Steve challenged Josh with this old scenario from the General magazine, which involves a British seaborne assault on sleeping Germans in Vaagso, Norway in December 1941. Josh chose to defend, and we played via VASL (as I had just gotten VASL set up again and was dying to get back into it after about four years off).
The Germans elected to sleep through the commandos’ landing, maintaining concealment and position. This meant the British Shipboard Observer couldn’t target anyone for his Naval artillery, but allowing the Brits to land unopposed was a steep price to pay for that peace and quiet.
By Turn 2, the first commandos had landed unopposed, and set about dislodging the sleepy Germans and expanding their perimeter as quickly as possible. Although the scenario is 9 turns long, there is remarkably little time for the Brits to control 30 buildings AND set fire to the buildings near the shore. My commandos rushed inland, leaving the mopping up and kindling of the shoreline buildings to the later arrivals. This almost caused problems later in the game, as some buildings didn’t catch fire as quickly as others…
In Turn 4, my only commandos to arrive on foot accidentally entered adjacent to Josh’s hidden AA gun in 41GG4. Unfortunately, his crew didn’t survive my return fire, and the gun was captured in moments. He rushed in his reinforcing tank to 41EE4, where it was swarmed by commandos and immobilized in the first CC phase. It took about 3 turns of CC to finish it off.
My last Landing Craft landed in Turn 6, by which time the earlier commandos had fully engaged almost all of the Germans further inland, with a view to sprinting inland to take buildings whenever the opportunity presented itself.
One German deserves special mention. Josh’s 8-0 leader single handedly took out a commando squad and leader in close combat, and withstood several point-blank shots thereafter, until finally succumbing in Turn 7.
By the bottom of Turn 7, all Germans were either broken or locked in close combat (except for 2 leaders), and the final British sprint for inland buildings was about to follow. Josh conceded at this point.
I have to think that the Germans needed to oppose the landing vigorously to whittle down the Brits and have a chance of winning.