Okay, @jemmy , @rasmus , @torros , @elessar2590 , @neves1789 , @damon , @stvitusdancern , @silverfox8 …
Time to wrap up the trench battle in Valor & Victory: Great War 1918 Edition.
We start off in the southern part of the breached German trench system, where Captain Pollock wants to assault the next German strongpoint but cut down on his company’s losses. Casualties are becoming a real problem here, the Americans are in serious danger of running out of men before the Germans run out of trenches.
Normally in Valor & Victory, the proper methodology to these kinds of assaults is usually a rough representation of real-life military “fire and maneuver” tactics, where your “base of fire” element force pours down fire on the target and pins them down, while your “maneuver” element flanks to one side or the other and assaults.
We’ve been running into two problems on this trench table, though. One, once we’re down in the trenches, there is almost never a long enough line of sight for any kind of “base of fire” or “overwatch” element. Two, the weapons of 1918 just aren’t powerful enough to seriously weaken or even pin significant units, the Americans have felt compelled to simply launch the assault “cold” (and pay the predictably horrific cost in casualty points).
Here, though, the Americans at last have no choice. Pollock and his half-squad (carrying a Lewis Gun) elect to put down fire on the Germans in that rubble pile, while Lt. Ferber leads the assault. The math works out that Pollock’s stack is better as the overwatch, because his -2 leadership bonus actually yields more of a benefit than the additional 2 points of firepower in Ferber’s stack.
But Captain Pollock scores huge on the dice Check out that “3”! Remember that low rolls are better in this game! Not only does Pollock and his Lewis Gun team pin down the two German half-squads in that stack (one of them is carrying an MG 08 15 LMG), but actually kills them outright! No assault is even necessary!
Up north, Captain Lomax is up against more serious opposition. That ruined building the Germans occupy (Leutnant Habeck) gives a +3 defense bonus, and is manned by 16 men, including another LMG. Habeck himself also confers a -1 leadership bonus. That is going to be one tough nut to crack.
Lomax’s stack unloads on Habeck’s position, with a “6” pins one of the half squads. It’s not much, but as Lieutenant Saunders prepares his men for the grim assault, every little bit will help.
The assault goes in, and German opportunity fire is horrendous. Two half squads are eliminated outright, a third is pinned down. Saunders keeps feeding more men into the charge, not stopping until is stack is at maximum allowed for one hex. At least now they’re in a crater, when they launch the assault.
Saunders’ assault clears eliminates Habeck’s platoon and clears the position. In an effort to keep casualties down, Saunders elects to “pin” some of his units rather than let them be eliminated (owning player gets to choose how to account for required casualty points, as long as he accounts for all points inflicted by the enemy). The trade off is, when you’re pinning you must pin much MORE than if you’re taking eliminated casualties. Saunders is gambling that he can rally his units before the Germans can counter-assault (any assault that hits pinned units – pinned units are automatically eliminated at no cost to the attacker). He gets to apply a -1 bonus to his difficulty on this roll (leadership). However he doesn’t roll very well, and two of his fireteams remain pinned as sure enough, Hauptmann Schoeller leads his men in for a counter-assault.
Now Lomax has foreseen this possibility. Note the three 2-5-2 fireteams deployed forward at the trench junction, ready to take opportunity fire on the Germans as they make that left turn down the trench to attack Saunders in the “Habeck House.” Sure enough, Schoeller sends units through this junction, and those three American rifle teams knock down one German fire team and pin two more. But then Schoeller himself leads more troops down that trench (and those 2-5-2s have already fired). They reach the building for their assault. Saunders’ men take opportunity fire, but have two major drawbacks here … they are badly weakened since two of their units are still pinned (and can’t contribute) and the German assault is already in the other half of the building, so gets the =3 building cover bonus (this is now an assault inside a ruined German bunker)!
Saunders’ opportunity fire does nothing (note the “10” – a rather bad roll). Schoeller’s assault goes in, and Saunders’ pinned units are immediately and automatically eliminated… even before the dice are rolled.
Saunder’s squads are eliminated (killed, wounded, captured, scattered, or otherwise rendered combat ineffective). Schoeller has paid a steep price for this assault, but again has re-taken “Habeck House!” The two half-squads up at the trench junction have rallied, and it looks like the Germans might still manage to repel this American assault!
This highlights the dangers of trying to pin too many of your units to account for casualty points, rather than “bite the bullet” and kill a smaller number of them. In the long run, Saunders wound up losing much more. Furthermore, setting up proper overwatch positions (like Lomax’s three fireteams at the trench junction) can help with preventing enemy counterassaults. Also, care must be taken to not assault units too deep into enemy positions, where you wind up being closer to enemy counterattack units than you are to friendly supporting units. And finally, the importance of leaders who can rally pinned units and prepare them to meet that enemy counter-assault.
In short, this game is fast, simple, and brutal, but also very tactical. The tactics are hidden in the turn sequence, the math, the bonus, the resolution tables. It’s not laid out on cards or stat lines. You have to practice the game, learn how squads and platoons work in overwatch, base of fire, and maneuver elements …
…and we’re not even using ALL the rules (MG fire lanes, assault movement, etc.).
