Kreta DFA Scenario - Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

I’ll make this very short. Relatively.

Friday night we ran another Death From Above (DFA) scenario for Flames of War; My Fallschirmjagers jumped into Crete once again.

I fouled up the game from the start by placing all objectives too close together, and effectively giving my opponent the ability to cover them all easily.

My demon-possessed die were on a rampage the whole night.

In DFA, the paratroopers army is 25% larger than the opponents army. This helps to offset the expected loss of 25% of the troops on the drop zone (dz).

Unfortunately, 25% doesn’t come close to offsetting for my miserable die-rolls, which ended the game for 40% of my ill-fated Fallschirmjagers.

To add insult to injury, the two most expensive units on the table were the two Glider Assault Infantry Platoons. They took 1/6 casualties when a poor die-roll resulted in:

1. Glider crashed on landing;
2. Team failed its saving throw to survive the crash.

Taking that insult beyond the mental to the near-physical face-smacking realm, my shooting was unbelievably poor, resulting in only 1 or 2 stands of Brit infantry dead. I did manage to kill off most of an HMG platoon. However, on assaulting the remains of the platoon and managing to destroy it, I left the survivors of the Glider Assault platoon open for a vicious fusillade, followed by a close assault that finished them off. 325 points gone in one shot, with one platoon dead.

The second Glider Assault Platoon, which was already 1/6th under strength, opened fire on a Brit platoon guarding the objective, missed most of their shots, assaulted and actually won. However they were now in a position to be fired at and assaulted immediately, and they were severely under strength. One can only hope that the Brits would fail their initiative.

Beginning of Turn One – my opponent, Rob, rolls to unpin all of his pinned units. He only fails to rally one unit, a non-critical infantry unit too far away from the fray at this point to do any good. He then rolls to bring on “reserves” and rolls a 5 – he needed a 4. On come his truck-borne Brit infantry, and where should they arrive? Right in the flank of one platoon of Fallschirmjagers. They had not made it to their equipment canister, so they were unarmed, except for pistols. They fought hard and only lost by a little! Still they lost. Luckily for me, the remnants, barely over half their original strength, fled towards their equipment canister.

The Glider assault platoon was fired on, losing another stand or two, and then assaulted by Brit infantry, led by the Company Commander. Of course, the Fallschirmjagers, outmanned, lost miserably. They were utterly destroyed.

Turn two wasn’t much better. My firing was ineffective, Robs saves worked. When it came time for his portion of the Turn, Rob naturally rolled to bring on his reserves. He rolled 2 die – and rolled a 5 and a 6, bringing on two of the last three units he had off-board.

I lost the remains of 1st platoon, leaving the commander still running for his canister, nearly alone. The Mountain guns fired and managed to kill one stand of infantry, but as Robert started his turn, I realized I had no combat-effective units remaining on the table – and with the dual-impact of two arty units (one of his reserves was an arty unit, he had begun the game with one on the table), and the tanks that were due to come on next turn, I knew the game was over. On one objective, I had the commander, the 2IC, and some anti-tank rifles (1 stand). Out 20+ inches from any of the objectives I had my mountain gun platoon intact, and 4 stands of infantry with their platoon command.

I called the game at this point.

The combination of my poor objective placement, compounded by my demon—possessed die, enhanced by Rob’s innate ability to analyze a situation on the tabletop and immediately exploit it, as well as his amazingly good die-rolls resulted in the worst loss my Fallschirmjager have ever had.

Louis handed me my other serious defeat, and a well-fought battle it was. Meat-grinder in a city-fight! Ouch!

Aside from my frustrations with my own stupidity in placing the objective so close to the other objective, and my utter disbelief at my horrific die-rolls, it was a good game, and played out much like at least one actual battle in Crete, where an entire FJ battalion was wiped out to a man.