Awakening the Bear Firefight 3 AAR – General Petrov
Awakening the Bear After Action Rerport
Firefight 3 – General Petrov
After the great time Kris and I had playing firefight number 2 at Fair Game a few weeks ago, we were itching to get some more Conflict of Heroes under our belt. Firefight 3 – General Petrov seemed to be the logical choice.
Firefight 3, like earlier Awakening the Bear firefights, introduces players to a few new concepts along with building on those introduced in prior fights. This time around, we see the introduction of mortars, including indirect fire, a wider array of combat cards, and and entire side,the Soviets, starting hidden on the map. Additionally, we see the introduction of off board artillery for the first time as the Soviets are granted three strikes for use at their discretion.
The scenario is pretty straightforward; the Germans have intelligence that a General Petrov lays wounded in a small village. The are ordered to capture or kill him. There is no other information about the location of Soviet forces.
Playing the Soviets, I plotted my set up on a printed out version of the map. Unbeknownst to Kris, I kept four of my seven units back giving close protection to General Petrov. My other three units were hidden a bit more forward. I was hoping for an assault from the front. Genius, I know . . .
Kris set up his units grouping the rifles and LMGs along the southern part of the map. His mortars were a bit more spread out.
Initial set up. Hidden Soviet forces visible at bottom as placeholders
Closeup on Kris's most mobile units.
Seeing that Kris had heavily loaded the south eastern part of the map, I tried some hidden movement to get into better position. However, hidden movement is very costly and I generally couldn’t move more than one next per turn with a unit.
Kris approached and seemed intent on using his 8cm mortars too drop down some smoke. While it didn’t impact the game, it indirectly gave us some exposure to the smoke rules which we hadn’t used up until that point.
Kris lays down the smoke
The challenge I faced was that Kris advanced very quickly on the suspected location of the general. A combination of group movement, full expenditure or Action Points, and full expenditure of CAP put him on the northern end of the southern hill ofon map 4 within two turns.
One of my hidden MMG revealed itself hoping to pin him down as by now I had called in some artillery right where he was. However, while I inflicted some damage and scored a VP, I really couldn’t slow him down. He eliminated my MMG and moved out of the target radius of my inbound artillery.
Kris' position in the middle of Turn 3
It was over by Turn 3. All of my units were now unhidden but really couldn’t put together enough firepower to stop the Germans. Outside of a few attacks, the lead German group waltzed in and captured the General pretty easily.
Final Score 7-2 in Turn 3 in favor of the Germans.
The final move to capture the General
Having been beaten pretty handily, looking back I though of a few things that stood out to me:
- Without any reinforcements coming, the Soviets are hard pressed to stop a mass of Germans
- The fact that the Germans know the General is in one of only two houses, and they are right next to each other, makes it very difficult to really consider the General as hidden. Once one hidden unit in a hex reveals itself, all hidden units in that hex reveal too
- I was surprised at how underpowered the Soviet mortar was. Also, the German 8cms move so slowly that they weren’t really in the fight at all, which is too bad. I wanted to see their indirect fire in action.
- I only got two of my three artillery strikes off and both of them missed. I took a wait and see approach and ended up waiting too long. Once I saw Kris massed together at the beginning, I should have fired all three right away.
- My forward units should have been closer together to provide support for each other. Instead they were spread too thin to be effective.
While disappointed with the loss, I had fun once again. While I would like to give this Firefight another shot, we’ve been looking ahead to Firefight 4 (or is it 5?) The Monsters which is tank heavy. I think we’re both itching to get some vehicle action in.
Another great game of Awakening the Bear!
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