Captain Lomax has no choice but to lead another bloodbath assault on the Habeck House. A staggering five casualty points are inflicted by German opportunity fire (Schoeller applies a -2 leadership bonus) and then Lomax leads the assault in with the few men he has left. It’s another massacre, and by the time I figure out the math, yes … Lomax has succeeded in the assault, so Schoeller’s teams are eliminated and the Habeck House again changes hands … but the required casualty points for the assault (3 for Schoeller’s units in the hex + 3 for the building’s defense bonus) exceeds the number of casualty points Lomax still has.
Yes, the two platoons have wiped each other out.
Badly wounded, Captain Lomax is carried off the field by her shaken, dazed survivors, and sends an orderly with a message to Captain Pollock in the south. “German bunker cleared. It’s up to you now!”
Fortunately for Captain Pollock, there isn’t much left in the way of German resistance. Lomax and Saunders, Schoeller and Habeck, they all really went “all in” on possession of that building (and the +3 defense bonus it confers to whoever occupies it). Consolidating with Lt. Ferber, Pollock prepares to push north, out of the German reserve trenches, through their communication trenches, and into his first immediate target, the remaining German mortar pit.
Pollock leads his assault in at the beginning of American Turn 5. Fortunately, heavy weapons like the mortar cannot help with opportunity fire, and Pollock and his men are within the weapon’s minimum range anyway (“6” is the firepower, “12” is the range, the small “2” after that is the minimum range. However, there is a mortar crew (half squad with rifles and pistols) and a German leutnant in there with a -1 leadership bonus. Pollock has chosen a route of assault that includes craters, slowing him down but he’s very close anyway and he wants the cover bonus. He only takes a casualty point to opportunity fire, which he resolved by pinning a fire team. Then the assault goes in and with a “5”, wipes out the mortar position.
Again, Pollock opts to pin units to account for his required casualty points (pretty much his whole stack). He feels safe doing this because (a) there are no German units nearby to counter-assault, (b) he occupies the German trench, which is a trench with a +2 cover bonus, and (c) he has a -2 leadership bonus, which will make it very likely he will rally these men at the end of his turn anyway.
On the American Turn 6 (German MG fire has no lines of sight, so relocates to a rubble position for better defense), the Americans finally catch a bonafide stroke of excellent luck. No clever tactics here, they just get damned, damned lucky. German opportunity fire gets the worst possible roll, a 12. Not only doe sit do no damage to the approaching American infantry, but when an infantry unit rolls a 12 on an attack roll in this game, an enemy sniper suddenly appears. Snipers are handled in a rather abstract way in this game, they appear as if by magic anywhere within LOS of the enemy unit that rolled the boxcars. So the American sniper pops up in t hose craters (apparently he’s been belly-crawling through no-mans land all this time) and immediately attacks the German MG team. Sniper attacks are very simple, they roll a d6 minus the cover bonus of the target hex, and apply that many casualty points.
The sniper rolls a 4, -1 for the rubble, thus inflicting 3 casualty points. Only 2 German casualty points are in the hex, so they are wiped out. Pollock’s men assault t he hex only to find the Germans already dead or wounded by the sniper. It’s an anticlimactic ending, but by this point the Americans are just glad they aren’t taking any more casualties.
Thus ends the game. So did the Americans win?
Well, they cleared the German trenches in the allotted time … barely (Valor & Victory scenarios typically last six turns). So … yes. But did they take too many casualties? Possibly. This was a playtest game of the new trench boards, so I didn’t try to set up detailed victory conditions. But in a more formal, finalized scenario, the Americans would have had to take the trench in the allotted time, and have “x” number of intact squads left to meet German counterattack from off the south edge of the table.
So with only 27 officers and men out of an original assault force of 198 … I don’t know if I would call this an American victory. Those early assaults were very ham-fisted, not very tactical, and very bloody. Then again, many German diaries and battle reports of the actual period recount that this is just how American units tended to fight in 1918 – fresh to the war so still very brave to the point of recklessness, but tactically somewhat unskilled.
Again, just because 171 Americans and 174 Germans have been “eliminated” doesn’t mean they are all dead. Their units have been rendered combat ineffective. The usual estimations for early 20th Century combat usually runs about half the men in a “combat ineffective” unit being actual casualties, with about one third of the casualties being killed outright. So German and American losses each ran about 27 killed and 54 wounded (81 total casualties on each side).
As for the trench boards, there are a few clarifications I want to draw up for lines of sight, but other than that I think they worked great. As for Valor & Victory, every time I play this game I’m reminded again how much I love it. It’s quick, easy, extremely tactical, pleasantly realistic (without mind-numbing levels of detail) and best of all, it’s free. It’s a little bit of work to print the boards and counters, but definitely worth it if hard-core tactical, historical wargaming is your thing.
Hope you liked the battle. As always, if you liked it, consider heading over to the Valor & Victory: Great War 1918 Project and tossing on some recommendations. 😀 Thanks!
