Taking the Tip: Mistakes and Bad Luck

[Bishop746]

Taking the Tip
11/56

No spoilers in this AAR; just a few observations on bad luck and bad judgment.

Swimming is not easy especially with 60 pounds of equipment and a parachute. B platoon lost 2 squads and the HQ section to the drop alone. C Platoon landed on the airstrip and did an excellent job taking out several sentries and getting to the ammo dumps. B platoon had trouble re-supplying because I moved them to an ammo dump that was to close to the enemy. This was my first of mistake.

After the transport landed I moved C platoon north to give B platoon some much needed help. The engineers, along with one pathfinder squad, moved parallel to the runway and a little to the south of it. This was my second mistake. After losing half of B platoon I should have never split my force into two groups. I should have picked an axis of advance and moved my whole force towards it using one platoon to screen my flanks. Once resistance got heavy I bogged down immediately. The engineers never made it much further than the runway intersection. C and B platoon did secure the commanders quarters but were unable to knock out a gunboat that made movement difficult. One bright spot occurred when an armored vehicle moved within 50 meters of the engineers. The HQ section fired it’s AT weapon but missed. None of the other squads had line of sight so were unable to help. One pathfinder squad though was south of the armored vehicle after clearing a building. They had no AT weapon but did have a satchel charge and enough movement to get close. They moved next to the vehicle and never received any OPFIRE from the enemy and destroyed it with a satchel charge. Had the assault failed they probably would have be destroyed on the next turn. The enemy stopped any further advance because my force was too scattered to bring sufficient force to break through. By turn15 the engineers were pulling back to keep from being decimated. B and C platoons, low on ammo and smoke, may have moved forward with heavy casualties but time ran out.

One aspect missing from all Steel Panthers games is the need or requirement to extract forces that cannot secure their objectives. This scenario ended in a Draw. In most scenarios I can understand a draw; one side pulls back and both regroup. We could assume that after the scenario ends my forces are either reinforced, since they do control the airfield or they withdraw to the shore and are extracted that way. This is not a criticism of this scenario but just observations that many computer games have a win or die mentality. Sometimes pushing on is a waste of lives and withdraw is the only option. Gamers should have to take that into consideration.