, I drew one!

Sure enough, Biermann and his men kept running.

But this time the British squad not inside the smoke had some firepower.

Not much (only 5) against the 8 German morale (because of Biermann’s command rating).

I drew a 10! That made a 15 attack, and Ben managed to roll just badly enough. Two suppressions (but since they were moving, they broke) and one actual break.

(He did draw a Battlefield Integrity event which gave him 2 points)

Ben didn’t commit the Combat Commander cardinal sin, though. He had a Recover card ready!

Biermann rallied, but two horrible rolls left both the team and the squad broken.

It was time to Rout those babies from out in the open.

First British roll…an 11! That made the Team have to retreat 5 spaces.

Which is when we both realized a sometimes obscure routing rule.

Each space a routing unit moves has to be one hex closer to the board edge.

Where they had happened to break, that was not possible without running into a British hex

Two options, neither actually legal.

The team died. Two more points for me

But surely I wouldn’t roll another high number and make the squad die too, would I?

Yep, another 11, and the squad died too.

To add insult to injury, the British deck ran out, causing another Time trigger and pushing us two rounds away from a rather high Sudden Death threshold.

Three German dead units and they all died by routing, not by me firing.

I still hadn’t killed a German unit directly!

With not much else to do, the German mortar and HMG continued to rain fire down on the British HMG, trying to kill it.

That didn’t work, though Cook died just as uselessly as Forbes did.

This brought the VP total down to 3 British, just to let you know.

Biermann did run off the board for two German VP, making it down to 1!

Then the mortar hit the trench hard, but drew a Time trigger for the firepower. Massive firepower, but down to one round!

I couldn’t afford that heavy of an attack on my HMG, so I gave Ben the initiative back.

He promptly gave it right back to me when he rolled really low, and finally he rolled a 9.

I thought about giving it back, but then I realized that the German deck was almost empty and we were close enough that a tie game was conceivable.

Whoever has the initiative wins a draw.

So I kept the 20 firepower roll.

The broken squad was just suppressed! That saved me 4 points.

The HMG team broke though.

Thankfully I had drawn not one, but two Recover cards. Finally!

Everybody was fine and the HMG was back in action.

Which meant it was time to open up on the German HMG and see if I could stop this constant harrassment.

After a lot of back and forth, and a lot of firing on both sides, I did manage to break both units in that hex.

They quickly recovered and started firing again.

Ben only needed one more squad kill to take the lead.

But he couldn’t get it.

While he broke one of my squads, I was able to recover him before anything bad happened.

That’s pretty much it. A bunch of firing back and forth, and one more effective German sniper for good measure.

I did manage to break the German HMG team, though!

Finally my deck ran out and it was time for Sudden Death, which ended with a 4.

Here’s the final situation.

I managed to eke out a 2-point win and end my losing streak!

In hindsight, I’m not sure why I avoided the woods that ended up being between my two forces. Foxholes in the Forest work just fine! But for some reason I didn’t think it would be beneficial.

I was wrong, but thankfully not fatally so!

Then Ben and I both made a big mistake each, but thankfully mine only cost me 4 points while his cost him 6.

And really, both of them wouldn’t have been lethal if the rolls had been better.

Not to mention that his mistake, neither one of us even knew that it was a mistake! We had forgotten the rout rule until it was time to implement it.

Ben was a fantastic opponent, fun to play a game with. I don’t know about him, but my feeling about the game went from “this is going ok” to “there is no way I’m going to win this” and then back again.

This win puts me back above .500, at 23-22.

I have a reprieve!

Though I still haven’t directly killed an enemy unit now in 2 months.

Something’s got to happen soon.

Next month’s scenario is from the Sea Lion battle pack, so another hypothetical invasion of Britain scenario!

Should be fun.

If you enjoyed this, why not join us on the ladder?

A chance to play a great game at least once a month, and maybe get some more games in otherwise?

Tony’s always around for one!

Until next month, my advice to you is make sure when you have an eager young NCO running to join you in battle, he doesn’t attract a bunch of fire from the enemy.

See you next month!

Combat Commander Ladder – After Action Reports

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