With summer here, it’s kinda hard to keep to a schedule, but I’m trying....

For my birthday (# 45), I got a copy of Valor of the Guards. This is the second historical ASL module (HASL) set in Stalingrad. While the original, Red Barricades, deals with the fighting in and around the Red Barricady tractor works in October, Valor of the Guards covers the earlier fighting for central Stalingrad.

I got it on Wednesday, the night Paul and I play, so I took it over to his house to show him. Well, with all the pretty new counters - assault engineers, NKVD, and Cletus the Slack-Jawed Commissar (as we dubbed the 8+1 Commissars) we just had to give it a whirl.

What to play - why Votg9 - Eviction Notice, of course! It’s short (4.5 turns), low counter count (10 German squad equivalents vs 11 Russian squad equivalents), minimal Scenario Special Rules, and uses only a small section of the map. Paul took the attacking Russians and I took the defending Germans.

My setup of pretty much specified by the scenario (all front line stone hexes to be occupied) but I was able to do some surprises. I had one AT gun and I set it up to fire down the left hand road. At this point, it had a clear shot to Paul’s entry area. This would discourage him from bringing his tanks down that road - and prefer the right hand road. Therefore, I placed my mortar on this flank so it could shell the rest of the board (no fear of it being swarmed). On the right flank, I deployed the two anti-tank rifles (ATR) I had in spots so that when Paul brought the tanks down the road, I could get side shots on them. Just for grins, the AT gun was setup such that once Paul committed his armor, I could push the gun to the other road (if necessary).  The center of my line was held by my HMG and most of my squads.

Paul deployed opposite my center and a little to my right. On turn one, he brought his tanks down the right-hand road (radioless platoon movement) and concentrated his fire to break my line. The first turn, my dice were not horrible (only 2 squads broke) but not great (no appreciable damage to the Russians). Turn 2 was about the same, except a berserk Russian squad managed to take out my forward most ATR. Turn 3, when the AT gun was manhandled into position, my dice got much better. I managed to destroy one of the  T60 M40 tanks and break most of Paul’s front line.

At this point it was getting late (setting up the scenario and reading the SSR took a lot of time) so we called the game, slightly in my favor. However, a good turn for Paul would have reversed that tenuous hold.

Now, two confessions and a problem:

1. 1.Paul and I didn’t read the SSR closely enough - specifically, we missed VotG20. This SSR says all Russian tanks have radios. We played the Russians as radioless. This significantly hurt Paul’s attack.
   

2. 2.Playing the game, I misread the victory conditions and, if the game had completed, Paul would have won because I didn’t plan on taking any buildings outside my deployment zone. I was playing a purely defensive battle (I guess my playing style is still stuck into the Russian mindset for Red Barricades (see here and here).
   

3. 3.There are many setup descriptions that are confusing, but the Russian setup for this scenario is a doozy. There are two possible ways we saw to set up; one forces the Russians to deploy only on the German’s left flank and one allows the Russians to deploy across the whole line. Need to get MMP to answer that one...
   

All told, a good scenario and one I’ll play again.