Hi Kids, Played a favorite of mine, Disposable Heroes! This time we decided to do something different, we took an old Squad Leader scenario for the setup and went to town! In retrospect doing this without checking the point values was probably not a great idea, as it turned out the attacker (me) was about 25% behind the defender in army points. Arg! Learn something new everyday! And to add insult to injury, my opponent had God's Own Dice while my luck was circling the toilet the entire time. Sometimes I wonder why I game at all...
The long view of the board, the Soviets are on the far end and have to exit the table through the German lines with half their forces intact. The Huns are set up in the foreground. The Russians have 4 JS-2's and 8 infantry squads, while the Huns have a 128mm Jagdtiger, a Nashorn, and 5 infantry squads.
The Commies starting positions; everybody in cover? Good! We used 25mm T-54/55 for the JS-2's. It's as close as we cold get, especially since we needed 4 of them.
The Dreaded Huns, subbing a T34/85 for a Jagdtiger. I do own a 1/50 Tiger, but refuse to build it, hoping that the Tigerboys out there will be discouraged from using the ultra heavies. Obviously it didn't work in this case. The yellow tokens represent some kind of anti-tank gismo, not sure what kind. There were quite a few Panzerfausts out there.
The flare goes up and the Russians start forward, just like the scenario says. This would be the last time the Russians won the initiative.
First shot of the game, a Panzerfaust takes out a JS-2. Just the first cold slap in the face lady luck would deliver; as my opponent never once failed an acquire roll, a to hit roll, an armor penetration roll, or roll up catastrophic damage. He also never hit a location with the thickest armor, but that really isn't all that tough to do.
Same again, my opponents perfect rolls continue with the same results. The Russian infantry has also taken a pounding, as the MG42's (they had 5, one in each squad) and 128mm HE shells blow the living crud out of everything in sight! The 128mm has a 50% chance to kill each and every man in a squad when it is on target. Results ranged from 6 to 8 dead.
The Dice Gods throw me a bone, as a 122mm HE shell crushes a Nazi squad! Seven dead out of a possible eight! So this is what it feels like to roll well...
The Huns are awarded a skull token, to show that they have lost a squad for initiative purposes.
The final positions of the Soviets as the final JS-2 gets hit next to the church. For the first time in the game, the incoming damage effect roll is less than a 9!!!!! (The other tanks' rolls were 10, 10, and 9 on D10.) The last JS-2 was only a 7, which killed the turret crew. But don't think I never shot back, the 3rd JS-2 actually managed to acquire and hit the Nashorn!!!! BUT, the 122mm AP shot only hit the track, and FAILED TO PENETRATE! Apparently the Dice Gods figured out the 10, 10, 9 results were getting a little monotonous, and decided to even it up during my rolls. At this point I threw in the towel, as I still had to cross about 5 feet of table and my infantry had taken about 60% losses and had no anti-tank weapons at all. The Hun infantry wasn't in great shape either, but there was nothing to stop the Hun tanks from crushing everything.
Here's the scenario, in the future I'd go ahead and get a rough idea of the points for each side. For example, the JS-2 is worth 253pts, the Jagdtiger a whopping 850!!!! Whoa! Still had a huge amount of fun playing Disposable Heroes! Figs are 25mm Westwind, Battlefront, and TAG. Tanks are London War Room, Jungle Rot, Hobby Armor Depot, and a 1/48 diecast Marder.
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