Turn 2

Allied Initiative…

So the allies moved, few attacks, lots of air to little effect and arty except in Liege area where arty DG’d 4^th Pzr. That sucked. But that was a cheap lesson. I’d forgotten about the power of Arty and leaving honking big stacks invites trouble. Lesson Learned. Bill did not take much of the bait. At the end of this turn I leave some unintended bait for him…oh boy please pray he missed what I did. Basically I left my best HQ and a bridge uncovered. The bridge supplies trace to 5 divisions. I don’t know that he can get to it, but I would darn sure try if I were he. It would soak up time and effort to fix that mess….sheesh.

First losses so far as of Turn 1:

 

In the Axis turn 2, we had some ground to make up but first we had to adjust our plan to cross at the Sedan. It was reinforced, GD was surrounded, and while we could force our way into success we needed a faster route across the Meuse. Our current plan was intended to be something like this in the Ardenne and that is to cross at the Sedan and look for a place near Couvin as well.

The problem was that getting supply where it is needed is a challenge; Sedan is a few miles too far. That and having to drop fresh supplies back near the map edge meant another turn of shuffling SP.

A new area to breach was required. After an hour of looking at the map I thought I had a plan. Doing this on VASSAL was a challenge so I wrote down what I needed to do in the order I needed to do it, working backwards from the end point. My ‘plan’ for Turn 2 looked something like this:

• Gather SP and reinforcements
• Hit air at bases within in 10 hexes of my planned strikes.
• Hit 1^st Armoured sitting in Reserve [I made an error here and forgot to attack his support air near 1^st A. which as we will see was very expensive]
• Find furthest forward location for Turn 3 SP placement, and look for a good Turn 4 location (in order to drop 8SP where you want, it needs to be on a detrainable hex WITH a HQ in COMBAT mode). Turn 4 location is now Paliseuel.
• Move units for HipShoots.
• Move 1^st Pzr to O.run 25.20 (unit of cav surrounded by 3 divisions…).
• Attack 78^th Cav with 6^th Pzr
• Both above use Hipshoots.
• Put 2^nd Pzr in Reserve to attack after Meuse is crossed.
• 7^th Pzr in Reserve as above.
• Flip GD and inch back to safety.
• Then strat move units to front.

That was the Ardenne area.

In the North we had 3 more situations. Isolated Paras, with a low Ammo supporting division, the Dutch were still up and running and SS:V was wandering around.

So what happened?

We adjust the focus from Dinat to a little further South.

Actual Divs in reserve were 2,5,6,7 and 29 Motor. Which all headed South.

1^st Panzer did most of the heavy lifting with 1/and 2/1 taking out the interfering blocking units, and a successful hipshot killed the Arty, the only highlight of the Airwar so far.

We lost 3 airsteps and 3 Battalions of quality troops….

The funny thing is the entire attack across the Muese was predicated on getting tanks over to not be ¼’d on offense. So I illegally moved the tanks across the river. I realized as we were about to do combat that was incorrect. We adjusted and ran the 1:1 combat. Thanks to a decent Arty roll and massive +4 AR +3 on the column shifts we lost just one Battalion and pushed the Fr 61^st Division back 10 clicks in disarray! They do however block the road.

 

By Air attacking Couvin, I gave my hand away, with my intentions. BUT the side benefit is that the Allied player committed reserve move units to move towards Brussels. This suits me fine. It also forced the 1.A and 2.A armour to move. 1.A is now in strike range of my Exploit units.

 

They also move closer to Brussels… I like this.

Belgium abandons a hex in Liege… We take it:

Further North is a mess. Dutch hold firm in Dordrecht.

 

During the Exploit Phase things do not go as planned and we adjust again. The Chances of success in these hills @ 1:1 is not good. It is akin to a 1:3 attack in the open!!!

So..we adapt.

IF the Germans take the initiative on turn 3, it could be really interesting! The flip side of that is, it will play my plan in the South hand openly. Possibly a good price to pay.

End turn Round up shots:

Yes I did indeed forget the SS:V……sigh

 

As we progress – Turn2 ends and Allies take initiative. The Exploit phase sees 3-4 divisions across the Meuse and part of 1A surrounded. The French have forces to bring to bear, to relieve it.

 

Overall turn two achieved the goal of crossing the Meuse in force. However the cost was high with a lot of steps lost in Air power and a lot more battalions suffering attrition. We have also left some issues as I mentioned at the beginning.